Our Practices | Art & Soul Nashville

The Studio Container

Our classes create a safe, nonjudgmental environment designed for meaningful exploration. We hold space for your journey by emphasizing:

Safety: Creating a trusted, reliable container where you feel supported to explore.
Nonjudgment: Holding all individuals and creative expressions with total awareness, acceptance, and compassion.
Connection: Cultivating commonality and giving individuals an organic space to share their experiences.
Witnessing: Seeing, hearing, and reflecting each person's unique journey with honesty and kindness.
Environment: Shaping a physical space that feels warm, intentional, and inviting.

Our practices are applied actions that lead to authentic artmaking.

Four Pillars

Our

Art & Soul is grounded in four core practices which invite us to slow down, listen deeply, and connect with the creative source within ourselves. Each practice engages our primary channels of human expression—kinesthetic, auditory, and visual—freeing you to create however you choose.

Play is fooling around, daydreaming, trying this and that—it’s an attitude, a way of being. You can do it anytime, anywhere, with anything and nothing.

We begin our description of practices with “play,” which is fundamental to all the arts. Without this practice, the artist is frequently disconnected from the self; he or she is often either lost, or relying solely on technique. Play is a sincere, but not necessarily serious practice that lets us (almost without notice) drop into our natural selves and express from that authentic place. When we play, we are:

Opening up to the possible
Exploring and experimenting
Letting go of conditioning
Listening with pure awareness
Reconnecting with the source and the sacred

At the studio, we like to play with all kinds of non-art materials to help trick the conditioned mind to slip outside its limited box.

We arrange, stack, wrap, hang, tie, sort, bend and mix all kinds of things such as beans, sticks, feathers, rocks, fabrics, jewelry, beads, buttons and bamboo. In the end, it’s an experience. If we’re listening, play will take us somewhere we haven’t been before.

Facilitators Who Specialize in this Practice

Amanda Cantrell Roche

Anne Putnam

Deanie French

Jenni Sturgis

Lisa Paige Binder

Robin Wolfenden

Susie Garland

Authentic movement is about moving and being moved. It is about expression and meaning unfolding without interference from the conditioned mind.

Authentic Movement is a practice in which a safe container is created for the body to move and express itself from deep within. This form was originally developed by a dancer, Mary Starks Whitehouse, who was searching for a way to embody Jung’s method of healing called “active imagination."

There is a meditative quality to this practice. We create a quiet space in which the mover can listen deeply to the impulses in the body and allow the body to move in whatever way it wants, moment to moment. The mover and the movement are received, held and honored with compassion and loving kindness.

This practice:

Develops awareness and deep listening on all levels: physical, emotional, mental and spiritual
Provides an opportunity to access and express deeply held sensations, feelings, longings and images
Develops trust in the self, the body and the group connection Is playful, fun and surprising, as well as grounding and empowering.

Accesses material that can then be expressed in other mediums as well (writing, visual art, sounding, etc.)

Facilitators Who Specialize in this Practice

Amanda Cantrell Roche

Anne Putnam

Deanie French

Jenni Sturgis

Susie Garland

At Art & Soul, we practice re-connecting to the Source before we start “making” art. We meditate; we move the body; we read poetry; we play.

When we transition into intuitive artmaking, we are in a playful state of not-knowing: trying this, trying that, making a mess, not knowing what we are doing or where we are going. We may have an idea that is a “point of departure." We hold it lightly while allowing a freewheeling exploration of the materials to let us drop from our heads down into our bodies. We say, “The hands know what to do.”

Often in our culture, we have the model that the idea for art comes from the head and is then executed by the conditioned mind, which applies its knowledge of various techniques. Intuitive Artmaking is a way of creating art in which the artist is supported in being connected to the multi-dimensional matrix of self and life. What happens is sometimes a big mess. Part of our practice is to become hardy to big messes and no “results” at times. But quite often a stunning revelation appears on the canvas. Or the piece of clay becomes something quite mysterious and powerful although we may have no idea what it is.

We are in relationship with our artwork, painting, clay, etc. We make a mark; it speaks back to us. We make another mark; it sings or groans in response. The work or “play” continues in this way. Art & Soul stands behind the notion that true art is revelation, not production, and this requires a leap of faith. Leaps of faith require trust. Often we have a lot of self-doubt. That’s why we do things in community. We support each other to let go and jump off the cliff. We also support each other to stay in the process and not quit; to go and grow deeper, to learn more, be more curious and more surprised.

Facilitators Who Specialize in this Practice

Amanda Cantrell Roche

Anne Putnam

Beth Richardson

Elizabeth Sanford

Jenni Sturgis

Karyn Henley

Kelly Cass Falzone

Lee LaChance

Lesley Patterson-Marx

Lisa Paige Binder

Robin Wolfenden

Sonia Fernandez LeBlanc

Susie Garland

Tobi Fishel

Vicki Manning

Sounding and Sound Journeying are practices that explore the power and beauty of the voice when it is given space to move freely, without judgment or inhibition.

Like the other practices employed at Art & Soul, it is meditative in nature. It is a deep listening practice. We breathe in a particular way. Without judgment, we let sound come. Listening to our deepest impulses, we discover worlds within us we didn’t know existed.

Using breath, movement, tone and chant, we enter into a deep relationship with ourselves, with others, and with something mysterious, opening new pathways to the source of creativity, passion, nourishment and the experience of fullness in life.

This practice:

Connects the voice to all levels of the organism
Helps overcome shallow or disrupted breathing patterns
Transforms both the speaking voice and the singing voice
Develops connection with the core being through sound vibration
Accesses material that can then be expressed in other mediums as well (writing, visual art, movement, etc.)

Facilitators Who Specialize in this Practice

Amanda Cantrell Roche

Anne Putnam

Jenni Sturgis

Sonia Fernandez LeBlanc

Susie Garland