Heartwork Journaling: Play with a Purpose

I stumbled on the idea of Heartwork Journaling a little while ago, I believe as an e-course. I didn't really want to sign up for it, but I discovered that the creator, Maritza Parra, had created a book, Heartwork Journaling: Play with a Purpose. So I decided to give that a read to see what this idea was all about. I've been journaling on and off for a few years now, so I thought this practice would be worth checking out. :)

The idea of Heartwork Journaling is that you use art to better uncover the feelings that you are dealing with, to both work through them and help you create a good life through self care and creativity. The main idea Parra reiterates all through the book is that your art doesn't have to be perfect or even pretty - it's 100% fine if the art you make is messy and something that you don't want to show anyone! She recommends getting a book of watercolour paper, watercolour paints, and some markers for outlining and writing on the pages (though near the end of the book she also mentioned using crayons or markers as an alternative, so that was nice to see). The book is made up of a bunch of lessons that I think are to get you started with Heartwork Journaling, though I'm not really sure....the lessons seemed to be kind of one-off art projects, and nothing really seemed to build off of previous lessons. There are some journaling prompts in most of the lessons as well to get you to reflect on emotions and other areas of your life (for example, boundaries and relationships). 

While I like the idea of Heartwork Journaling, I didn't really connect to it in the book. I didn't connect with the idea of being a divine scientist, and found the book overall too structured (in that I wasn't really interested in doing any of the lessons). I did find some helpful journal prompts though, so that was great.

I'll also admit, I wandered to the dollar store part way through reading this book, but I couldn't find anything I would call "watercolour paper," so I didn't really have any of the materials to follow the lessons in watercolour anyway. I have pencil crayons and could give those a try, but the whole idea really felt made for watercolour paints (they can kind of blend and bleed together in your art; pencil crayons or markers wouldn't really). 

While I am grateful for some of the prompts I discovered in Heartwork Journaling: Play with a Purpose, I'm not sure how much I will use a lot of the concepts in this book. But I also think it's worth checking out and deciding for yourself on how you feel about the idea. :)