Two Day Event - Virtual Lecture + Workshop
Friday Oct 27th & Saturday Oct 28th
Zoom Link: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/89019408824?pwd=MXZBZnhzaThiWlZqZWhtNDBQOGsrQT09
ZOOM Meeting ID: 890 1940 8824
Passcode: JUNG
Heather Taylor-Zimmerman is an artist, art historian, and depth psychologist whose work explores creativity from the perspective of ecopsychology, art therapy, imaginal arts-based research, and individuation. She has a doctoral degree in Jungian and Archetypal Psychology from Pacifica Graduate Institute where she completed her dissertation on C. G. Jung’s art-based methodology embodied in his creative opus, The Red Book. Since graduating Heather has taught related workshops and coursework at The Evergreen State College, Pacifica Graduate Institute Jungian organizations, and a nature and creativity center that she founded. Most recently she has created an online curriculum to bring Jung’s “invaluable method” of creative active imagination into the world to promote healing.
Heather enjoys speaking at conferences and serves on the board of the Jungian Society for Scholarly Studies for whom she is the journal art editor. She publishes and sells her art internationally, specializing in visionary art or art based on the power of symbols as exemplified by The Red Book and named by Jung. With a focus on healing art, Heather has created art hospitals, clinics, along with public, private, and government buildings. Diagnosed with cancer a year ago, Heather has spent the last year undergoing treatments which have extended her work as an art therapist in clinics and facilities to her own healing, exploring the psychosomatic benefits of art as that Jung called a “healing” and “teaching” in her art and life. Blending modern science and ancient wisdom in her offerings, she is excited to share the transformative and archetypal healing power of creativity.
Ph.D. Archetypal Psychology, Pacifica Graduate Institute GPA: 4.0 2019
Dissertation: “Viewing the Soul as a Painting” on Jung’s art-based methodology in The Red Book
Committee: Jennifer Selig (chair), Fanny Brewster (internal reader), and Pat Wald (external reader)
M. A. Archetypal Psychology Pacifica Graduate Institute GPA: 4.0 2015
B. A. Art & Art History The Evergreen State College (no grades) 1992 (4 credits short of a B. S. in Psychology from The Evergreen State College)
Leading Rites of Passage, Mirroring School of Lost Borders, WSU, 4H 2018-202
1. Rites of passage represent an archetypal variation of Jung’s approach to healing through art and nature in which the leaders are usually analysts and the journey is into nature.
Graphic Recording and Facilitation Grove Institute 2015
2. Graphic recording and facilitation lead and record groups through symbolic imagery.
Additional certification and training in Art Therapy, Multiple forms of Life Coaching including goal setting and storytelling, Neuro-Linguistic Programming, and Dialectical Behavior Therapy
3. Through online courses and work at Alzheimer and DBT clinics.
Graduated Summa Cum Laude
First Honorary Memorial Award, Jungian Society for Scholarly Studies at the Washington DC conference, Complexity, Creativity, and Action, 2017, opening speaker
2018-2021 Instructor for workshops, lectures, and classes at The Evergreen State College and Pacifica Graduate Institute, including their Counselling and Depth Psychology Departments
2020 Group art therapy instructor at Thira Health in Bellevue, WA
2017-2020 Journal art editor and secretary for the Jungian Society for Scholarly Studies
2018-2020 Creator and facilitator Soul of Creativity teaching program Teacher and Founder
This curriculum incorporated my dissertation along with land-based teaching and collaboration. The subject matter included cutting-edge science and nature mysticism in an integral and transpersonal approach. Participants discovered more about themselves in relationship to each other and the land.
2017-2020 Founder, developer, and facilitator Nature and Creativity Sanctuary
The sanctuary created a collaborative container for the land-based curriculum in which people learned as a form of embodied transformation with the land, connecting with each other and nonhuman nature.
2017-2020 Co-created nParadigm, a business designed to shift consciousness and awareness
2015-2018 Graphic Facilitation for International Systems Thinking Conferences
1994-2016 Teacher for transdisciplinary Arts Bridging Curriculum program
2010-2012 Art therapy at Alzheimer and Old Focus Clinics
1992-2020 Professional artist specializing in healing art for hospitals and clinics as well as visionary art to raise consciousness. Including public, private, government, and corporate spaces.
2021 Upcoming JSSS Symposium host for visual art and follow-up discussion on art-research
2019 JSSS conference “Chaos and Interdisciplinarity,” Asheville, NC, workshop topic: Jung’s art-based path and host of the second annual Art Night
2018 JSSS conference “Emerging . . ,” Portland, Oregon, workshop topic: art as emergence and host of first the annual Art Night
2017 JSSS conference “Complexity, Creativity, and Action,” Washington D.C., presentation topic: the mythic and historic roots of the political phrase, “Drain the Swamp”
2016 JSSS conference “Foregrounding the Earth’s Relations to Psyche,” Santa Fe, New Mexico, presentation topic: carbon sequestration and psyche
2015 JSSS and International Association of Analytical Psychology (IAAP) “Psyche, Spirit, and Science,” Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut, presentation topic: synchronicity and creativity
2015 Jungian Society for Scholarly Studies Conference “On Nature and the Feminine,” University of Alberta, Edmonton, Alberta, presentation topic: union of the masculine and feminine in The Red Book
2017-2020 Annual publication of art and writing in the Jungian Society for Scholarly Studies Journal
2018 Inclusion in the award-winning Feminine Mysticism in Art by Victoria Christiansen
2011-2016 Annual publication of art in the 13 Moon Galactic and We’Moon Calendars
1994-2012 Published art in books, calendars, and cards as well as public and private spaces
“Heather clearly brought scholarship and art together to achieve a transcendent function in a really beautiful way.” Jennifer Selig PhD, founder of Pacifica’s Engaged Humanities and Jungian and Archetypal Programs, international speaker, and author, including the ward-winning book Deep Creativity
"I really feel that you have made such a huge contribution to our souls, to our artistic creative selves . . . I would like to have a lot more Jungian work like this." Fanny Brewster MFA, PhD, analyst, educator in the Clinical Psychology Program at Pacifica Graduate Institute, author on race and grief, and artist
"You and the work you are doing are an inspiration." Susan Rowland PhD, co-chair of the Engaged Humanities and Creative Life Program and core faculty in the Department of Jungian and Archetypal Studies at Pacifica Graduate Institute, and author of many books, including Jungian Arts-Based Research
“Heather is a masterful educator on how to heal and grow through artistic expression. Her presence is open, kind, wise, and playful. She is skilled at creating a safe container for individuals to explore, go deep, and have meaningful transformative experiences." Mary Gibbons, MD, retired physician and educator at the University of Washington, author of journals, national protocols, and standards
“Heather is an exceptional teacher and group facilitator, as well as a beautifully soulful artist and person. Her depth and breadth of knowledge on Jung’s Red Book is rare and is complimented by a graceful adeptness at teaching others how to journey into the spiral of their own depths through art and creativity.” Kristen Williams PhD, therapist and repeat workshop attendee and organizer
“Heather has a unique ability to synthesize multiple disciplines and perspectives, including material and spiritual realities.” Pat Wald, MFA in art, taught at 4 colleges and universities, my internal reader
“Heather is a creative genius. She is one of those rare ‘bridges’ of academia and the mystical realms, which is difficult to do. She is also one of the most dedicated and disciplined artists I have met and isn’t afraid of paving a new path for emerging artists to learn and feel safe.” Victoria Christiansen, MA in Consciousness Studies and Social Work, award-winning author of Feminine Mysticism in Art.
“Heather is a true renaissance woman. Among her many attributes, her ongoing reverence of Nature is most evident in who she is and all that she does: personally, professionally, and artistically.” Buck Pavoni, MA, licensed counselor, and rites of passage leader
Art and Brain in Healing
Heather’s dissertation explored the art-based and art-informed methodology of C. G. Jung in The Red Book as an archetypal healing path that returns to past ways of knowing and forgotten neuropathways. Jung referred to this “invaluable method” as a path that he “so frequently walked” with patients but never published, lamenting that it never reached a wider circle. In her dissertation Heather took a step toward redressing Jung’s lament by studying, walking, teaching, and publishing this path, following in his footsteps. She viewed this creative individuation journey as a “healing” and a “teaching,” as Jung referred to it and exemplified as a modern pioneer of art therapy and research. At its heart, this journey represents what Jung called the secret and effectiveness of art in a return to a new state of participation mystique—a new and yet ancient way of seeing that has been found to create changes in our brain, alluded to by the sociologist Lucien Levy-Bruhl as participation mystique. While the neuropsychological healing that transpires in the application of Jung’s creative method can be attested to in the scans of people who have suffered from brain injuries and in other forms of rehabilitation, the most important implications relate to the potential within all of us to tap into and remember neuropathways from the past to heal. Interweaving the work of modern neuroscience and ancient wisdom, Heather simultaneously speaks to and leads people upon this healing journey.
The Artist as Collective and Higher Humanity
This healing path is based on the creation of symbolic images from the personal and collective unconscious in art and then dialoguing with them in active imagination. In this therapeutic process the artist was described by Jung as “collective” and “higher” humanity who evolves the psychic life of humankind. Heather’s dissertation thus has implications for art(s)-based therapy, research, and analysis. Yet its deepest implications are transpersonal and integral as a path of individuation that leads to wholeness, evolving consciousness, and healing the psychic ills of our time. Walking a path that connected body, mind, and spirit within the individual and the group, Heather’s dissertation reaffirmed the reality of past ways of knowing rooted the anatomy and physiology of the brain. Jung said that he did everything in his power to teach those close to him a new way of seeing, and my experience with “his” archetypal methodology was not only personally vision-inducing but transpersonal, indicating a psychic connection that is just being alluded in modern science.
C G Jung said that there was an artist hiding in everyone and that this artist must be drawn up from the unconscious to heal humanity from the psychoses of modern times. While Jung evolved his archetypal healing path with a nescient understanding of split-brain studies, the field of neuropsychology has taken off since his death. This workshop begins by contextualizing Jung’s path within the context of modern neuropsychology and ancient wisdom to understand the healing mechanism and the brain states involved while holding the mystery.
The art of The Black and Red Books represent Jung’s opus and an individuation journey at the heart of his oeuvre. Through dreams, visions, and active imagination embodied in art Jung followed his soul upon a transformative path that he later led his “advanced patients” upon. Like Jung, this course follows in the archetypal footsteps of the soul to guide participants as they begin their own opus or soul work to discover what he called the “secret” and “magical value” of art. Walking this creative path, participants are led by Jung, while honoring his insistence that everyone must find their own way. Through visual lectures, alchemical healing labs, and experiential art, each participant will begin to create a soul or life work in their own symbolic language, as they embark upon a path of healing Self-discovery. Applying Jung’s “invaluable method,” participants explore psychological art journaling to find themselves and their way.
Learning Objectives:
1. Apply active imagination
2. Understand underlying neuropsychology
3. Implement art therapy
4. Create visionary art
5. Demonstrate the intuitive function
6. Remember visual literacy
7. Articulate a symbolic language
8. Uncover and differentiate unconscious influences
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