To separate a little bit the two words I start first with healing. Healing has always been a question since the existence of humanity. There are even theories saying that humanity started when humans started to heal each other consciously. The healing processes become more and more sophisticated with time. Anyhow, it is a subject that has been with us all along the history of humanity and what before seemed to be in the hands of Gods, nowadays, it is in the hands of humans, of individuals. Healing being in the hand of Gods also meant that it was uncontrollable. It was a grace, a divine intervention, if healing happened at all. People were inventing many different approaches, but these were more experimental than considered a safe, secure knowledge. In our times, when science is giving the illusion of security, a certain method is applied for a specific symptom or disease. With this the ancient space where experiment could happen is lost. Before the healing process could be applied to a person according to the situation and depending on many different things, so a disease or a symptom could be healed in many different ways, depending on who was ill. Nowadays, the person is left out from the process of healing and the focus is on the disease, which is considered something bad that has to be eliminated as soon as possible. This is creating a lot of tension, a lot of stress. We are burning in the fire of immediateness. There is no time given for the process itself, which can lead or not to recovery, but everything has to be solved right now, right away.
And what about art? Art was the space for the healing of the soul. It was the space where the transcendent, the Gods could intervene in the life of humans, and could produce Catharsis in the soul of the people. Especially the dramatic arts were meant to make this connection between the invisible word of Gods and the visible word of humans. Some things that happened to humans could be understood only by looking beyond the human stories and letting the soul be touched by something coming from beyond the visible and touchable word. Chinese art I find very healing. Especially the presence of the space. The silence and the space. It has more importance what is not drawn or what is not shown than what is expressed. For me this is the essence of art: to create such spaces where breathing is possible, where being is possible, and where things can happen on their own accord.
So what is the art of healing in a nutshell? I think it is to agree with this space, and also with what a symptom or a disease shows in this space. To see the message or to see how the disease, the symptom is part of the whole. It is giving a special touch to the person to whom it is happening. It is part of the destiny of this person and as such, it is part of the whole. And
to say yes to its invitation, to be curious about it, to see, where, in which parts of our soul it wants to take us, how it is talking for us about our wholeness.