by Mor Keshet, MPS, LCAT
CERI Faculty Member

As an Integrative Eco Arts Therapist, visualizations are important to my process as they help me not only see things as they are, but as they could potentially become. Visualization is a profound skill that is emblematic of what renowned archeologist Christopher Henshilwood (2003) director of the Centre for Early Sapiens Behaviour at the University of Bergen in Norway, named the ‘symbolic mind of our species.’ Humans have been creating symbolic expressions for over 500,000 years. We have both an innate need and a seemingly singular capacity to create symbolic expressions of our experience. And so, for this CERI Earth Day 2024 blog post, I would like to extend an invitation to you to visualize and create your own symbolic expression. 

Allow me first to tell you a bit about Art Therapy and Integrative Eco Art Therapy. Art Therapy helps people connect to the expressions of their subconscious minds. By fostering a psychic and relational space that is safe, creative, and open, those engaged in Art Therapy are able to bypass the sophisticated verbal defenses of the psyche and penetrate the vast knowing that is the subconscious mind. Once art is created, the person who created it is left with a physical manifestation of their subconscious expression. The art provides an archival sense of permanence, tactility, and ideally – curiosity. The interiors of our mind are on display in artform, and this can serve as a bridge, an opening towards dialoguing with self, and often, a roadmap towards where we yearn to go. When we physically, artistically, symbolically manifest that which we visualize, we further integrate said visualization into our psyche, and so it becomes more accessible and cohesive. 

Integrative Eco Art Therapy is a humanistic and eco-centric approach to restoring and cultivating healthy attachments between humans and the natural world. Within this model, we create symbolic gestures while borrowing from Nature as setting, subject, materials, or ideally all three. This supports a profound process in which participants become both soothed by the kinesthetic and neurologically balancing process of artmaking and they develop meaningful insights and resourced understanding about the larger patterns of their lives. IEAT is informed and held by the principles of Interbeing, reciprocity, and cooperation, and thereby helps to organically support and deepen participants’ development of healthier, more secure attachments to themselves, other people and the natural world. 

I recently led a group of Expressive Art Therapists in a cooperative exercise of visualizing the world which we yearn for through poetry. After hearing several poems written by Philip Larkin, bell hooks, and Nora Bateson, participants were asked to write a spontaneous poem about their vision for the future. We then each read our poems and carefully reflected on their meaning and impact as we received them. Each writer selected two lines from their poem that I arranged into a collective Eco Poem dedicated to our future. 

I would now like to give you the opportunity to engage in this exercise with me, here and now. Below are the poems that I read to the group. I encourage you to consider each. As you read them (perhaps out loud), consider what words penetrate your being and why? Do they transport you to another time and place? What questions do they leave you pondering? What sensations are you aware of in your body as you hear the words? Are any images stirred in your mind? Take time between each poem to reflect on these questions and perhaps make a note of your thoughts and/or any sensations you become aware of. 

The Trees (1974)
by Philip Larkin

The trees are coming into leaf
Like something almost being said;
The recent buds relax and spread,
Their greenness is a kind of grief.

Is it that they are born again
And we grow old? No, they die too.
Their yearly trick of looking new
Is written down in rings of grain.

Yet still the unresting castles thresh
In fullgrown thickness every May.
Last year is dead, they seem to say,
Begin afresh, afresh, afresh.


Appalachian Elegy
bell hooks

2. such then is beauty
surrendered
against all hope
you are here again
turning slowly
nature as chameleon
all life change
and changing again
awakening hearts
steady moving from
unnamed loss
into fierce deep grief
that can bear all burdens
even the long passage
into a shadowy dark
where no light enters
word for word
mouth for mouth
all the holy ones
embracing us
all our kin
making home here
renegade marooned
lawless fugitives
grace these mountains
we have earth to bind us
the covenant
between us
can never be broken
vows to live and let live

6. listen little sister
angels make their hope here
in these hills
follow me
I will guide you
careful now
no trespass
I will guide you

This was my offering: 

Progress no more.
Comfort in waves of light 
weaving into streams of being. 
I see you, fear not young one
for we have passed into the echoes of tomorrow. 
Emerged into stillness as the shimmers of 
cardboard boxes collect our tears for what was.  
The dew freezes holding 
memory. 
No flags, no allegiances. 
We remain 
standing atop the grove.

I now invite you to take 10-15 minutes (or much more should you wish!) to write, paint, draw, sculpt, collage – CREATE - your vision for the future. Don’t censor yourself. Allow your thoughts to roam and coalesce with all that you feel and know in this moment. Breath it in and allow it out. Your symbolic manifestation of your vision for the future is a gift on this Earth Day, 2024. An essential thread that is needed to weave the collective tapestry of our human and more than human world. 

I would love to see what it is that you have visualized and symbolized in this precious moment of time. The more we as individuals deepen our awareness of what is happening to our world while developing clearer visions for a healthier future, the more we may realize that future. Don’t be afraid to know your truth. It is good, it is real and it is needed. Thank you for joining me along this journey here and now.  

Please be sure to share with me and CERI using #visionfortheplanet