Oceana Blueskyes, LMFT, Art Therapist

02/16/2020

New workshop offerings ! ❤️

Your True Power: A Reclamation of Self Through Seasonal Rituals
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A 4 Part Workshop Series
by Elyce Talavera, CMT & Oceana Blueskyes, LMFT
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Part 1: Spring Forth
Sunday March 1
10am - 12pm

2001 South Barrington Ave.
LA CA 90025
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Like it or not, change is the only constant. For anyone feeling adrift in the midst of a transition, confused about how to move forward, we've got you! If you struggle to stay grounded in the midst of change and uncertainty (that's pretty much all of us!), join us for a communal exploration of creative self-care practices that will nourish your intuition and affirm your innate power to navigate the currents of life with confidence. Each workshop in this four part series includes yoga, herbs, guided meditation, and creative rituals designed to optimize your health, enhance productivity and happiness, and honor the inhale and exhale of the seasons inside you and on the earth. Each season celebrates something different, thus providing you with four opportunities to learn how to ride the waves of change. Participants will take home a customized herbal remedy and self-care plan to integrate these teachings into daily life. Bring a tea mug, journal, pen, and your yoga mat.

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As good as it feels to welcome warmer temps and longer days, the transition from winter to spring can be a jarring one. Let’s shake off winter stagnation together and explore yoga, herbs and self-care rituals that nurture our spring renewal.
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$44 by 2/27, $50 thereafter
RSVP to [email protected]

07/20/2019

Any hand stitcher will tell you: To embroider or crochet slowly mends the spirit, stitch by stitch.

07/16/2019

THIS!!!!

You know why it feels like A LOT? The whole brutiful mess of this wild and precious life we’re all fumbling our way through? Because it is. It IS a lot.

Never before have we had so many opportunities to create change and make a difference. Never before have we had so much information to sort or so many decisions to make. Never before have our nervous systems been this overloaded, or our bodies so out of touch with the natural cycles meant to guide and calm us. Never before have we been exposed to needs and struggles beyond our local communities. Never before have we been subjected to the wounds of the entire world.

We are navigating completely new terrain, and we’re doing so with very little guidance, mentorship, or empathy from our elders.

This reality requires something of us that I’m beginning to see as utterly essential to our ability to stay sane, to stay strong and to feel whole toward our collective healing and awakening:

We must hold our experience lightly. Like backpackers on a months-long pilgrimage, we must remove our packs regularly, assess the usefulness and necessity of every weighty item we once decided we needed, and distribute what we absolutely must carry in the wisest possible way.

The load of other people’s opinions?

The backbreaking burden of savior mentality?

The weight of shame and self-abandonment?

We really can choose to set them down.

What if, instead of doing the WORK of healing, we decided to play our way to transformation? What if, instead of seeing the world as super f*cked up, we saw it as a giant, beautiful mess of an experiment? What if we could learn to laugh at our own folly and hold our greatest discomfort with childlike reverence and wonder?

Aldous Huxley said it simply and sweetly:

“Lightly, child, lightly. Learn to do everything lightly. Yes, feel lightly even though you’re feeling deeply. Just lightly let things happen and lightly cope with them. Lightly, lightly--it’s the best advice ever given to me.”

The story that we have to hold ALL the things, ALL the time, ALL BY OURSELVES is heavy, toxic lie that keeps us burdened, separate, and spending.

04/23/2019

I adore the writings of the late great Oliver Sacks, and couldn’t agree more with his stance on gardens for mental health. I’m shifting more and more of my sessions to my “outdoor office” at the Stoneview Nature Center, and my patients are loving the effect that sitting under the trees, watching hawks and hummingbirds, and tending the plants have on their mood and sense of well-being.

Even for people who are deeply disabled neurologically, nature can be more powerful than any medication.

03/06/2019

“Yet another study that highlights the link between green space and mental health is a timely occasion to remember that people aren't solely responsible for nurturing their own emotional and psychological wellbeing. Those who plan the roads, parks, schools, and office buildings that surround us also play an important, if indirect, role as guardians of our mental health. And we should feel empowered to fight for our mental health by demanding what we deserve: green spaces with the potential to help everyone thrive.”

Green space can do wonders for our well-being, and we have a right to demand it from our cities.

01/18/2019

This about sums it up.

I swear this is what I've been saying to my therapist for thirty years.
Just a reminder that sometimes the wrecks are the prophets.
Paying attention is hard. We can do hard things.
I love you!
G

//And love you Laura McKowen -- thanks for this!//

03/24/2018

❤️open studio art therapy is the best! It’s a dream of mine to have a space like this someday.

03/17/2018

“It comes through the written and the spoken word; sometimes a word, a sentence or a poem or a story, is so resonant, so right, it causes us to remember, at least for an instant, what substance we are really made from, and where is our true home.

These transient ‘tastes of the wild’ come during the mystique of inspiration- ah, there it is; oh, now it has gone. The longing for her comes when one happens across someone who has secured this wildish relationship. The longing comes when one realizes one has given scant time to the mystic cookfire or to the dreamtime, too little time to one’s own creative life, one’s life work or one’s true loves.

Yet it is these fleeting tastes which come both through beauty as well as loss, that cause us to become so bereft, so agitated, so longing that we eventually must pursue the wildish nature. Then we leap into the forest or into the desert or into the snow and run hard, our eyes scanning the ground, our hearing sharply tuned, searching under, searching over, searching for a clue, a remnant, a sign that she still lives, that we have not lost our chance. And when we pick up her trail, it is typical of women to ride hard to catch up, to clear off the desk, clear off the relationship, clear out one’s mind, turn to a new page, insist on a break, break the rules, stop the world, for we are not going on without her any longer.”

-Clarissa Pinkola Estés

02/03/2018

❤️🤣❤️🤣❤️🤣

08/17/2017

This is a really good one ❤️❤️❤️

I'll never relate to my crying child the same way again.