We can learn a lot from pottery and the process of turning a lump of mud into a thing of beauty. I am teaching a Wellness Pottery class for a group of teens and wanted to share some of the learnings I will be teaching.
Beyond the analogy of pottery representing life, making pottery can be a calming and meditative experience, helping to reduce stress and anxiety. Working with your hands is good for improving cognitive health and sensory stimulation. The world seems to fade away when you are working with clay. This is what mindfulness is about.
Now, how does pottery mimic life?
Clay
Pottery is nothing without the clay. The clay becomes art or a functional part of your home.
The clay is your potential. You are moldable and shapeable and destined for something beautiful. You start as something so tiny and seemingly insignificant, a mass of cells. But what can you become with the right care and circumstances? A loving parent, a scientist who creates a cure for disease, an artist whose art brightens a space, a leader of a movement that creates peace
Remember, everytime you shape your clay, treat it how you would like to be treated. With gentleness, patience, and belief in what this clay can become.
Water
Water is necessary in every step of the clay’s journey. From shaping, to smoothing to drying so you can fire it – the right amount of water is critical.
Water represents the things in your life that keep you balanced. Too much water and you turn to mush, you aren’t capable of being who you are meant to be. Too little water and you also can’t be sculpted. You can crack under the slightest of pressure. What things in life keep you balanced? There are five basic aspects of our life we need to manage to keep ourselves balanced.
- Diet – this can mean different things to different people but generally speaking you want less processed, chemically laden food and more food that is recognizable to the source.
- Movement – you don’t have to be a marathon runner, but moving throughout the day keeps your blood oxygenated. Even 15 minutes a day of getting your heartrate up can make a difference in whether or not you will find yourself with dis-ease.
- Sleep – sleep is one of those things that will actually kill you if you don’t sleep. They haven’t created a drug like they have if you don’t exercise or eat well. Sleep helps you drain toxins from your body and you process things that have happened to you throughout the day through your dreams.
- Sense of meaning – what are you doing in your life to give you meaning? You could be taking care of a plant, picking up garbage in your neighborhood, or maybe just getting good grades so you can go to the school of your choice.
- Community – who is your tribe? Where do you go to feel like you belong and matter?
Inspiration
What is inspiring you to create? Is it nature, a loved one, or you just want to practice being mindful? Do you need this to be functional pottery or will your clay be a work of art?
What do you want out of your life? Do you want to live more of a sideline type life, do you want to participate actively? What inspires you? Who inspires you?
Pencil and Paper
These are your plan. Putting a little forethought into what you want your pottery to look like can go a long way from a simple sketch to even mocking it with a paper model.
If you want specific things out of your life, write them down. Goals that are written down have a much greater chance of success vs just having them floating around in your head.
“Setting goals, whether they be personal or professional, has been linked to higher self-motivation, confidence, empowerment, and autonomy. Perhaps unsurprisingly, research has established a substantial connection between goal-setting and success.”
Writing something down can help steer you when you have a decision to make so that each consequential decision moves you in the right direction.
Molds
Molds help to shape the clay. They add support while the clay is in the critical drying stage. There are drape molds, press molds and hump or slump molds. They serve a different purpose depending on what you want your clay to be.
In life, the molds that help shape you could be your parents, your kids or your spouse depending on what stage of life you are in. There is lots of research that says the cards you have been dealt with don’t have to direct the rest of your life. You are born with a set of genetics but your outcome can be heavily influenced through epigenetics by your experiences and your environment.
“For example, perfect pitch is the ability to detect the pitch of a musical tone without any reference. Researchers have found that this ability tends to run in families and might be tied to a single gene. However, they’ve also discovered that possessing the gene is not enough as musical training during early childhood is needed for this inherited ability to manifest itself.”
https://www.verywellmind.com/what-is-nature-versus-nurture-2795392
Tools
You have a variety of tools to help you get to a beautiful piece of pottery. You have your hands, sponges, brushes, carving tools, ribs that are wood, metal and rubber and they all shape your clay in various degrees.
I think tools represent all the different aspects of your life to get you where you want to be. This could be a best friend who comforts you during times of emotional upset or gives you advice in just the right way so you can hear it, it could be money that allows you to buy the things you need, or it could be something as abstract as your health. Without health – what do we have?
Scoring and Slipping
When adding a knob or ensuring two parts of the clay connect, you need to score and slip. Scoring and slipping is the glue that holds the clay together.
In life, we have a social fabric that keeps our society functional – from teachers that teach us, to leaders who guide us, to police who keep law and order so we can feel safe living our lives. We can consider how we contribute to keeping our society connected and working together to build something beautiful.
Kiln
The kiln is a necessary step so the pottery can be handled without crumbling.
The kiln represents stages of your life or milestones. Consider when you were a baby and you finally start to walk after crawling for many months. Crawling was important for those months, but once you start walking – you don’t typically go back to crawling. Walking provides so much more freedom.
When we encounter challenges in our lives, we want to metephorically fall up the stairs, not fall down them. You may slip a bit, but falling down a flight of stairs is something you want to avoid. Firing the clay in the kiln is a milestone. You’ve done enough work that you won’t have to regress to a less desirable stage in your life.
And finally, we have You!
You are the ultimate creator. You have the power to work hard and practice and hone your pottery skills the same way you have the power to steadily increase the beauty and joy in your life.
And just like in life, pottery is messy! Don’t forget to have fun.