Crafting a Path Through Illness: Exploring creativity while chronically ill - Germaine Hypher - ESCAPE | LEARN

Description:
An accessible, encouraging and inspirational self-help book that unites a broad selection of creative pursuits with the subject of living well with chronic illness. Crafting a Path through Illness offers ways to live an enjoyable, meaningful life despite chronic ill health and shares how the associated experiences and perspectives can have a valuable impact on creative output. It is both a how-to and a why-to for living creatively with chronic illness.

Through its many insights:
* Learn how arts and crafts can affect your physical and mental health.
* Discover how the arts have been used alongside medicine over the centuries.
* Feel inspired by other disabled and chronically ill artists and crafters, past and present.
* Be guided in how to connect creatively with the space around you and the wider world, including other people, when isolated by illness.
* Find tools, hacks and suggestions for making creativity more accessible to you.

Have a go at the suggested ideas and projects. Chronic illness is, by definition, ongoing. Patients need to find ways to be fulfilled and live well amidst their symptoms. Not only does this book offer ways to achieve that but it also shows how living with the experiences and perspectives of ill health can have a valuable impact on creative output and the uses that can have within the wider community.

https://www.hammersmithbooks.co.uk/product/crafting-a-path-through-illness-exploring-creativity-while-chronically-ill/

Review
This book is packed full of really helpful and inspirational information. Germaine Hypher

has gathered together many chapters full of practical and helpful information not just relevant to people suffering with chronic illness but anyone looking to reignite their creativity.

Divided into short and very accessible chapters containing advice, creative activities and inspiration all designed to support individual wellbeing.

The contents include:
Introduction: From my path to yours;

Part I: Being ill, the creative way: A creative life; The feedback loop; Artistic responses to illness;

Part 2: Creative healthcare: An historical viewpoint; Crafty prescriptions for physical conditions; Creative calm for happier health;

Part 3: The art of felling larger than your illness: Creative purpose; Making a difference; Creative connections;

Part 4: Crafting your path: Spinning gold from straw; Making room for creativity; Getting the tension right; Stopping up the energy leaks; From pushing to pacing; Good practice; Recovering from perfectionism, Create-ability; Fallow times and beyond;

Part 5: A dose of inspiration: Changing perception, not circumstance; Moving with the rhythms of restriction; Going without; Going within; Listening to the voice of illness; Maximising your environment; Flights of fancy; Borrowing from others; Contradictions and combinations; Gathering the yarns of your life;

Appendices: Creative directions: Home-friendly arts and crafts; Charity and kindness projects; Online resources; Metaphors and imagery to explore; Bibliography

With more people working from home, or suffering from work related stress Part 4: Crafting Your Path and the chapter on Stopping up the Energy Leaks is particularly helpful in how to tune into the messages from our bodies.

The comprehensive and well-researched ‘Creative Directions’ at the back of the book is a really useful source of further information.

Every chapter has valuable advice, offering the opportunity to dip into, or revisit time after time.

Crafting a Path Through Illness is an inspiring, uplifting and encouraging book for anyone suffering with chronic illness, but also very relevant for the wider community. Highly Recommended!

Crafting a Path Through Illness: Exploring creativity while chronically ill by Germaine Hypher is published by Hammersmith Health Books