Articles
Monday, 1 September 2003
Lucia Capacchione: The Vision Mentor
Dorothy Segovia
[Published in Senior Living Magazine]
Dr. Lucia Capacchione Ph.D., A.T.R., R.E.A.T. is passing the torch. The 65 year-old Cambrian and author of 13 self-help books, including the best-seller Recovery of Your Inner Child, is training educators, healthcare practioners, psychologists and artists to teach others how to create a life filled with passion, vitality and fun. Her method? Visioning®.
In the introduction to her book, Visioning: Ten Steps to Designing the Life Of Your Dreams, Dr. Capacchione defines Visioning® collage as a process for creating the life you want. It is a method for finding the dream that lives in your heart and translating it into the world of three dimensions. Visioning® can also be described as practical dreaming: a dream that Lucia knows as well as she knows the floor plan of her Cambria home.
“In 1973 I went to a workshop and the facilitator asked us where we’d be in 5 years. I saw, a house, this house, in the woods by the ocean,” Lucia explains. “ I thought it was near Carmel because I had never been to Cambria before. So I had the vision in 1973, but I didn’t find the house until 1993.”
Visioning® is a process. In the same way we piece together our lives over a period of time, the same is true in the making of a dream.
In the early 70’s, Lucia discovered her breakthrough journaling technique while recovering from a debilitating illness that kept her bedridden for months. Unable to find treatment for a rare collagen disorder, Lucia turned to her journal. As an artist, Lucia was already familiar with her creative self. But by applying right brain processes for personal growth that she learned about during this time of self-exploration, she discovered the power of writing and drawing with her non-dominant hand. She developed a body of work known as Inner Child/Inner Family Therapy. This work is being used in recovery programs throughout the world and is endorsed by Charles Whitfield, Melody Beatty, Bernie Siegel, Louise Hay, Joan Borysenko and other leading experts in the health and recovery fields. Universities, art schools and writing classes are also using her techniques. Lucia then went on to write a series of books on the subject of Creative Journaling before she turned her Visioning® technique intoa book. While Creative Journaling is Lucia’s process for creating a vision for inner growth, she has always used Visioning® to create her life map.
Raised in Hollywood by a mother who was a tailor and expert dressmaker and by a father who was a film editor, Lucia was surrounded by material and cuttings that her parents stitched together into tangible collages: clothing and films. Later, as art student at Immaculate Heart College, she studied under artist Corita Kent, who was the artist in residence at the time. Her foundation to Visioning® collage was born when she blended quotes, advertising art and poetry to create a world on paper. Lucia then visioned herself into a position at the office of the innovative designer Charles Eames after graduation. It was here that Lucia developed her 10 steps of Visioning® that include everything from making a wish, finding order in creative chaos to celebrating the final product.
Lucia’s present reality of teaching her creative vision to students was a different 20-year dream in the making.
This energetic woman lights up as she describes her dream of training others in her work. “My original idea started during a small six-week course I was teaching in the early 80’s. I wanted to certify professionals in my journaling technique. I knew I needed a field supervisor that I was totally trusting of, someone who really understood my method because they were a living example of my work. I also needed someone who had supervisory skills.”
This is a very specific dream and it brings us back to the first step of Visioning®: making a wish. In the very logical adult world wishing is reserved for children. But when it comes to realizing her dreams, this feisty lady lets her inner child take the lead.
“When I first get a vision, I don’t work myself into a fret, I don’t say, well why can’t that happen now. If I am compelled,” she points to her heart, “from within, I do something about it. But if I get the compulsion from my mind, I have nothing but roadblocks.”
But, how do you know if you are wishing from your heart instead of your head?
“When you are in your creative self, you are in your physical body and enjoying it, the physical sensations feel good,” Lucia laughs.
Actually, laughing is a very good indicator that you are in your creative self. Lucia points out such indicators as the book lover who spends hours browsing in bookstores, the gardener who loses themselves in their yard, the hiker who can’t get enough of nature’s beauty.
Visioning® is a wish with a plan. As adults with a lifetime of loving, learning and playing we can create a new vision. One discovery that I made for myself in my own Visioning® is that it’s much easier to do this in a group of friends. While Visioning: Ten Steps to Designing the Life of Your Dreams is a step-by-step guidebook to the Visioning® process, there’s nothing like a good old fashioned ‘Visioning® Bee’ to creating a wonderful life.
Jennifer Star, Certified Creative Journaling Expressive Arts instructor, teaches the Visioning® method in Cambria at a monthly workshop. Though the C.J.E.A. training encompasses art modalities such as movement, sound, music, drama, sculpture, writing and visual arts, Jennifer gravitated to the Visioning® work.
“I related to this process because it resonated the most: creating something that is almost three dimensional,” she says. “I can do the writing journal work if I’m required to do it, but I’m not that type of person. So the Visioning® process works well for me at this time in my life.”
Jennifer’s Ongoing Collage group meets once a month in Cambria. She can be contacted at (805) 927-7261 or by email: starflower13@pngusa.net.
Meanwhile Lucia, along with Training Supervisor Marsha Gamel, Ph.D., is mentoring another group of students October 11 through October 18 when she hosts another C.J.E.A. Certification Training Program at the Cambria Pines Lodge. For more information about Lucia’s workshops and training courses, or to find out more about her books, visit her at www.luciac.com or call (805) 546-1424.
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