creativity and discharge

Written by Niek | 12 December 2011

The very last edition of the (British) Here and Now internet site, published for four years now, several times a year by email, and only for CCI co-counselors, publishes last Sunday evening also a contribution about a possible 'relationship' between 'creating' and 'discharging' in CCI co-counseling. This Here and Now internet site was a wonderful personal initiative of a member of a British CCI community. It is a pity that this internet (email) initiative in its original intention will not be continued. Though they announce that some email information (about UK – and possible other - CCI meetings) will be published by internet. Quoting of articles of this closed circulation was only permitted if the author was asked permission to do so, and only in CCI circles. The service has been issued for four years and offered members to communicate about issues of their interests and or showing their creative products as poems, visions in writing, sculptures etc.

last edition

In this last edition, the editor of the public website CCI World News Service, writes about his thoughts of a possible relationship between creating and discharging in CCI co-counseling. We quote his contribution. He wrote: 'Triggered by the liberation after a discharge, as part of the process of CCI co-counseling, I only experienced for years these impressions and enjoyed what happened. I was grateful with the result and admired each new insight that I gained. I did not think about anything else and just accepted what happened. It was an experiment. And it worked well for me! That was my experience at and just after my CCI fundamental training in 1982! And years after that.

I was told that liberation and discharge were connected, as I understood it. In my perception was that a kind of logic. So it was not an item to think about. In these times I experienced to be overwhelmed – any way in the Netherlands and Europe – by being pushed strongly to discharge. It was in my view, the 'era' of the culture of the mobile, lively and noisy discharges. The times that I – and I think we all – were more or less pushed into discharge. I hated to be pushed already in that time and not being in charge of the process myself. And that is still the same. Years later I am still grateful for this experimental phase in my CCI life! Though I would have liked to know about a (possible) relation between discharge and creativity!

recently

Recently I wondered where all the energy comes from which is in my view compared with discharge and liberation. So I wrote last June for the public website CCI World News Service (www.cciwns.com) some points about what evokes my liberation? Because it is obvious to me that liberation is connected with a lot of energy. Energy that just evaporates and evokes a feeling of relief. Researching – as the activity in CCI is for me an overall reviewing and searching for what happens inside me – I see this activity as a process. A process that unrolls it self. Like, as John Heron names them: the need to love and to be loved; the need to understand and be understood; the need to be part of a bigger whole. And so looking at what we in CCI in fact are doing, it seems me to be: creating an atmosphere in which we are able to observe what we did not realize that it was there before.

And are we, within CCI, not all the time busy with creating? Creating a non authoritarian environment, equal time to work, respect to each other and everything, and do we just not commend and conscious create how we would like it to be?

Or more in general, do we not try to create how we can live in peace with our past, our present and our future? Looking at the phenomenon of discharge as a result of our own creativity, gives – in my view – that activity of discharge quite another annotation. The liberation is a result of a conscious personal action, and not an unaware reaction on a painful experience.

healthy creativity

Being focused on the activity of creating, I suddenly seems to see far more examples of it. I knew already for years that writing about feelings/emotions (= creating in words what is bothering you) is healthy and evokes similar kinds of physical reactions as discharges do. Scientific research at the University of Utrecht (Netherlands) has proved that already long time ago.

Searching by Google about the power of creativity offers 68 million results. So thoughts about this item are not new! In 1888 Florence Nightingale writes 'people say the effect (of creativity) is only on the mind. It is no such thing. The effect is on the body, too.' Google informs me also that Mary Rockwood Lane and John Graham – Pole, long ago wrote an article on this subject published in 1994 in Arts and Aesthetics in Nursing (ISBN 0-88737-609-6). These authors write: ' The overall mission in creating this arts program is to explore and demonstrate links between the creative arts and the healing arts. We see these links as enhancing and integrating our physical, mental, emotional and spiritual well-being'.

Soon afterward my daily paper (NRC Handelsblad) draw my attention by an article about a ' writing therapy' as developed by prof. James B. Pennebaker, department of psychology, University of Texas, USA. Doing so, and clicking on 'writing and health', you enter 'some practical advise' to do at home. This starts with: 'Writing about emotional upheavals in our lives can improve physical and mental health. Although the scientific research surrounding the value of expressive writing is still in the early phases, there are some approaches to writing that have been found to be helpful'.

It follows like: 'Keep in mind that there are probably a thousand ways to write that may be beneficial to you.' And the practical advises ends with: 'What to do with your Writing Samples: The writing is for you and for you only. Their purpose is for you to be completely honest with yourself. When writing, secretly plan to throw away your writing when you are finished. Whether you keep it or save it is really up to you.' Already in 1997 the same author (Pennebaker, James W.) publishes by NY: Guilford Press a book 'The Healing Power of Expressing Emotion'.

artists in history and wish

My same daily paper of November 24th informs me that famous artists, (painters, sculptors, drawers, designers, etchers etc.) in the 'lower European countries ('the Netherlands and Belgium) 'lived substantial longer in the seventeens' century,than the aristocrats of that time, as a result of a scientific demographic study of the Netherlands Interdisciplinary Demographic Institute (NIDI). There must have been something in their style of living, in their work or possibly in their paint, that they lived longer writes the daily paper. So far there is no connection with the emotional life of those creators and their well being! But who knows?!'

Hopefully there is within the CCI circles, somebody who is willing to continue the British internet initiative, giving especially room in CCI circles to certain personal emotional expressions. Though they are as well very welcome elsewhere! Any way they are in CCI World News Service, as a public website, and ask for the credentials!