From Fragmentation to Wholeness: Containers for Healing

Authors

  • Tamara Pearl Simon Fraser University

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.25071/1916-4467.40368

Keywords:

holistic education, arts based inquiry, healing, container as metaphor, containers for healing

Abstract

Psychological and social fragmentation in many forms confronts us daily. Using a framework of holistic education and Indigenous holism, I propose a pedagogy of repair to facilitate healing and wholeness. The metaphor of container is used to investigate how to transform fragmented parts of the self or of society and lead the fragments towards wholeness by facilitating transformational encounters with ourselves, with others, and with the world. Metaphorical containers are not necessarily physical spaces, but are created by relationships, by ritual, by art-making and by other means. A felt-sense-informed, arts-based inquiry elucidates characteristics of effective containers. An Indigenous model of healing and justice, an alternative prison in the province of British Columbia, serves as a poignant example of an effective healing container.

Author Biography

Tamara Pearl, Simon Fraser University

Tamara Pearl is a PhD candidate in Philosophy of Education at Simon Fraser University's Faculty of Education. She works as a psychotherapist in private practice, and is an adjunct faculty member at Adler University in the Masters of Counselling Psychology and Art Therapy department. Her research focuses on healing responses to wrongdoing and wounding. Her doctoral fieldwork is conducted at Kwikwexwelhp Healing Village, a minimum security prison in British Columbia, Canada.

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Published

31-08-2018

How to Cite

Pearl, T. (2018). From Fragmentation to Wholeness: Containers for Healing. Journal of the Canadian Association for Curriculum Studies, 16(1), 36–52. https://doi.org/10.25071/1916-4467.40368