The Next Exercise

The next day I went to a workshop with Jan Allan. I had been invited to preview the kind of work students undertaking a Masters by Research experienced. We did a series of dances and of course I thought I was pretty clever to be able to engage in body movement at all. Suddenly the music Roxanne came on and I was "triggered" - I found myself isolating in the corner and in some emotional difficulty. I had been self talking before the session saying over and over that I wanted the opportunity to do the Masters so much that I was not going to let anything take it away from me. For the first time in my life I stayed conscious of the process throughout a panic attack! I was able to view my behaviour from a distance and self-correct. The 'triggered' condition passed reasonably safely and here is the resultant drawing.

Big

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So what is the banana you may say? Upside down and all? It is trash thrown away and discarded.

Big

It represents my father and all of the elderly folks in our society that are 'past their used by date', it is the 'stigma of uselessness' for addicts, it is the 'throw away the key' people in our jails. It represents all of the trashy, junky, emoptional muck that came up through the process. It came up and it needed to be tossed and so I tossed it on and it got caught up in the swirl of the drawing! The tossing on of the banana signaled the completion of the self-portrait.

Now for the next stage. What I have described above is the context (different procedures such as the recording of five small events) - which provided the gathering of data. The artistic products of which became the content from which the next inquiry was generated.

Next Page.

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Index. Introduction Day One Day Two - The Dream Next Exercise Final Presentation Bibliography

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