Wandering into this Vast Panoply of Becoming
Larger than life and radiant Moa from Sweden - “incapacitating Depression” from In Your Own Skin Portrait Banner hanging at Dartington Gallery 8 March - April 16 2023.
“Having abandoned the flimsy fantasy of certainty, I decided to wander.”
Life is change. All the time. Guaranteed. So how strange we tend to hold on so tightly to attachments in our culture, wanting things to be certain.
To loosen that grip, and also increase well-being, it helps to practice. And one of the big practice fields for me for years has been the approaching of total strangers to invite them to take part in the In Your Own Skin project. Inspired by the work of social worker Brené Brown, along with neurobiologists and other researchers, who discovered that if you want to look at happiness you need to look at shame, I set off out into the world, armed with body paints and video and still cameras to record people discussing their hidden truths.
I had set up appointments with some people I particularly wanted to include, but most of them were complete strangers who I just walked up to and asked. Literally, people in the street.
After lengthy and often very deep and moving conversations, I agreed with them a word or phrase that represented their hidden truth and painted it onto their skin. I then photographed them to create the portraits that feature in the project.
A single story tells many stories.
During the process, I connected deeply with over 200 people from more than 30 countries and all walks of life, and each of these powerful moments released a generous contribution to the world; a buoyant reminder of living fully and the beauty and strength that comes from facing and embracing our vulnerability.
And, speaking what is invisible points us toward something essential: Interconnecting us all. We are a living paradox and the sooner we learn to dance with this, the sooner we can live more fully alive.
“There is some strange intimacy between grief and aliveness, some sacred exchange between what seems unbearable and what is most exquisitely alive.”
The project is made up of hundreds of individual images but they are all part of one giant human poem - all unique, but all part of the same poem forest. In the 1950s, it was discovered that a variety of Aspen tree, the Pando, while it looks like tens of thousands of trunks and crowns, is actually one living organism - they all have the exactly the same DNA. So while we see them as many, they are actually one. Just like us.
The In Your Own Skin production process, by its very nature, also helped me to abandon the fantasy of certainty. I never knew how people would react or respond, or what they would share if they chose to be part of this mad and wonderful process. There were, of course, many mishaps. People disappeared, or did not show. Equipment packed up. Technology let us down. Hard drives crashed. Data was lost. So much… And yeah, that too was part of the wonder and the adventure.
This, then, is the antidote to the fantasy of certainty and the ‘resilience strengthening’ of that Wanderer part of us.
More info and to book film here.
The wandering nerve
And speaking of wandering, I cannot resist adding a note here, a cheerleading cry even, for the vagus nerve.
But why are you wandering off into a neurobiology tangent, you might ask? Well, because I love the vagus nerve. And ‘vagus’ comes from the Latin term for wandering because it extends and wanders through the brain and down through the whole of the body.
Vegus nerve. Wandering nerve.
The vegas nerve is a fabulous wonder that is key to our health and well-being. It carries an extensive range of signals from the digestive system and organs to the brain and vice-versa. It is the tenth cranial nerve, extending from its origin in the brainstem through the neck and the thorax down to the abdomen, and controls involuntary body functions such as your digestion, heart rate and immune system.
Things that make your vagus nerve happy include dancing, walking near the sea, listening to a river or experiencing the smell of a forest. And perhaps most important of all is to cultivate curiosity and openness to awe.
Wandering Vegus Health bunting art
by Katheryn M. Trenshaw
Small and sticky
Things small. Things simple. Things sticky.
As in: things you can love to do regularly and often because you love them. Anything we can wander into with awareness, no matter how small, helps our well-being. For example, wander for five minutes down to the stream and just be. Or dance to a single track of music in the living room. Or smell the Earth and blossom in your garden. How does this feel?
“Risk and Reward
Feeling deeply is dangerous.
Doing anything else is tragic.”
Art as wandering
This brings us neatly, or untidily, to the doodle. Just let the pencil wander and make marks and see what comes. Creative writing and journalling and visual journalling are also both powerful ways to practice this.
You can come and find out more about this in the Spring on my courses. I’m offering a limited number of places in person, and in the not-too-distant future online places as well for those of you further afield. Please DM me if you are interested or would like to be put onto the waiting list.
And please let me know, in this vast panoply of becoming, what is your favourite form of wander?
“We are part of this universe. We are in this universe. But perhaps more importantly, then both of these facts is that the universe is in us… My atoms come from the stars. There is a level of connectivity. That’s really what you want in life. You want to feel connected. You want to feel relevant. You want to feel participant. Just by being alive.”
