Art therapist Mindy Edelman: Cut out for vision boards

Minday Edelman says to dream big and think limitless.

DECEMBER 1, 2016 15:22

Vision boards are designed to align with one’s life purpose (photo credit: ORIT ARFA) — Vision boards are designed to align with one’s life purpose

(photo credit: ORIT ARFA)

Three years ago, art therapist Mindy Edelman of Hashmonaim, near Modi’in, made her first-ever vision board. A vision board is a popular, self-help tool by which people create a collage or an amalgam of images of what they want to manifest in their lives.

Edelman wasn’t sure why, for her first board, she intuitively chose pictures of little girls. She is a mother of two sons and a daughter ranging from ages 21 to 28, so she wasn’t necessarily envisioning having another girl. Looking back, she realizes she wanted to get in touch with her “inner child.”

“It is my belief that our true essence is often revealed to us and present in its purity around the age of five or six, providing that one is not undergoing a particular trauma at this age,” she told Metro. “Thus, it is important to recall who we were, what we enjoyed, what we liked about ourselves and recognize our natural-born God-given talents.”

The vision-board workshops that she envisioned, and which she offered for the first time during the High Holy Days, are the result of getting more in touch with that “inner child.” She offers them as a supplement to her full-time work as an art therapist for high school students and private organizations.

Vision boards, she told the 10 women who gathered mid-November to participate in her second workshop, are designed to inspire not necessarily the acquisition of tangible, material things but alignment with one’s life purpose.

“I believe the modern Western world kind of lied to us and set us into the wrong direction because of that focus on ‘measuring ourselves up,’” she told the women, who were mostly Orthodox English-speakers. Canadian-born Edelman is bilingual and wrote the workshop in Hebrew.

She contrasted her approach with the visualization method made popular by the book and movie series The Secret, which she found put more emphasis on material success and fame. “I have no problem with those things, and like them as much as everybody else, but the problem with that is that people could achieve it all and not be happy.”

Having worked as an art therapist for cancer patients, she noticed that illness often drives people to suddenly go after their authentic selves.

“Many people expressed that when they had the illness, it made them do a heshbon nefesh [soul searching] with themselves to get rid of the toxins in their lives, whether a toxic job or relationship,” she told the participants.

Edelman believes she herself is aligned with her life’s purpose, doing what she values and enjoys.

“Though I must emphasize, I believe that we as individuals are constantly evolving, and therefore ought to be attuned to our inner voice, and whenever possible, allow ourselves to change accordingly,” she said.

Born in Montreal, she eventually settled in Israel as a college student at Bar-Ilan University, where she studied guidance counseling and psychology.

At that time, she met her husband, Stewart, then a student at the Hebrew University and today a CFO at a hi-tech company in Jerusalem. She received her master’s degree in art therapy at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles, her husband’s hometown. Clearly supportive, Stewart had signed in the participants and periodically came into the studio to drop off herbal tea for the women. Their three-story, finely furnished home is one that could reasonably be pictured on a vision board.

The workshop, which costs NIS 150, took place in the home’s third-story attic which has been converted into a cheerful, well-equipped studio-clinic.

The large table at which the women were seated was outfitted with the kinds of arts-and-crafts tools that would make “little girls” excited: magazine picture cutouts, glittery stars and flowers, and of course glue, scissors and markers.

“The reason we’re doing a vision board – and it’s not because I’m an art therapist – is that our brain thinks first in pictures,” Edelman said.

She started out the workshop by helping the women get in touch with the “child,” asking them to select an image card from a deck produced by Points of You, a company that produces personal- growth materials. One woman chose a picture of a girl with a cat and remembered the time when she wanted to be a vet (but never became one). Another woman chose a picture of a woman eating ice cream, recalling her parents’ icecream treats in the New York summers.

Edelman then gave the women a “questionnaire” to fill out, to inspire the direction of the vision board, prompting them with sentences like: “I experience satisfaction when...” and “If I was not afraid, I would....”

“If you dream big and think limitless,” she told the women, “then you become more creative in how to get what you want afterwards.”

Then the work began. Edelman turned on some David Gray, a British musician whom she likes for his meditative flair, as the women reached for the magazine cutouts and chose the images that intuitively spoke to them. Edelman was on hand to print out specially requested images off the Internet. The more popular cutouts on the table included images of brides, children and food.

Batya, a Hashmonaim resident who is undergoing a divorce, said she came to the workshop on the heels of a professional meltdown that same day. This former beauty-salon owner recalled the vision boards she had made in the past, with pictures of mansions and jets.

“I’m in my 40s now, and it’s interesting what used to be important to me and what’s important now,” she said.

“When I was younger, I had really grand and ostentatious ideas about what I wanted, and I think maybe age has toned me down or made me more realistic.

I see how my visions are simpler.

What I’m reaching for are more the simple things in life. I see the theme right now is home, making a home.”

Looking back, she sees how her ambitions were dictated more by her ego rather than by what she truly wanted inside.

Today, love, friends and authentic emotions – above material things – have become her values. Given the difficult time she is undergoing, she surprised herself in creating a cheerful board full of bright colors.

“I thought I was going to come here and have this be about my career and all I want to achieve, but I think my soul is really saying that’s not what I really want.”

One participant, Bracha Benaim, said that she thought twice about gluing on certain images, such as a picture of a home with a swimming pool – her son’s dream. It never seemed feasible to her.

“If you dream it and invite it, it has more of a chance of happening,” Edelman advised her.

Benaim thinks the value of such an event is having a facilitator who prods and encourages, but in the future she may take her time with a vision board, painstakingly curating pictures as they come, and carefully creating a space for them.

Edelman also considers vision boards as ongoing conversations that people have with their dreams and desires.

Sometimes, she said, including from her own experience, the results aren’t immediate.

“I’d be really happy if I hear from people three or four years from now.”