HEALING JOURNEY

By

Ann Mortifee

When I first started singing many years ago,I almost immediately began to recognize the power of the performing arts. I would look into the audience and there would be people laughing or weeping, and by the end of the concert, it was clear that all of us had shifted in some extraordinary way. There was an energy that had come into the room. I was excited by it, and troubled, because I knew that it was something that I didn't understand. Over the years, I have come to recognise this energy to be a healing energy.

Healing happens on so many levels. It can be as simple as a song that resonates with someone to open and awaken the heart, bringing with it a sense of safety and comfort, merely by giving the listener the experience that they are not alone in their feeling. Music can cause the release of deep emotions trapped within the body, energies that may not have moved in a long time. It has the ability to set armies marching, to make us want to dance, to make love, to weep. Tears that heal. Laughter that refreshes.Ultimately, the role of an artist is to awaken the deep life urge that is already in every person. It's not that we are saying something that the listener doesn't already know, but we are triggering and opening the place where it is stored in them.

There is a hidden energy in both the gifted performer and the gifted healer. I don't know how to articulate it exactly, we can call it the Great Mystery, theForce, Inspiration, Vision, God, the Goddess, or the muse. We can call it anything we want, but it is actually unnameable. It is a spiritual something that is unleashed. It travels through both the performer and the healer and touches whoever is willing to receive. Healers and performers are fed and enlivened by this extraordinary Life Force, but many have not yet built their own lives and understanding to a place to be able to contain and really work with its power. It is a tremendous journey to follow this Life force back to its source, to ask where does this come from, what does it really want from me, and where does it want to go? It is almost as if the muse touches who it touches, and some people are ready to take the journey inward and others are not. My own personal healing journey over many,many years has been absolutely essential in my process of closer alignment with this magnificent Creative Force.

To help others come to know this energy more fully, I have felt the urge to create a kind of dual experience for people where they can come to a concert in the evening and then the following day, if they wish to go deeper, come together at a workshop and acquire some tools that may be helpful in their own healing process. This approach is not for every performing artist, but it has worked for me and has provided a natural bridge between my music and healing worlds.

The universe is full of healing power. When somebody comes to a place in their life when they are ready to take their inner journey, I'm sure the whole of nature jumps for joy. There is tremendous support for healing on this planet and I think the forms of healing are expanding every moment as more and more people are open to receive them.

There are cultures in which every person is considered to be an artist with personal access to healing power. Everyone joins in the healing circle,and everyone joins in the artistic circle. We have lost so much of that,but we are returning. More and more people are realizing that you can't just take a pill to heal, that you have to be involved in your own healing process. Many new and exciting healing practices are coming to the fore and changing the face of medicine, and it is the same in the arts. There is an infusing of small record and performing arts companies starting up all over the place because people want to return to the roots of inspiration. "Inspire", to take in the breath of life, and to give it back . We are moving back into inspiration because we are hungry and in need of new life.

The performing or healing artist who can truly take in the breath and give it back creates an atmosphere where others can also take in the breath and give it back in turn. This is our true work, to be conduits for beauty and renewal.

 

This article originally appeared as a guest editorial in the Performing Arts magazine Fall 1994

 

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