Entering Creative Consciousness: Moving into Deep Connection

Abstract

Many people find it difficult to enter the creative process. When a therapist or group leader introduces dance/movement, participants in individual or group sessions may hesitate to engage in creative expression. This article explores approaches to assisting individuals and groups to enter into states of consciousness conducive to creative expression and transformation through trance, ritual, and movement. Through an understanding of hypnotic principles derived from the work of Milton Erickson, non-ordinary states of consciousness conducive to creative and expressive arts therapies can be encouraged. This process allows participants to experience a powerful connection with the deep self and the outlet for expression that creative expression techniques provide.

Keywords: non-ordinary states of consciousness, ritual, movement, expressive arts therapy, creative consciousness, creativity

“The dance between the conscious and unconscious is choreographed in the magical place of the imaginal realm” (P. Lewis, 1993, p. 2)

This paper is an exploration of approaches to assisting individuals and groups to enter states of consciousness conducive to creative expression and transformation through generative trance (Gilligan, 2007, 2010), ritual, and movement. Many people find it difficult to engage the creative process. Particularly when introducing dance/movement, participants in individual or group sessions may hesitate to engage in creative expression. They may be constrained by their sense of what is “appropriate behavior” or by their discomfort about revealing parts of themselves that do not match their sense of social identity. Participants may not want to expose, either to themselves or to others, the vulnerabilities that might emerge. They may have learned from early experiences that the “magical place of the imaginal realm” (P. Lewis, 1993, p. 2) is not socially acceptable. They may hold a belief that they are not artistic or creative, thinking that creativity is something “magical” or special, rather than something inherent in all human beings.

The notion of everyday creativity…involves the basic capacity of human beings – indeed of all living things – to adapt flexibly to changing environments (also see Sinott, 1959). … Defined in terms of adaptive capacity, such creativity logically pertains to many types of activities at many levels of complexity; it serves, after all, as a basis for human survival. (Richards, 1997, p. 140)

Creativity is not something that exists only in eminent artists. It can be seen as the ability to “express being itself … (to) enlarge human consciousness … the most basic manifestation of a man or woman fulfilling his or her own being in the world” (May, 1975, pp. 39-40). Encouraging creativity involves finding ways to inspire curiosity, self-confidence, openness to experience, imagination, and expression, attributes ascribed to creative people (Russ, 1993).

The question addressed here is how those facilitating transformative work can assist clients and students to find their way through their discomfort and open to the possibilities of healing and growth through creative expression. Techniques can be adopted that help people dive deeper than the ordinary cognitive state of consciousness that is the usual mode for interaction in our culture.

Diving Deeper

One pathway into the depth work of creative expression is through movement. Most people growing up in Western cultures have learned to ignore information from their bodies (Aposhyan, 1999; Gendlin, 1978). The cultural programming for moving and holding one’s body is clear in the modeling of adults following the unspoken rules of how to behave in public and private circumstances (sit on chairs or sofas in a limited number of positions, stand quietly in lines, occupy the areas of the room that have been subtly designated for use, etc.). Sometimes the direction is more overt, as in the following example from my own experience. Whenever I was caught with my feet up on my chair in my sixth grade classroom, I was forced to stand for several minutes as punishment. I learned to sit in the approved manner or risk public humiliation.

Once people learn to disregard their bodies’ natural sensations and impulses, they are cut off from a rich source of information from parts of themselves that may unconsciously have a powerful effect on their experience of themselves and their behavior in the world. They are disconnected from the unconscious processes “… ‘of which the personality is unaware’ but ‘which [are] a factor in the determination of conscious and bodily phenomena’ (Erickson & Rossi, CP I, p. 424)” (Lankton & Lankton, 1983, p. 8). Those conscious and bodily phenomena may be the “symptoms” or calls for attention to deeper parts of the self. They are often the impetus that brings a person to a workshop for personal growth or counseling.

The healing work invited by those symptoms involves reconnecting with parts of the self that have not been available to the conscious mind. Through opening possibilities for connection to realms below the surface of ordinary consciousness, those guiding groups or individuals help clients and students contact deeper levels in themselves in which they have access to integration and healing.

In life, the patterns which connect are always deeper (and thus less apparent) than those which disconnect … A person’s “unconscious” autonomy will always be generating that which is needed for integration and growth. (Gilligan, 2002, p. 56)

Accessing this level of consciousness can be done without engaging in clinical hypnosis that would require extensive training on the part of the facilitator. To enter creative consciousness, the facilitator primarily needs an awareness of the possibility of encouraging a naturalistic generative trance state.

Generating Multiple Possibilities
for Each Response

The third principle is to generate multiple possibilities, sometimes stated as “Your unconscious can express X in so many ways” (Gilligan, 2010, p. 14). The following example is from an inner journey exploring life direction, power, action, and energy. In this scenario, participants were already moving in their own individual explorations of these ideas, and some of the possibilities described here are naming or pacing what the facilitator was observing. This acknowledged and validated the experience of those whose activities were described, while providing permission and possibilities for those who might now have engaged in those movements or activities at that point.

How close do you feel to that path of your life right now,
and what do you need, in this moment, to find your way to the right next step in your life,
in your journey,
in your process …
There are so many ways to find that way,
could be dancing wildly, could be quietly seeing where your quiet fires are,
could be sitting with just what’s going on inside,
could be tending the places of wounding from the past,
breathing the places where power wasn’t,
celebrating the places where power is,
mourning the energy you wish you had,
enjoying the place that feels just right.

This principle overlaps with principles of developing everyday creativity, which involves the cultivation of openness, flexibility, resiliency, and willingness to experiment. The ability to “adapt flexibly to changing environments” (Richards & Kinney, 1997, p. 140) is basic to creative consciousness. Including suggestions in the development of creative consciousness that support many possible responses gives participants permission to enter creatively into an expressive exploration of what is presented. Invoking multiplicity provides space for creative responses that fall outside the box, both in the present moment within a session, and in everyday life after the session. In essence, the consciousness that is invoked in order to shift participants into a creative state in the moment also begin to open up the possibility for a more creative (flexible, open, resilient) state outside the session. Moving into a state of consciousness conducive to healing is healing and growth-inducing in itself.

Working with Creative Consciousness

Three principles derived from the hypnotherapeutic work of Erickson can be easily applied to the process of assisting clients and students to enter the creative consciousness conducive to creative and expressive arts practices. Using these principles, the facilitator can help participants to establish and maintain connection with the deep self and provide permissive suggestions as the creative consciousness journey shifts from an inner process in stillness into movement or other creative expressions. The three principles are: (a) utilization, (b) complementarity, and (c) generating multiple possibilities for each response.

Utilization

This is one of Erickson’s major contributions to hypnotherapy. The therapist holds an attitude of acceptance and communicates to the hypnotic subject that “What you’re doing right now is just fine and is exactly that which will allow you to do X” (Gilligan, 2002, p. 4). Whatever is happening can be part of the process and can be used to move deeper into the state of creative consciousness.

Pacing and leading. The simplest forms of utilization are pacing and leading, where the facilitator makes statements describing what is happening (pacing), and then moving to something new (leading). For example, participants readying themselves for a creative movement journey in one of my workshops often create a comfortable place for themselves to begin by spreading a mat or blanket on the floor and setting up cushions, then placing their bodies in comfortable positions. This can be paced by saying something like, “Finding your way into a comfortable place to rest, adjusting the cushions, placing your body in just the right way.” This is not a command, or even a suggestion, as much as a description of activity the facilitator observes in the room. The following example is from the beginning of an inner journey exploring the realm of the heart:
Taking all the time you need,
to do the big adjustments of cushions,
and now the smaller adjustments,
of legs, and fingers, and hands,
and just how your neck wants to be,
just how your legs want to be,
and all those adjustments get finer, and finer,
as your consciousness moves in,
in from all that there is out there,
to all that there is right here.
This begins the trance by pacing with the description of adjustments participants are making, then leading into the idea of consciousness moving inwards, shifting the focus from external to internal process.
Complementarity
Creative consciousness involves what might be called paradoxical logic. A person in trance can identify with “both sides of a complementary distinction of ‘this’ and ‘that,’ ‘inside’ and ‘outside,’ … both ‘here’ and ‘there,’ connected with you and disconnected from you, ‘a part of’ and ‘apart from’ an experience, both a child and an adult” (Gilligan, 1987, p. 41). This both/and logic can give rise to an experiential state of unity, which can be a profoundly healing process for internal conflicts.

Movement. Complementarity is explored easily through movement, with basic exercises that focus on use of space, time, and/or force. Participants are guided to explore movement that is large/small, up/down, hard/soft, fast/slow, and other contrasting or complementary qualities. This extends the movement vocabulary as well as extending the sense of experiencing the concept of both/and somatically and experientially. Complementarity is also brought into the verbal guidance of the trance as a means of underlining the possibility that two “opposite” energies can exist at the same time. Following are examples from an inner journey exploring vision and sight:
And how amazing,
that the world is full
of so many kinds of experiences,
and some of them are harsh,
and some of them are soft and gentle …
And how nice to know that
there are also those experiences where you melt into merging with what you see,
and whether your eyes are open, or closed,
your sight focused outward, or inward.

The Facilitator’s
State of Consciousness

Facilitators are not only guides into the realm of non-ordinary states of consciousness for participants in their sessions. There is also the question of what states of consciousness the guides themselves might enter that are most conducive to contacting the intuition and creativity that allows them to be most therapeutic or transformative. One presumption that could be made is that facilitators rely on their cognitive minds when gaining the training they need as a foundation and structure for their work. From the grounding of that foundation, they often follow insights and wisdom that break through from a deeper part of their beings. Joan Chodorow (1991) wrote that as she gained greater understanding of theoretical underpinnings she was able to bring increased consciousness to what was primarily intuitive in her early experiences with dance and dance therapy. Both aspects—intuitive and cognitive—are important for the facilitator, but most clinical training focuses on the cognitive.

Creative arts therapists are not separate from the process through which they lead clients and students; they participate experientially to get “out of [the] head and into the interpersonal connectedness of the relationship” (Gilligan, 2002, p. 88). Most people drawn to creative arts therapies intuitively know this. They expand beyond the analytical realm because it has been healing and growth-supporting for them to do so. This creative and intuitive process is how they access a sense of what will be helpful and healing to those with whom they work.

In any form of psychologically therapeutic process, the relationship with the client may be a primary factor in the healing process (Bachelor & Horvath, 1999). Developing a truly therapeutic relationship challenges the facilitator to open to a state of consciousness beyond the analytical, intentionally or not. The facilitator must be able to empathically connect with the client in order to foster limbic resonance and regulation (Lewis, Amini, & Lannon, 2000), thereby increasing the ability of the client to tolerate and regulate affect. Within the safety of the therapeutic relationship and with the guidance, mirroring, and modeling of the counselor, dissociated brain functions can be integrated, and new ways can develop to deal with levels of stress and arousal that led to fragmentation.

The insights and wisdom that break through from deeper parts of the facilitator’s being can be profoundly important guides in this process. Milton H. Erickson, whose skill in hypnosis attracted many students to study his work, maintained that his unconscious mind presented him with the information and direction he needed with each client. Erickson “emphasized an externally oriented interpersonal trance state” (Gilligan, 1987, p. 76) as the state of consciousness most conducive to the relational connection with the client as well as connection to the intuitive parts within. This state involves the attunement of the therapist to the state of the client through focus on the client’s breathing, posture, muscular tension, and emotions. In order to shift into that state of consciousness, Gilligan (1987) suggests one possible procedure (out of many possible approaches to developing such states):

1. Ensure comfortable seating positions.
2. Go inside for a few moments.
3. Attentionally focus on the subject.
4. Breathe comfortably and easily.
5. Establish eye contact.
6. Allow effortless mental processes.
7. Let yourself speak freely and easily. (pp. 77-78)

This model is specific to working with an individual, but the same format can be used in group situations, focusing on the entire group in step 3, and skipping step 5.

Ritual as Structure and Container

Both facilitators and clients may benefit from having a structure through which to organize the creative process, freeing up possibilities for exploration within the safety of a container. Although creative consciousness states are helpful in the process of accessing unconscious material and reconnecting with neglected parts of the self, they are dependent on the context in which they occur to give them value, meaning, and form. The facilitator can take this further, consciously developing a container that feels safe, supportive, and encouraging of the exploration and expression of internal processes.

The use of ritual can provide some of this structure, along with many other benefits. Mircea Eliade (1959) observed that ritual is a potent means of creating “sacred space” and “sacred time,” thereby bracketing a protected space outside the ordinary daily life of the participants. The experiential nature of ritual can “create a window through which the ideal can become actual” (Parker & Horton, 1996, p. 85), an opportunity to find new meanings and narratives. Ritual, even in the anthropological sense, “is a mechanism for constantly re-creating, not just reaffirming” (Bell, 1997, p. 39) equilibrium in a community and in the individuals within that community. Participation in ritual activity allows people to embody a sense of “their place in a larger order of things” (Bell, 1997, p. xi). This may involve a transpersonal or spiritual orientation (Cole, 2003), but not necessarily a specific religious model or belief system. The larger meanings communicated through the ritual process may be closer to those communicated through art than through religious dogma.

The word ritual comes from the Sanskrit rita, which refers to both art and order. Like all real art, ritual provides organic order, a pattern of dynamic expression through which the energy of an event or series of events can flow in an evolutionary process toward larger meaning or a new stage or level of life. It offers ways in which your transitions are illuminated. When occurring in time and space that are prepared and understood as sacred, ritual has the power to help you move to the next stage of your life journey. Once arrived, you know by the difference you perceive in yourself and your surroundings that you are there. (Houston, 1987, p. 42)

Human beings develop rituals to face challenges, to come together in groups, and to provide form and guidance in our lives (Achterberg et al., 1994). A ritual may have a history that links participants with ancestors as they perform a sequence that has been repeated innumerable times. It may connect participants with community through sharing the repetition of familiar words, gestures, sounds, dances. It may be something new, created specifically for a particular time, place, and purpose. It is “the ineffable structured into an event … an interaction of forces by which something else arises” (Highwater, 1978, p. 35). Ritual provides an opportunity “to have people embody assumptions about their place in a larger order of things” (Bell, 1997, p. xi).

Imber-Black and Roberts (1992) suggest that there are five main purposes of ritual:

1. Relating: shaping, expressing, and maintaining relationships
2. Changing: making and marking transitions for ourselves and others
3. Healing: recovering from relationship betrayal, trauma, or loss
4. Believing: voicing beliefs and making meaning
5. Celebrating: affirming deep joy and honoring life with festivity

As a structure or container for the work of counseling or transformative workshops, ritual can aid in creating the relationships that are so essential to that work, facilitating and acknowledging the transitions that are part of the change process, and supplying a structure for healing. Ritual provides a frame for expressing and celebrating what is meaningful and reclaiming connection with self, others (the therapist and/or others in a group setting), and the transpersonal realm.

Ritual may invite the transformative aspect of creativity to take place, as participants use the ritual to create a shift in their perspective and in the way they organize themselves in relationship to others and the world around them. It is “an intense, experiential-symbolic structure that recreates or transforms identity” (Gilligan, 2002, p. 200).

Ritual ushers us into a welcome and comforting rhythm of thoughts and activities. It unclutters our minds by providing structure and boundaries during times of change. The order imposed by meaningful ritual allows us to reflect our values and convey messages to self and the community about who we are and what we are experiencing. Ritual helps us face together those things that are too painful, confusing, or awesome to face alone. Because rituals both come from and create dreams, they encourage the deeper wisdom coming from these visionary levels. (Achterberg, 1994, p. 19)

The meta-message of ritual is integration, unity, or wholeness (Rappaport, 1975). The experience of this meta-message may be what is called a peak experience (Maslow, 1964) or grace: integration of the diverse parts of the mind, specifically “those multiple levels of which one extreme is called `consciousness’ and the other `unconsciousness’” (Bateson, 1972, p. 129). It may also be an example of “collective resonance … a felt sense of energy, rhythm, or intuitive knowing that occurs in a group of human beings and positively affects the way they interact toward a common purpose” (Levi, 2005, p. 2). From this perspective, ritual can be understood as a potent technique for catalyzing and enhancing creative process and healing.

Without specifically naming it ritual, workshops and counseling sessions already have, by their nature, ritual qualities. According to Simon (1994):
[A] special meeting time and place, separation from ordinary reality, special use of language and conversational practices, as well as the intention of both participants as held and guarded by the therapist, allow for the invocation of a kind of ritual space in which healing can occur, a safe container for what will arise. In addition, ritual space provides an intensity of feeling and focus that matches the intensity of traumatic experience, adding emotional credibility and power to the proceedings. (p. 51)

A facilitator creates a framework to provide a container for a trance state (connection with the unconscious mind); a ritual space (Gilligan, 2010) that generates a helpful trance rather than a plunge into what could feel like painful, uncomfortable, or even dangerous territory for the participant entering the unconscious realm. Acknowledging the ritual nature of this framework gives the therapist an opportunity to shape the container and the trance that develops. The therapist is simultaneously involved in the ritual space and keeper of the space, protecting the participants from outside disturbances as well as tracking the process taking place and guiding participants towards a healing experience. To engage in both roles and dance between them fluidly requires a combination of cognitive training in what to do (a toolkit of intervention possibilities) and the abilities mentioned earlier: shifting into a non-ordinary consciousness that allows for intuition and relational connection with the participants. The structure and process of ritual helps the therapist to shift into the consciousness that supports healing work, as well as creating ritual space and time for the participants.

Entering the Realm of Creativity

Opening those channels and entering that deeper territory of creative exploration and expression takes more than conscious intention to do so. Participants in creative arts sessions rely on facilitators to be their guides into that transitional space. This helps create safe containers in which participants can contact neglected parts of themselves (Gilligan, 1997) and begin moving towards healing. Intuitively, most facilitators of creative arts practices know that they need to create an environment and context conducive to expression by moving into a state of consciousness outside the ordinary. This state of consciousness is “unlike the usual, wide-awake state associated with active thought. The state is often referred to as a trance, an altered state of consciousness, a ‘nonordinary [sic] state’ of consciousness, a meditative state, or an alpha or theta brainwave state” (Achterberg, Dossey, & Kolkmeier, 1994, p. 8). In this article, this state will be referred to as creative consciousness.

In a state of creative consciousness, movement and creative expression can emerge from a more authentic self (Austin, 2001), “true to their own qualities, despite external influences and pressures” (Scharf & Mayseless, 2010, p. 85). A relationship can begin to develop with the unconscious mind, awakening awareness of the mind-body connection where healing and transformation take place. Creative consciousness supports a context for this to happen at the appropriate pace and depth for each participant. This process involves open-ended suggestions that leave room for individual interpretation, both internally (unconscious processing) and externally (creative expression), concerning the subject or theme at hand. Properties inherent in the trance state that can support new integration and transformation include “both/and logic, multiple truths, subtle body, temporal/spatial freedom, somatic alterations, meta-cognitive centering (witnessing), non-judgmental processing, transpersonal connectivity, numinosity/luminosity, and sensuality” (Gilligan, 2010, p. 55).

Although creative arts therapists may develop approaches to moving into non-ordinary states of consciousness intuitively, it is useful to understand why these methods work and design techniques that address the diverse needs of clients. With training and knowledge of the many possibilities for inducing a non-ordinary state of consciousness, the therapist can improvise creatively and confidently to facilitate choreography of the dance between conscious and unconscious awareness.

Working effectively within this field requires rigorous training in a tradition …, but the specific techniques arise from this ever-shifting ground; thus, their form and meaning are also constantly changing. Obvious examples of working in this way are playing jazz or writing novels. When such an approach is used in therapy, curiosity and fit predominate as organizing principles, rather than control and manipulation. (Gilligan, 2002, p. 104)

Generative Trance and Inner Listening

Gilligan (2012) describes generative trance as “a creative art in which conscious and unconscious minds are woven into a higher consciousness capable of creativity and transformation” (p. 1) beyond what previously existed for an individual. Generative trance is substantially different from authoritarian trance, which involves a hypnotherapist giving specific directions. Generative trance is a permissive trance, where suggestions are offered that encourage a state “during which the limitations of one’s usual frames of reference and beliefs are temporarily altered so one can be receptive to other patterns of association and modes of mental functioning that are conducive to problem-solving” (Erickson & Rossi, 1979, p. 3). The new patterns of association and modes of mental functioning are not imposed by the facilitator. Instead, multiple possibilities and options are offered, along with permission and encouragement for participants in the experience to find their own unique responses.

Within the container of the individual or group session, participants have an opportunity to practice tuning in to the unconscious and creating a conduit (using movement or other creative arts) through which the unconscious can express itself. Then the participant can begin to have access to the new patterns of association and modes of mental functioning that Erickson described. This breakthrough of something from another part of the mind was termed “inner listening” by Harman and Rheingold (1984).

It is a state in which the floodgates of thought seem suddenly thrown open and profound ideas and images, often solutions to our deepest problems—questions about life, our work, or our relation to the universe around us—are revealed in an instant. (p. 3)

They propose that the insights available through this opening are not only available to the talented few, but to all of us, as a learned skill. Application of that skill need not produce art masterpieces or changes in our understanding of science, but rather a new way of life. A deep source of wisdom and intuition is accessible inside each of us that can direct us on the path towards healing and aligning the fragmented parts of ourselves. Assisting people to access that wisdom and move towards integration and wholeness in their lives aligns us with an evolutionary current of development that can heal not only each individual on that path, but the community and world they live in.

Creative movement exercises can be a practice in this skill of inner listening, opening channels for breakthroughs that are the essence of creativity. In addition to the cultural messages that may close down access to this unconscious territory, those channels may be blocked in order to repress or suppress emotions that feel too intense for ordinary consciousness. In the process of blocking access to “intolerable” emotions, the channels are blocked to other unconscious information and insights as well. Movement, because it goes directly to the somatic being where these emotions dwell, can draw them into consciousness as well as offering an avenue for expressing and working through what emerges (Tantia 2016).

Conclusion

Using the structure of ritual to create a safe space for exploring may allow access to deep sources of wisdom and intuition inside each person. These insights might provide direction on the path toward wholeness and alignment of the fragmented parts of self. Facilitators enter the realm of creativity together with their clients and students to support a transformation of clients’ understanding of themselves and their place in the world as they gain insight, wisdom, and integration. Yet the guide into the realm of transformative experience participates in the experience as well. The process of assisting people to access that wisdom and move toward integration and wholeness in their lives aligns the guides of this transformative work with an evolutionary current. The process can not only heal each individual on that path, but also ripples out to the community and the world.

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Selene Kumin Vega, Ph.D., is a licensed psychotherapist (California MFC #32604), and consultant in private practice, a workshop leader, and a dancer, as well as faculty at Saybrook University’s College of Integrative Medicine and Health Science.

Selene’s work with movement and other experiential modalities has evolved over 45 years of teaching and developing approaches to facilitating self-exploration, connection, and transformation in workshops and courses. She has taught at The Institute of Transpersonal Psychology, Bastyr University, JFK University, Kripalu Center for Yoga and Health, SoulCollage® Institute, and Sacred Centers and has served as President of Santa Cruz CAMFT (California Association of Marriage & Family Therapists). Selene has published chapters on the use of mind-body and psychospiritual approaches to the treatment of anxiety, and the use of movement practices in psychospiritual growth and psychotherapy. She was editor of the Spiritual Emergence Network Newsletter, and co-authored The Sevenfold Journey: Reclaiming Mind, Body, and Spirit through the Chakras (Crossing Press, 1993), which has been translated into six languages.

At Saybrook University, Selene teaches several courses in the Mind-Body Medicine graduate program in the College of Integrative Medicine & Health Sciences (CIMHS), and developed the course in Somatics: Body-Oriented Approaches to Mental Health, and the 4-day Mind-Body-Spirit Integration seminar, which debuted in January 2017, for incoming graduate students in CIMHS.