My first experience with art as a healing modality was as a teen in off-off Broadway theater. But that’s not the first story I want to tell about art and healing. My biggest best experience ever with art as a healing modality was as a dancer in rehearsal at Henry Street Settlement.

Trigger warning: This is about woman’s bodies and whether a woman has the right to have control over her own body.

I was in my mid 20’s. It was a dance theater troupe. I was a member, simply a dancer. Every rehearsal we had homework. This time the homework was preparation for an improvisational dance that we would do. The improv directions that had been given a week before this rehearsal were to bring in two archetypal images. One to start the dance and one to end the dance.

My first image was the statue of Diana the Archer. I’m a Sagittarius and the Archer, at that moment, felt representative of who I was. I love that sculpture.

The dance improv was an improv with percussion. Along the walls of the rehearsal hall a rather long narrow space were percussionists, drummers, people with rattles and sticks, others using their hands to clap and slap on the floor and their bodies. Everyone was a member of the dance troupe. Who better to play with percussion than a bunch of dancers who worked with rhythms.

Have you ever had that experience of sound entrancing you? The percussion did it for me. Music has had that effect on other occasions, too. It’s why I chose the harp as an instrument to learn as an adult. Some people say that the tones of music in and of themselves are healing. Are you familiar with Steve Halpern? If not, please become acquainted with his music.

I stood at one end of the corridor of sound. Entranced by the beat. When I was ready, I moved as though shooting the arrow.

Then I began to follow the path. Dancing,turning and beating with my feet. The troupe had been told that the only reason to get up and dance with me was if they felt ‘called.’

“Called’ a rather ambiguous word to use for that sense of need, and giving and artistic and healing presence. I’ve heard ‘called’ used to express needs. I’m called to drink from the stream, get a glass of lemonade from the fridge, satiate my hunger. ‘Called’ has that sense of giving. I’m called to be an intuitive, a reader, an astrologer, so much more. I’m ‘called’ to make art, visual, movement, sound, film, all the arts. And some are called to heal. They heal with their hands, with their hearts, with their meditations.

Two other women were ‘called’ to join me. Together we danced out the triumvirate goddess, maiden, mother and crone. We enacted a birthing. My dance was not the first we did in this company as part of our rehearsals. It was my first dance as part of this troupe.

What did we do to prepare? We did so much to create that space. Meditation. Mirroring each other looking directly into our partner’s eyes, and seeing our partner’s soul. Drumming. Yoga. Tibetan 12 tone practice. So many healing modalities. We’d done them for weeks.So many healing modalities went into the preparation.

No one in the group had a license, no one held a medical, nursing, therapy degree..

The dance became a dance of birth. Did you know Artemis was a patron goddess of birth? She is also the moon. She represents the three phases, new, full and closing crescent. We danced together and balanced each other as we lifted and dropped. We rolled and we moved, touching, leaning and sliding between each other’s legs. It was a deeply meaningful and moving dance. Definitely for me. The other women said for them as well and the troupe agreed that as they watched it was a kind of ritual, an unstoppable ritual that had to be played out until it came to an end.

I danced as the women left me after the birthing. I was reborn through dance.

I arrived at the final archetype I had chosen. It was the image of the Tarot card Justice.

What was my dance? It was a healing.

This was roughly 50 years ago. Women had just been granted full rights to their bodies and their destinies by the Supreme Court. In therapy, I had to ask my therapist if what had happened to me was (trigger warning if you want to stop reading now) r@p*. I wasn’t sure, because I had been culturally inculcated with the idea that my body was not my own. My therapist confirmed that a (trigger warning) knife at my throat was a component of sexual violence.

My dance was the first step in acknowledging the divine feminine in myself and working to birth it and nurture it in other women.

I danced my way to a new professional world. And without that healing among all artists and lay healers I would never have gotten to the place I am now.

I danced for another 20 years as I also got degrees and certifications. I am a visual artist and a writer. And a professional therapist — over 35 years spent in institutional settings, hospitals and schools. And a tarot reader and astrologer (since age 13) — runs in my family, taught by my mother and she learned from her mother in law.

Art heals.

I understood that art heals from this experience in dance.

People who need licenses to prove they heal through art, may or may not be healers. It’s not the license. Licenses are fees to the state, a way of the government taking our money.

Often people say that the license has to do with ethics. Professionally, when one person is working with another person in a healing capacity, it behooves a person to have an understanding of ethics, boundaries, confidentiality and maintaining trust. In the end, people are ethical or they’re not. Insurance does not ensure that a licensed healer will not take advantage. We’re all too worldly wise to believe that. Although license and insurance are good to have in this litigious world.

Sometimes licenses are the sign of privilege in the same way that education can be. I’m not against licenses, I have them. I’m very much in favor of education, so don’t let me give you the wrong impression.

Here are some degrees, licenses and certificates that I hold and have held:

BA Art/Theater

MA psychology

MSW Masters of Social Work

LCSW Licensed Clinical Social Worker

Certificate from the Institute of Sociotherapy in Dance/Movement Therapy

Former Licensed Massage Therapist (I let that license go at the age of 70)

Certified School Social Worker

Girls Leadership Institute Girl Meets World Certification

Certificate: Social Emotional Learning Through the Arts

Mind/Body Medicine Certification through Harvard

Certified Yoga Teacher

Certified Group Psychotherapist

Certificate in Post Trauma Management

Certified Trauma Informed

Certified Eating Disorder Therapist (the organization that gave out those certs is now defunct)

One year doctoral training

Certified Pleasure Coach

School Principal Licensure

Certified Supervisor for Licensed Social Workers to hold space, teach and advise them on their way to Licensure as an LCSW.

I began working with other women who had experiences like mine as a yoga teacher and then went on from there to get more training. My practice expanded to include, couples, families, boys and now I also work with men.

This has been both the path chosen for me, over which there are experiences that I had no control and through which I had the strength and support to take the journey farther as the wounded healer and as the healing healer.

Thank you for reading and getting to know me better.

Love, light, peace and beauty to all here.

Best,

Mera