RAINBOW WORK is an ancient healing practice that integrates color, energy therapy and the creative arts, giving children and families the opportunity to align with their body's wisdom, regain balance and actualize their soul's potential.

In this context, the metaphor of the soul refers to that part of the child's being that holds the destiny, the potential and the innate gifts or talents. Often along the way, especially in light of today's high tech and fast moving life styles, this soul aspect or "soul seed" can become dislodged, creating much energy loss. Such dis-lodgement and energy loss can manifest in a variety of symptoms, unfortunately often found in many of our children's lives such as: hyperactivity, restlessness, resistance, anxiety, separation stress, transition difficulties, and general lack of motivation. In the rainbow work, we track the three important rivers of life: the mythic imagination, the body's wisdom, and the soul's journey. All three must be vital and flowing for optimum life and energy. The integration of this important trinity opens a dialogue with the Self, creating the possibility of deeper awareness, enhanced vitality, and the unfoldment of one's gifts and talents, contributing to a more meaningful and authentic life story.

Each rainbow session is designed to meet the child's individual needs, supporting his or her innate ability to follow their soul's call.

RAINBOW  THERAPY  is offered by appointment at Create·A·Story Studio.

Mankind's call to story is very elemental and deeply instinctual. Stories are a way of remembering, sharing and healing (Arrien, 1993; Estés, 1992; McNiff, 1988). As noted by Clarissa Pinkola Estés: "Stories are medicines. I have been taken with stories since I heard my first. They have such power; they do not require that we do, be, act anything... we need only listen" (1992, p. 15). Telling and listening to stories is a very sacred and ancient cross-cultural practice, one found throughout all oral traditions (Arrien, 1993). As one of the oldest healing and teaching arts, stories help transmit values, ethics, traditions, and memories. As noted by Estés: "The nurture for telling stories comes from those who have gone before. Telling or hearing stories draws its power from a towering column of humanity, joined one to the other across time and space" (1992, p. 19). In story telling traditions, answers were sought to important questions through finding just the right tale. Cross-culturally, as keepers of story, the shamans, healers or medicine men sought answers of disempowerment or dispiritedness by deep reflection concerning the patient's life story. Often in such explorations, one story would lead to another, then another. Such summoning would call forth greater forces of love, mercy, generosity, and strength, giving people hope, healing, and courage (Estés, 1994):

"Stories set the inner life into motion, and this is particularly important where the inner life is frightened, wedged, or cornered. Story greases the hoists and pulleys, it causes adrenaline to surge, shows us the way out, down, or up, and for our trouble, cuts for us fine wide doors in previously blank walls, openings that lead us back to our own real lives..." (Estés, 1992, p. 20)

The use of story, as it relates to the therapeutic setting, needs to be explored in its cross-cultural, historical, and modern day perspectives. In the light of today's upheavals, on both a personal and global level, the use of story could hold a much sought after medicine. More than ever there exists a need for us to re-learn how to listen to ourselves and to each other, in search of hope and courage when facing the pain and suffering in our contemporary Western Culture. Without exception, we are all touched by the tragic circumstances of loss and trauma (Cohen, Barnes & Rankin, 1995), and children everywhere are in crisis, rich and poor (Kramer, 1993). As noted by Margaret J. Wheatly and others (Gil, 1991; Malchiodi, 1997; Terr, 1990), no one is saved by remaining silent: "The tragic irony is that silence creates more trauma... The antidote has been to break the silence... Telling our story and being listened to is one of the simplest ways to heal" (2002, p. 32). Historically and cross-culturally, the medicine man, shaman or healer was the story keeper, and as healer, their art was twofold (Estés, 1992). As agents of change and transformation, they knew and understood the gift of listening and right timing. Listening between the lines, looking deeply in the patient's soul, exploring and asking each dispirited member of the community to discover when and how they became so disenchanted with story, particularly their own, was always a beginning point (Arrien, 1993). Once discovered, the story keeper would ignite the souls creative fire with just the right tale, at the right time. These artist/healers used story as energetic healing tools to create "shape shifting" (Arrien), giving community members the ability to shift the shape of their experiences, moving out of re-activity into creativity. Tracking stories, both individually and culturally, served the communities needs on all levels. Such a tracking art helped all those with soul loss integrate both their inner and outer experiences. In this way, destructive patterns were not repeated (Arrien). Once enlivened, people could again commune with the four rivers of life: the river of inspiration, the river of creative challenge, the river of surprise, and the river of love (Arrien, 1987).

Perhaps these small seeds of story have been divinely implanted in each of our souls. Like trees, we need to be nurtured with more and more story to flourish, and grow deep roots. And yet, like the trees, each seed has a unique story or unfoldment, which will color how and when we will grow. It is this unique seed that calls us, beckoning us to hear and tell stories, and learn about our own story. For story holds the creative fire necessary to ignite this sacred seed. In essence, stories are gateways to our deeper selves, helping us to remember who we are. Hearing and telling story, can keep us connected to all that is natural and instinctive in our nature. As pathways to our inner being, stories hold great healing medicine. There seems to be an archetypal energy surrounding such healing agents, which help people remember, seek growth, willingly accept change, transform, and find courage and strength during times of loss and trauma. They encourage us to keep walking, no matter what, as ourselves. They give us hope and energetically hold us in very sacred ways. This type of container is very much needed today, for as noted by Estés: "Story is a medicine which strengthens and arights the individual and the community" (1992, p. 19).

It is no small wonder to discover that story has found its way into our modern day therapeutic settings. Today's creative art therapies, using multi-modal approaches, often incorporate this ancient healing medicine as intervention when dealing with many current life crises. In such nurturing, holding environments, the seeds of our personal mythos can take root, helping the soul grow in its natural way and to its natural depth (Estés, 1992).

In conclusion, it seems fitting to end with a story told by the renowned analyst and story keeper, Marie-Louise Von Franz:

Whenever one has found a treasure in the depths, an experience of the self, there seems to be a need to convey it in some way to others... you find it too in shaman stories; when the shaman has made his great journey to the Polar Star, or the Underworld, when he comes back he must shamanize. That means he must bring something to his tribe. There is one story where a shaman is a reindeer hunter and he doesn't like to shamanize, so he always slips away to just hunt reindeer because it's his favorite occupation. But every time he does that, he falls ill. He finally gives in and says, "No, I have to serve my people. With my inner experiences, I have to serve my people. I can't live a private life as a happy reindeer hunter anymore." (1999, p. 97)

Perhaps this is true for all of us. Such inner experiences truly give birth to our stories, stories that can serve our communities and ourselves. Whether as artists, educators, shamans or healers, coming together to create rich healing environments where story can be told, shared, and heard could prove to be valuable and essential in today's world. Clarissa Pinkola Estés, one of our great contemporary story keepers, herself assures us of story's great medicine when she states:

"I hope you will go out and let stories happen to you, and that you will work them, water them with your blood and tears and your laughter till they bloom, till you yourself burst into bloom. Then you will see what medicines they make, and where and when to apply them. That is the work. The only work." (1992, p. 464)