Saturday, October 9, 2010

Imagination...Vivien Deitz Presentation

This past Thursday, I was lucky to attend Vivien Deitz’s presentation, “Imagination: The Playground of Fairy Tales”.  I found her presentation to be very interesting.  I have to say that it was very different than I was expecting.  It seemed that it was going to be more of a breakdown of the two fairy tales, “Aladdin and the Magic  Lamp” and “The Velveteen Rabbit”.  But, the presentation was actually much more interesting than a simple synopsis of the tales. 


She introduced a new word to me in her presentation: Shamanism.  Her psychotherapy outlook on fairy tales brought me a new outlook on fairy tales that we have read.  Her somatic guide imagery was something very new to me.  At first when she asked us to close our eyes and imagine ourselves going to pick up our shamanic inner child, I thought…”This is crazy”.  But, I did give it a shot, and found it to be beneficial in understanding the tales she then went on to break down into symbols and motifs. 
She did speak about how great the years 8 and younger are great years, where everything seems real.  Although I never had an imaginary friend as she did, I do understand exactly what she was talking about.  That innocence and belief that everything was real was great.  I never had a feeling of doubt, if I thought I saw it, it was real.  There was one year where on Christmas Eve I thought I say Santa and his reindeer flying around the street, and I swore by it.  No one could convince me that I saw otherwise, and I still hear about it till this day, “Do you remember when you told everyone you saw Santa…”.

I really enjoyed her retelling of the two stories, “Aladdin and the Magic Lamp” and “The Velveteen Rabbit”, as they seemed to come to life.  She pointed out a lot of symbolism throughout the stories, specifically colors, which often are overlooked as being unimportant.  The emotions felt by the characters are another point she made an effort to point out.  Deitz made the stories more connectable through the listener (me) gaining a better relationship with the characters through a better connection.
Vivien Deitz’s presentation resulted in me now really opening up my imagination when reading these fairy tales.    



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