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Beryl Roche is a registered nurse currently studying the Graduate Diploma in Anthroposophical Nursing...
I have many examples in my life of how art has been important within a structured educational environment. Throughout my schooling life art helped shape me and contributed to a personal sense of identity. I can recall times from classroom art sessions back to when I was 6 and 7 where art took up my total focus and gave me great satisfaction. I can remember looking at things a round me as if I was going to draw them and I'm sure this has helped me observe things in a more detailed way than I would have otherwise.
It was not until undertaking the Anthroposophical Nursing course in 2005 that I saw the usefulness of artistic exercise. The deliberate use of art in order to observe an object made me realise that this was a skill I had, to some extent, taught myself in the process of wanting to draw as a child.
But this process was taken further to help us to attain knowledge of purpose, function or even intention.
When we started to tackle the plant study I was amazed at how my initial observations (through the process of drawing) led me to know things about the plant that research would then back up.
 The Silver Birch was classic of this. I must of spent four hours up the tree doing this one drawing alone. It felt quite a short space of time as I got so focused on trying to capture what I saw. But when I started reading up on the tree everything fell into place. We are encouraged to write down our observations around our drawings and it is amazing how unwittingly you pick out special characteristics about your plant. By the end of the assignment with "Betula" though, I felt like I could take all these things I had now learned about the birch and relate it in a very complete way. By knowing this tree and why it grew the way it did and adapted itself in special ways for its environment, I could relate it's purpose medicinally, for man. I am certain I would not have had the same connection with her if I had not spent the many hours I did, in her presence, drawing her.
- Beryl Roche
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Trisha Russell is a registered nurse who studied the Certificate in Art of Health in 2006 and is enrolled for the Graduate Diploma in Anthroposophical Nursing 2009
Over the past 15 years I have completed studies in nursing, midwifery, communication, adult teaching and learning concepts, management psychology and human behaviour. When I applied to do the Art of Health in 2006, I was aware that I was looking for something other than mainstream academia. I knew a little about the programs Taruna offered through colleagues I worked with in the maternity unit. Although I knew very little about Rudolf Steiner based learning, I did notice that there was a difference in the way these particular colleagues worked with women and their new baby. If you asked me what the difference was, I would probably say that I noticed that their inner attitude and outer gestures were somehow different to other colleagues. They seemed to connect with women in a different way whilst caring for them and their new born baby.
Apart from nursing and midwifery, most other study I completed as an extramural student so I was used to attending lectures, completing readings and assignments. However studying through Taruna opened the door to a whole different world of learning. At first I found that using different artistic mediums’ as learning strategies challenging, as this was my first contact with such learning methods. However as we progressed through the program I found that these methods of learning moved my perception in a way that other academic study never had.
I found that the artistic mediums encouraged critical and creative thinking so that learning became integrated and more personally meaningful. While readings, lectures and written assignments expanded my thinking and intellectual understanding of concepts, the art work seemed to expand my awareness far more on the physiological and soul levels. I felt my learning rather than thought it. Through the art exercises I started to become aware of how different colours affected the way I felt; blue had a totally different affect on my mood to red or yellow. After a while I realised that my learning was flowing from the inside out as I noticed these colours in a world. I could see shades of indigo in some sea shells; shades of vermillion, rose madder, ultramarine, Prussian blue and golden yellow in the sky at different times during the day. Every morning when I drive to work I am given the gift of the day breaking over the Havelock hills and now I feel its beauty (in fact it often takes my breath away), rather than simply thinking how nice it looks. For me, the learning that came through using art seemed to build a bridge that integrated my thinking and doing with a far richer inner feeling life.
How is this important in my work? I often work along side people who have a variety of illnesses and are often afraid of what this means for themselves and their family. As a nurse I need to be able to integrate education and research with my clinical practice and patient management. However I also believe that these qualities need to be tempered with heart qualities such as compassion, understanding and empathy.
I know that I can learn technical skills and deepen my intellectual understanding through research and further reading. However, to practice in a holistic way means that I am able to connect with people on more that just an intellectual level. And the only person who can learn how to connect with other human beings in a heartfelt manner is me. For me, learning through the artistic mediums shifted my perception on what it means to be human and what it means to experience ill health, on a deeper personal level that any other study had.
I am also more aware of my own internal emotions, what triggers feelings of confidence and what triggers feelings of self doubt. Art has given me a way of expressing and releasing these different emotions in a healthy and proactive way as I learn to integrate all aspects of myself into a healthy whole.
So why use art in any study program? I believe that no matter what our job of work is, whether we work with people or on the land, learning through art is an essential learning medium if we want to temper our intellect and actions with gestures of the heart in learning about and caring for ourselves, others, our daily environment or Gaia, our living planet.
- Tricia Russell
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Anne Dodds completed the Certficate in Applied Organics & Biodynamics in 2006. She is currently completing the Certificate in Art of Health this year.
As a student on the Biodynamic course in 2006, I undertook the plant observation project with mixed feelings. At first I was unsure of the reasons for doing the project, but as I got into it, I realised how interested I was, how interested I had become in plants and now I had a new skill that enriched this appreciation.
I learnt to observe, not just the finer details of the growing plant, but the processes that were going on within. And as this was occurring, it opened up an awareness of self.
The observational drawings were three-fold; a pencil drawing of the plant as we saw it, detailing the various stages of the plant. Then there was the gesture of the plant, so without taking the pencil off the page, capturing the flow or the plant. Finally the ‘feeling’ of the plant; it’s mood. After doing this process over a few months I developed an intimate relationship with my plants.
The process also opened up the artistic nature in me that I hadn’t allowed any freedom before this.
- Anne Dodds
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