Being buffeted by all the things we currently see in the world—things being turned on their head, dissolving, being dismantled, disappearing—our psychological wellbeing needs robust counterbalances. Read on for a simple, effective strategy to enlist beauty as mental and emotional ballast. This is the first in a new series of articles with practical, everyday ways to care for your psychological wellbeing
Hand-made / Nature-made
Recently, during a video call with my dear friend, Jules Taylor, I gave her a tour of the Artfulmind Pop-up Gallery/Shop installed in my Erowal Bay studio. I walked around showing her on camera the exquisite hand-made items created by more than a dozen makers and artists. Jules asked me how it felt to be surrounded by such captivating things where the hand and mind of the maker are so evident. I told her it felt truly wonderful—it gave me a deep sense of peaceful, calm, buoyancy. Her comment in response was, “Beauty as ballast.”
Last week, I delved deeper into the topic with Jules in her professional capacity as a therapist who has been practising for more than 30 years, and who is also an experienced teacher of meditation and mindfulness practices. I invited Jules to reflect on the concept of beauty as ballast and applying it as a strategy for psychological stability, for herself and for her clients.
“I am someone who wants to be awake and alive to the world, with all that means in our tumultuous times, but how do you let the world enter you without it overwhelming you or needing to shy away from it? To me, there must be some sort of counterbalance. That can be many things for many people, of course, but for me, it’s beauty. Beauty in the hand-made, and nature-made.
“It’s beauty that has an intelligence behind it that moves my heart and mind and allows me to keep inviting the world in. Beauty is the counterbalance to the sorrow and the heartbreak and the devastation.
“I find beauty everywhere. Even a simple little flower on a weed I find extraordinary. I look at that flower and ask, How did you get to be so exquisite, so delicate and so beautiful and so well formed? And you’re just sitting there just shining your gorgeous little face to the world.”
Friday Flowers
Jules, formerly a resident of Erowal Bay, currently lives in inner city Melbourne. Her affinity with flowers has formed a (mostly) weekly ritual of visiting the florist Flowers Vasette to chose blooms for care-filled arranging in her home-based counselling space. Jules’s process of choosing and arranging flowers is a creative mindfulness practice that you may wish to try, and adapt, for yourself.
Choosing
“It’s breathtakingly exquisite this particular store where everyone who works there is in the business of beauty as ballast. I wander through and I drink in all the flowers, and I might land on one flower. Then, what to pair with it?
“I don’t go for obvious pairings. I always decline help from an attendant. It’s important I am in my own process where I have things that are somewhat at odds with each other. There’s something pairing them, but they are also at odds, which is sort of a little bit like me.”
Arranging
“It’s really all about lengths and position. It’s a process that unfolds because sometimes I will put my first attempt in the vase and then I have I look, and then I walk around and I go, ooh, something’s not quite right. So I take them all out again and I do another arrangement, and then I walk away and I go, ooh, no, something’s not quite right.
“Then I might shape them. I might change the size, or think it needs to have a little bit more in the front. I like something quite odd and poking out. I don’t like it to be a conforming bunch of flowers. I need them to say something. I need them to be saying something to me.”
“Sometimes, if I’m a bit busy, I’ll just go, oh, that’ll do. And, of course, that will never do. So it could take a whole day, but I can never leave the day without it feeling right, feeling like I’ve allowed the flowers to express themselves, using my mind and their form and shape together, having been in relationship with each other and found a resting place.
“We are doing the dance together.”
Flower Power
The power of the flowers’ beauty as mental and emotional ballast is revealed when Jules tells me in the interview, “I have been flowerless for a few days and I am bereft.”
I am delighted to be a beneficiary of the beauty as ballast that Jules’s Friday Flowers provide for her and her clients when I receive photos of her exquisite compositions, which are typically placed in front of a large scale, dynamic, bold colour, abstract painting by Rowena Martinich—its own beauty as ballast.
Enjoy.
Jules Taylor / Therapist and Thinker
Formerly a resident of Erowal Bay, Jules currently lives in inner city Melbourne and offers Telehealth consultations. For information about the services Jules offers for heart, mind and body, visit her website Mercurious where you can also contact her to arrange a conversation.
