Recovery

My focus during February has been on recovery, physically and creatively.

Recovery: I wet the entire surface of an old watercolor painting.
Then I used a variety of scrapers to reveal the white paper underneath.
Next I added another layer of shapes in acrylic paint.

Since returning from Italy, I have been doing yoga five days a week with a variety of yoga instructors. Walking throughout central and southern Italy was a great experience, but that much walking tends to tighten the hamstrings and calves. So my first goal in deciding to do yoga Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday and Saturday was to stretch my hamstrings. And that did happen in January.

But I had no idea how intensifying my practice could bring other exciting physical recoveries. In February I began to notice that the stiffness in my left leg and hip was beginning to loosen, resulting in a slight improvement in my balance and a vastly improved triangle pose.

I got really excited when, with my hands clasped behind my head while lying on the floor, I felt the elbow of my left arm touch the floor simultaneously with my right elbow. My left arm has had mobility limitations since I broke it nearly two years ago. My physical therapist had gotten me to the 80% functionality the doctors had said was the maximum I could expect. I wanted more than that and my physical therapist encouraged me to keep working toward that goal. I think I’m up to 90% now and I’m not done!

Unlocking A Broken Heart: All that remains of the original
acrylic painting are the brown color and large red shape.

For years I have wrestled with stiff hip and back muscles that compromised my flexibility. These were the result of the sitting required at my job. Although I had been able to stop the psoas muscles from seizing up by using a ball chair, sitting still constricted them, leading to tightness in my sacrum and lumbar region. In mid-February I experienced the first loosening of my back muscles when I was able to roll back and up into a supported shoulder stand.

In my artwork I have been wrestling with recovering my sense of color, layering techniques, and the looser painting style I used to have. The desire to recover these skills arose from a review of my Eve paintings. They were done in a palette of blues and greens with touches of Burnt Orange or Terra Rosa. I suspect I was drawn to cool colors because of the extreme stress of my job during the time that I began this series.

So recently I did several “play” pieces to begin my skills recovery journey. Recovery and Unlocking A Broken Heart are acrylic. I did Chinese New Year in gouache to warm up for the mandala class I’m teaching. All were painted on paper, on top of failed work from the past, thus I had nothing to lose.

Chinese New Year 2015: May the year of the sheep, goat,
or ram be filled with deliberate actions and expansive creativity.

Do you have a long-neglected physical function, skill, or talent that you would like to recover? Create a simple strategy and go for it. Believe me, you can do it!