The Wanganui community is invited to explore healing arts.

From tomorrow, 15 healing arts practitioners will be in the Community Arts Centre on Taupo Quay for six days and those who attend can choose to have a massage, relax with Reiki, or recharge with reflexology.

Included in the healing arts are colour therapy, interactive drawing, iridology, spices, herbal teas and remedies, flower essences, energy healing, magnetic healing and Jin Shin Jyutsu.

The community will get to banish their "hurts and fears" to a worm farm while they set their hopes and dreams free on the leaves of a tree.

Deirdra McMenamin says this is participatory art where people will be encouraged to write their hurts and fears on pieces of paper, shred it, then those shredded pieces of paper will be fed to worms.

"The horrible stuff is then transformed in to something positive," Mrs McMenamin says, because the vermiliquid and vermicast continues the cycle and fertilises trees which have been brought in for the healing art week.

The practitioners say the healing arts is about building resiliency, and the community can discover the different modalities that are available in Wanganui in a non-threatening environment.

This is the healing space where people can start conversations, they say.

The people can then set their hopes and dreams free by writing on pieces of paper which they will clip to the leaves of the trees.

There are timetabled events including meditation, and talks from some of the practitioners about healing with horses, energy healing and using a pendulum,

electro medicine, Healing Tao, Yoga Nidra and using herbs in daily life.

Dr Chris Cresswell will teach meditation for those who have never meditated or those who want a refresher and on Wednesday between 6.30pm and 8.30pm there is an opportunity for a "taster" of a wider selection of treatments.

People will be invited to have their arm cast as part of an international peace sculpture; to "lay down your arms" in a commitment to building peace shared by hundreds of people previously in Northern Ireland, Ireland, France, Wales, England and Canada.

Healing Arts in the Community Arts Centre from December 4, 10am-3pm; Saturday 9-1pm, Sunday 10am-1pm. For more information: 3421026, 02102739481

- WANGANUI CHRONICLE