Using Art To De-Stress And Find Your "All-Is-Well" Place

I recently had the privilege of meeting Gloria Tiede and being on the receiving end of her unique craft. Gloria gifted me an “All-Is-Well” session, and because it was such a great experience, I wanted to share with you about it and we’re going to be doing a free webinar in a few weeks (details at the end of this post). But before I share about my experience (and I’ve included the art that Gloria made for me), let me let Gloria tell you what the All-Is-Well place is all about…

The All-Is-Well Place

Life these days can be brutal. Companies are going out of business. We save for retirement and the bank goes bust. Wars don’t end. We’re wrecking our environment. Our relationships feel stress. We are aging. Life feels like one long marathon with only a few winners… and the signs indicate we’re not going to be one of them.

What if it doesn’t have to be this way? What if there’s an all-is-well place deep inside each one of us regardless of what happens? What if you could live from a felt sense of OK-ness right in the middle of everyday challenges?

I want you to know that there is a place deep down where all is well. Below the scars, below the imperfections of our world there is a point of perfection inside each of us. That place is the source of real happiness.

Sometimes this place is called the still point. Sometimes it is called the sacred. Some people call it nirvana. Some people call it “my deepest self.” Down through the years it has gone by many names and many of the terms are not religious. I call it the all-is-well place. If you have your own name for this place you should keep it. This is the place of the infinite and it has an infinite number of names. Your All-Is-Well place exists right at your core and you can learn to sense it deep in your chest.

But I don’t always feel that all is well…

Yeah, you say, “But I don’t always feel all-is-well… How do I know such a place exists?” The reason we do not usually have a felt sense of our all-is-well place is because we have been taught to place our attention on the external world. We focus on our families, on our friends, on our jobs, on issues that need to be cared for, on money, and on good causes.

Now the external world with all its challenges is wonderful – I’m not suggesting we turn our backs on it. I’m suggesting that we balance our focus on the external world with a focus on the internal world. And most important is where we centre ourselves. The ability to experience life as friendly, loving and abundant  is dependent on the ability to centre ourselves  in the internal all-is-well place.

How images can help you find your All-Is-Well place

Einstein said that imagination is really more important than knowledge and he was one of the smartest men that ever lived. Einstein knew that the infinite possibilities inherent in imagination help us to go beyond what we already know. Einstein used his imagination to move from what he already knew into something wider. If you would like to go beyond what you already know about All-Is-Well, I invite you to consider using images.

The words image and imagination share the same root and they help each other to function. Paintings, pictures, and images all point to things beyond the paint on the canvass or the pixels on the computer screen. You don’t have to be an artist to use images as another way of knowing. All human beings create images in their imaginations.

My passion is supporting people in accessing their own unique inner All-Is-Well places using images. I ask individuals to describe their own unique interior places and from that I create a customized digital paintings that is theirs to keep. I have listened to many people describe their personal All-Is-Well places and while all these places evoke similar feelings of peace, love and quiet joy, visually every one is unique. There is nothing more enjoyable than accompanying people as they go to their All-Is-Well places and then gifting them with an artistic image inviting them to live from that place.

My session with Gloria

I’ve been very into art-making since I was a child. I loved it so much that I attended art classes weekly from the age of 5 to 19. I’ve kept almost every piece of artwork that I created and each time we’ve moved continents, I’ve had a look through my artwork in our storage and I get a rush of memories with each and every picture I look at – memories of how I felt when I created the picture, what I was struggling with or celebrating in my life at the time and core truths about who I really am. So when Gloria offered me the session and explained how images can anchor feeling states, I understood what she was on about. I must confess though, that I was a little skeptical about the idea of someone else creating art-work to represent my feeling state, but I was up for the experiment and curious to see what that would be like.

As with any guided visualization, eliciting my All-Is-Well place was a relaxing, enjoyable and centering experience. For people who aren’t familiar with how to do this, just learning how to do this would be an incredibly useful skill. During and after the session, I felt deeply relaxed, centered and at peace.

Because of my initial skepticism about having someone else create the artwork, I really enjoyed that I was quite shocked at how much the image represented my All-Is-Well place and how I could be transported to my All-Is-Well place by an image created by someone else.

And then I listened to the song and the words, “If you could see what I see” hit me in the gut. I hadn’t said it to Gloria, but it’s always been so important to me to observe well and to see the stuff that many people miss. I’d say that seeing is one of my super-powers. But it can be lonely sometimes because not everyone sees what I see. And one of my favorite themes about leadership that I reflect on often is that idea that leadership is about seeing others and being comfortable with being seen. And then all of this looped back as I thought to myself that it felt like Gloria really got into my head and saw what I saw! And then the double-whammy of awesomeness; it hit me that I felt incredibly seen through this experience, and that made me bawl.

Gloria had taken time to contemplate me and my All-Is-Well place while she created an image, wrote a poem and selected a song for me. I suspect that the sense of wellness I got looking at the picture, hearing the song and reading my poem came from the magic of feeling lovingly seen and heard by another, more than anything else. And you can’t get that painting alone.

Here’s what Gloria created for me

Since this represents my All-Is-Well place, it’s not going to hold the same meaning and emotional power for you, but here’s the artwork, poem and song that Gloria gave me.

And here’s the song she selected for me. It’s called “Perfect Replications” and it’s by Denise Hagan

We’re doing a webinar

If you’d like to learn more about finding your All-Is-Well place amongst the chaos of life, join us for our free webinar. Gloria will take you through her group “All-Is-Well” process, using visualization and some of her images, and she’ll be sharing a special offer exclusive for the call attendees to take her up on an individual All-Is-Well session where she’ll create All-Is-Well artwork personalized for you.

Date: Wed 18 Aug
Time: 10:00 am PST/ 11:00 am MST/ 12:00 pm CST/1:00 pm EST/ 6pm UK/ 7pm SA

Click here to register for the webinar and get the call-in details.