HOW to Enhance Critical Thinking through Creative Contemplation with Rock Art

 

                             The Necklace at Grand Gulch, Utah

In their last post, Bill and Dori shared their discoveries and ideas about using rock art to engage in creative contemplation in a way that enhances critical thinking. The goal is to build self-efficacy (recognizing the level of one's ability to use challenges as an opportunity to overcome difficulties and succeed). One challenge that Bill and Dori have in common is the loss of loved ones.

 Dori began developing a process for merging feelings, emotional awareness, and logic while journaling during the short illness and then loss of her fourteen-old daughter, Cj, in January 2000. Cj's medical staff encouraged Dori to share her writings, which model tapping into our integral wisdom for creative solutions when grieving. Therefore, she published her journal in 2002 as The Healing Room: Discovering Joy through the Journal.

The public’s positive response to her workshops in bookstores inspired her to pursue a doctoral education in resolving loss. Dori’s dissertation succeeded in specifying steps for integrating feelings and emotional regulation (EQ) with intellectual analysis (IQ) in a way that promotes optimum problem solving. Co-writing Engaged offered both Dori and Bill opportunities to explore and expand upon this process into artful ways for re-engaging the imagination by blending images of rock art with poetry and even recreating one’s story. 

 For decades, Dori has used line drawings as part of speech therapy—from comprehending and expressing simple concrete facts to deciphering and communicating complex ideas. Bill has used line drawings of rock art to document, preserve, and study these ancient designs. They both recognized that using line drawings with rock art offers an additional element to mental processing – dream work. While there are images that we recognize, many others can produce quandary due to unfamiliarity. And, since the ancient artists did not leave explanations about their art, we have the opportunity to blend facts with impressions and engage in speculation.  

Rock art, when viewed in relationship to one’s own life, becomes a sacred exercise of creative contemplation that can enhance critical thinking skills. This process stimulates the imagination for optimum brainstorming and offers an alternative way of responding to challenges instead of reacting to situations. This is essential for developing self-efficacy, which also includes assessing one’s level of skill and making recommendations for improvement while keeping one’s strengths and limitations in mind.

 One important step in this process is the separation of the physical sensation of feelings from words of emotion that attempt to interpret these feelings. There is no better way to experience a process than to do it yourself. Using the line drawing above of the Necklace Panel, write down your answers to the following questions.

 1. What is going on?

Study the line drawing of The Necklace above. Ask yourself: “If this is a dream, what do I see going on?”  Allow yourself to answer quickly without making any judgements. Write out what could be a theme, who/what might be the characters, what actions might be going on, what kinds of interactions are happening, where it might be happening, when it might be happening, and anything else that comes to mind.

2. How does this make you feel?

 What sensations do you feel? Use vocabulary of physical sensation (tingly, light, stifled, heavy, hot, cold, sweaty, dry, expansive, constricted). “If this was really happening, I would feel ____.”

3. What is your perception of emotion?

Attach adjectives of emotions that you perceive go with your feelings. Begin with the simplest such as happy, sad, angry, confused, excited, fearful, anxious, enthused. “This physical sensation makes me feel _____.”

4. Releasing Feelings

Take a moment to focus on these sensations, and release them while breathing for five cycles.

5. Reimagine the Story

How might you change the scene to improve on the story? What line drawings could you add to the scene? If you felt very positive about the story, what could you add to make it negative, and vice versa. Does it relate to anything that has happened or is happening in your real life? If so, what can you do differently in order to change how you are responding to the situation?

6. Evaluating the Outcome 

How does changing the story make you feel about self-efficacy (your ability to use challenges as an opportunity to overcome difficulties and succeed as well as being aware of limitations)? 

Now that you have experienced this process using rock art, use it the next time something happens that bothers you. Make a drawing of the situation using simple lines. Then go through the same steps. Once you become comfortable with this process, you can begin experimenting with using it to write your own poetry and create your own drawings in response to life events.