The Art of Everything By Mary Anne Pankhurst An interview with Virginia Lake on the Art of Healing & Artistic Expression

 

 

Friday, Nov. 8, 9:20 a.m.: 

 

I’m on my way to the Mystic Meadow B & B on Pilon Point Road to interview owner and artist Virginia Lake, who I’ve had the pleasure of meeting before.

 

For starters, she’s one of our own Apples & Art champions and I personally enjoy owning some of her delightful art cards, haikus and Boobahkoos.

 

 

Problem is, I’m not at my best today.  I feel a dark cloud sitting on my forehead and neither the cold air nor the snow flurries whirling in it are helping push the cloud away.  Now I’m concerned my mood might affect Virginia too.

“I shouldn’t be so witless,” I say to myself, walking up Virginia’s driveway.  If there’s anyone who’d welcome a person in an open and non-judgmental way – it’s Virginia – the ultra-intuitive who’s not only a visual artist and poet, but a professional who assists her clients in making healthier mind-body choices through laser assisted therapy and Tibetan acupressure.

 

So I get a grip on my confidence, clamber up the wooden steps and raise my hand to ring the doorbell.  No need.  The door’s already opening and I’m stepping into a warm foyer, as well as the welcoming arms of both Virginia and her husband, Dr. Tom, the scientist.

 

Is that my cloud I feel lifting?

 

Minutes later, we’re sitting in comfy chairs in a sunroom that overlooks endless greenery, smiling and talking, and Tom is suddenly handing me a cup of freshly brewed coffee.

 

 

Whoosh! There goes my cloud.  I think I see it hovering then slipping quietly into the deep greenish-umber water that flows near the north side of Tom and Virginia’s home.

 

Only now can truly tune-in to what Virginia has to share.

 

She begins by asking me whether I’m familiar with “visualization techniques” and physician and author Bernie Siegel.

 

I am.

 

Neither of us can remember the exact title of his famous book (which in fact is Love, Medicine and Miracles) but at least she knows I’m somewhat familiar with imagery exercises that can help unravel the emotional distress that Siegel believes plays a role in disease processes.

 

Confident that I’m “with her,” Virginia recounts a recent case about a client of advanced age.  He’s sought her help for unrelenting back pain.

 

Before actually sitting with the man, Virginia’s process is to visualize the symptoms he describes, as well as the anatomy and physiology, and then, (as she says):

I bring it into reality by putting it down on paper. 

 

In effect, Virginia “intuits” that the gentleman’s problem is not lumbar pain but pelvic, and specifically the bladder.  So she meets with her client, shares what she has visualized and suggests he investigate further (with the doctor) who eventually does diagnose a bladder infection and other bladder issues.

 

But one of the reasons she’s telling me about this case is that she wants me to understand that her experiences during the visualization process, or later when she dreams, are the source of her poems and drawings.

 

It’s as if at the intersection of wellbeing and illness that art – in whatever form – is what flows out.

 

Virginia says:

It is the incompleteness of language that gives rise to the arts.

 

Beautiful!

 

For more information about Virginia’s healing arts and laser assisted techniques for overcoming smoking addition, click here:  http://actionlaser.wordpress.com/who-we-are/

 

So, if there’s art in what you do, I want to here from you via artofeverything@cornwallfreenews.com