Workshop on how the arts can help healing

What do the arts, flowers and Braille paper have in common in providing healing?

This is what artist and art therapist Karen Adler hopes to show at her Finding Light In The Darkness workshop at Yarramalong on Saturday, June 21.

“The answer and the connections between them may not jump out immediately,” she said.

“They come slowly and they come gently but they come surely – which is the best and most natural way for things to grow, whether it be the beauty of nature or the beauty of human beings.”

Adler said long experience had taught her that the process of making art, being creative – whether it be drawing, photography, poetry, any form of making something visible from the invisible – was both relaxing and rewarding.

She has seen participants, regardless of their level of experience, surprised at what they create when guided in different ways to find answers within.

Finding Light In The Darkness as both a title and an activity came to Adler as an answer to how to find our way through the tumultuous times we’re living in.

“With all the woes happening in our world today, if we can’t find our own inner light, life becomes harder than it already is,” she said.

“If we don’t master ways to make meaning, sense and beauty out of lives, the darkness is more difficult to bear. “

Adler’s poetry book, Giving Birth To God, has been transformed into a Braille version by local disabilties advocate Roslyn Sackley, who is blind, and is almost completed as an audiobook.

Braille paper, donated by Sackley, is smooth and buttery, the raised dots giving both texture and differently-sensed meaning.

“Braille paper emphasise the ‘feeling’ nature of feelings, that they’re substantial and powerful things we need to master,” Adler said.

Finding Light In The Darkness will take place from 9.30am-3pm on Saturday, June 21, at Angel Sussurri, Yarramalong.

For more information email karenadler222@gmail.com

Book at bit.ly/3RCdD8W