From an interview in Sun Magazine with Marion Woodman:
Woodman: All my life God has spoken to me through illness. My pattern is to go along and have a marvelous time until all of a sudden I’m pulled down by some malady. That’s where the real psychological gravity is for me. Throughout my career I’ve seen people have similar experiences: not paying attention to their bodies and getting sick and sometimes even dying prematurely, or, at the very least, not living their lives as fully as they want. I’ve found that talk therapy is not the best way to help these people. In many instances, it is of little help at all. I decided early on that the body must somehow be involved in one’s psychological healing, because the body can hold on to memories and images that are otherwise inaccessible. You can’t get to them simply by talking about them…
…
Kullander: You’ve also said that physical and spiritual awakening go hand in hand. How so?
Woodman: Some people come to God through the body, and I’m one of them. Jung’s typology lists two pairs of functions: thinking-feeling and sensation-intuition. My primary function is intuition. I see and feel the world intuitively and respond from a very intuitive place. For Jung the opposite of intuition is sensation. Because intuition is my strongest function, sensation is my weakest. The mystery of God comes to us through our least-developed function. So for me sensation can seem like a miracle, because it’s totally new.
As I said, God has always spoken to me through illness. After the shock and pain of a prolonged illness, there comes surprise and joy. I may see something as simple as a red tulip, and that tulip holds all I need to know about the mystery of God. (continue reading)
This makes me also think of Deena Metzgers concept of Sacred Illness. There is a quote specific to Sacred Illness towards the bottom of that post.
More posts that feature Marion Woodman’s work on Beyond Meds:
● Technology has made us one world and we don’t know what the heck to do with it
● Marion Woodman and the Conscious Feminine Project
● healing/wholeness as opposed to cure (again)
You must be logged in to post a comment.