Cultivating transformation through flower mandalas
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White rose mandala. Image: David Bookbinder
Boston-area psychotherapist and photographer David Bookbinder carries on Jung’s tradition by blending his work and art into unique mandala renderings.
Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung viewed the mandala, the circular design considered a universal symbol of transformative healing, as a vessel for projecting one’s Self and sometimes used them as a therapeutic tool while treating patients.
Boston-area psychotherapist and photographer David Bookbinder carries on Jung’s tradition by blending his work and art into unique mandala renderings created from photos of flowers. He wrote that his motivation for creating the flower mandalas “was to heal from a decade of physical and emotional trauma, the consequence of a near-fatal event in Albany, New York, in1993. This event, which culminated in a near-death experience, set me on a spiritual path I'm still following today.”
He said he tends to work on several mandalas at once and that the experience is reminiscent of meditation. “I use a computer to create these images,” he told Flesh and Stone. “I begin with a snapshot of a flower, take several pie-slice-“…I knew that in finding the mandala as an expression of the self I had attained what was for me the ultimate.” - Carl G. Jung, from Memories, Dreams, Reflections.
shaped slices, and then multiply them around, often combining parts of several created images into one final candidate. Then I manipulate saturation, texture, focus, and brightness until what feels like the essence of the image emerges.”As a therapist, Bookbinder works with artists, children and families, and people with addictive behaviors. “Clients sometimes have no reaction at all, and sometimes the images become a topic of conversation, either as a way of my helping them develop some heretofore hidden creative urge they have, or as an entry into a discussion of their artistic process. I don't explicitly introduce my work into my psychotherapy, but I know that many of my artist clients have been drawn to me because I am also an artist.”
Blue Pansy 1 © 2008, David J. Bookbinder
Bookbinder plans to use selections from his Flower Mandalas blog at Beliefnet, where he facilitates a discussion on art, healing, and transformation, and his personal web site, in a book on using the power of the mandala to heal. He invites participation. “I'm looking for personal responses to the mandalas. "Ideally, I'd like to come up with one word which captures the essence of an image, and then a corresponding piece of original writing or an inspirational quote that relates to that word. For instance, one viewer told me that my pink peony image symbolized "protection" for her, though no quote related to "protection" came to mind. I'm also interested in any information about the flowers themselves. The white rose, for instance, has a fascinating history.”
People interested in participating in the book can do so by joining the Flower Mandalas Project forum at Beliefnet.
Bookbinder’s work is featured at the Griffin Museum of Photography in Winchester, MA, through the end of August.
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Life is like the flower,
It needs nitrogen and the sunlight
That it receives from the higher power.
Then as we mature and grow we will never know,
What destiny the Big guy have in store.
Herb Mathis
Copyright ©2008 Herb Mathis
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