02.11.08
Energy Portraits Show Us Our Authentic Radiance
– By Leiah Bowden
It isn’t so meaningful that we can write or speak. It is meaningful that we want to, that we want to bridge the gap between inside and outside, and on the bridge find release and relief from isolation. Tonight I created an Energy Portrait of the unified being created when Lisa and Dennis, longing for each other for over 25 years, finally joined in a bond that spans dimensions and eons.
An Energy Portrait is an audio-visual soul reading in luminous, vibrant pastels on paper and my voice on audio tape with the guidance, singing and chanting that spontaneously pours through my throat as part of the process.
When I created my first Energy Portraits, I thought they were a fascinating kind of art. There was no sound that poured forth. Soon after, I began helping people release blocked energy through an intuitive flow of movements, often with singing and chanting. As anyone who offers and is blessed by this kind of work has undoubtedly heard, people told me, “You were born to do this work.” The occasional chanting and singing that made brief entrances during the physical energy work became a strong component of the Energy Portrait sessions, and it became clear to me that the Energy Portraits are more than art – although I intend no denigration of art for art’s sake! These speak to the soul and of the soul.
As I have created them, I have seen tears streaming down people’s faces and awe on their faces as they recognize that the love they have hidden away, tucked inside their bodies, has found a door and is rushing out to embrace them. Even when I do them long distance, people call or email to tell me how deeply moved by them, as Stacey Wall, a Reiki Master in Massachusetts wrote: “I am so thrilled with the portrait!! Thank you!! The first thing that came to me was “FINALLY someone sees me”. I was so moved by the portrait and even more amazed with how the tape was right on the money. It was wild to think that you don’t know me and yet I had a tape of you telling me all kinds of things about myself that were absolutely accurate.”
More recently I’ve learned that they are being used for inspiration, for personal transformation, and even as corroborating diagnostic tools for acupuncturists. Have you heard the story of how the indigenous Americans initially could not see Columbus’s ships? Their paradigm would not allow a vision of something so utterly out of their understanding of possibility. So it is with seeing energy flowing. I have been teaching The Intuitive Art of Energy Portraiture for some years now, and I can assure you that even if you think you can’t see energy, you can create an Energy Portrait that might even delight and amaze you. In my classes, people who were not artists, who thought they were not creative, whom others had underestimated all their lives, trusted themselves as we went through the series of preparatory meditations and visualizations, to pick up a pastel crayon and begin drawing without judging themselves or planning their creation.
We are radiant beings of brilliance and light, no doubt. Let’s be brave to lift off our shrouds through our fears of our own magnificence.
