Your Inner Healer Has an Important Message for You

Trade in your workbook for drawing paper; words alone are not enough to get to the bottom of some injuries. Instead, let art be your portal to the subconscious today—a place where you can express emotions too deep or tangled for words.

This guided art exercise helps you connect with your inner healer, that internal force that intuitively knows how to mend what’s broken. This exercise can help you embrace your authenticity and discover something new about how to heal your pain.

The Inner Healer Art Exercise

Get Prepared

• Create Your Sanctuary: Find a quiet, comfortable place where you won’t be disturbed. Enhance your sanctuary with soothing music, comforting items like a weighted blanket, or meaningful objects such as crystals.
• Gather Your Tools: Choose art supplies that resonate with you—paper, canvas, paints, markers, or any medium that draws your interest.

Get Enlightened

1. Ground Yourself: Begin with a few slow, deep breaths, centering your attention on the present moment.

2. Visualize Your Inner Healer: Close your eyes and invite an image of your inner healer to come forward. Consider:

• What form does your inner healer take? It might be human, animal, symbolic, or abstract. It could be a tune or texture or place you know in the world. Open yourself to anything.
• What colors, shapes, or symbols naturally emerge?
• What emotions or physical sensations accompany your inner healer?

3. Create Intuitively: Open your eyes and begin making art. Allow your hands to move without judgment or concern for perfection. Trust your intuition and let the process guide you.

4. Layer Your Artwork: Healing isn’t linear; it’s a layered experience. Feel free to add different mediums or cut out parts of your artwork. Think about glueing them somewhere else.

5. Reflect and Decode: When your artwork feels complete, take a step back and observe. Consider journaling about your experience, but at least reflect on these questions:

• What messages or insights did you discover?
• What emotions surfaced, and how did they change throughout the process?
• How does your creation speak to you about your own healing?

Guided art experiences are pathways to inner wisdom and self-compassion. There’s no wrong way to engage with the process. Honor your feelings, trust your instincts, and approach yourself with kindness.

This exercise isn’t one and done. If you don’t receive insight immediately after creating art, you’ll receive it in an aha moment later on (I promise!). Creating images with meaning leaves an indelible mark on your psyche and your unconscious won’t stop trying to get its message through to you. Much of the time, your understanding will burst through when you least expect it. Art is healing when you create it, and it is healing later, too.

Why Meeting Your Inner Healer Helps (It’s Actually Science)

The concept of the inner healer draws from Carl Jung’s wounded healer archetype, suggesting our own pain can become our best path for healing ourselves and others. Creating art from this deeply personal space taps directly into your unconscious mind, bypassing language and accessing the limbic system—the brain’s emotional center. This can be especially powerful when working through trauma or complex feelings, helping you reveal insights and strengths hidden beneath the surface.

The Benefits of Meeting Your Inner Healer Through Art

Art exercises like this one have several benefits for you, even when you think, “Did I do that right?” Yes, you did it right. When you use creativity in your seeking, you can’t go wrong. Here’s how it works.

• Emotional Release: Art provides a safe, tangible way to express complex emotions, reducing stress and building emotional resilience.
• Self-Discovery: Visualizing your inner healer can uncover hidden strengths and coping mechanisms, deepening self-awareness.
• Personal Empowerment: Connecting with your inner healer strengthens belief in your innate ability to heal, grow, and overcome challenges.

Tell me in the comments what your inner healer looks like, or share a surprising development you stumbled across doing this work.