Kintsugi - The Japanese Art of Repairing Broken Vessels

"I will use gold to heal my heart and retrieve my soul"

Kintsugi is a Japanese art used to mend shattered ceramic vessels with a resin made with a precious metal. The art was founded in the late fifteenth century by Japanese craftsmen. Highlighting repair of what is broken, Kintsugi masters restore broken clay pieces into a finished product more beautiful than the original.   This technique marks the history of rupture in a ceramic piece, embraces flaws and imperfections, and gives new aesthetic value.

Reflecting on how kintsugi is a metaphor for spiritual healing, I found an essay by Pui Ying Kwan on the increasing culture of disposable (goods and people) and the potential for designers to focus on emotional durable design, "design that has stronger emotional links with users." According to Kwan, Japanese culture values the historical aspect of a piece, so that it is not mended to look like its original form, but instead to emphasize its brokenness and restore its original function. Kintsugi is a personalized object, made more valuable by its restoration to a unique new whole.

My spiritual journey has brought me to a place in my life where I am looking for ways to heal my heart. Lots of people know what a broken heart feels like- it's an overwhelming aching, a sense that a vibrant space in the body is emptied out and hollow, the reverberating sound of loss or dissonance when what you thought was love is not love after all, the drowning sense of floating in pain. These are all ways I have known heartache. But my most recent experience of heartache, one that has brought me to a new landscape in my healing journey where I MUST find a way to heal my heart, is not a sense of pain. For the last few years I've had anxiety attacks that manifest as literal sharp pains in my chest, accompanied by an experience many people have heard of as "fight or flight" but which, from my humble experience, utterly lacks the dynamism implied in the term.

This experience of being physically paralyzed by pain and the fear of being open to pain in my heart center has redefined heartache for me. To be honest, I used to relish in heartbreak when it was a psychological and spiritual sensation of emptying out, breaking, or soaking through because I knew it was "all in my head" and that "this too shall pass." I cannot say there was any narcissistic moment of pleasure to gain from my heart pain embodied in my chest and actually running through my blood and energy lines. Panic attacks humbled me. Anxiety embodied sent me a new message: "You have gone too far and have to stop and heal me now."