PEMBROKE PINES / SUNRISE
Mandalas help to reshape a life
- Using a spiritual creative
process, a South Florida
artist found a way to cope
with her troubles.
Special to The Herald
Can salvation come in
the form of a circle? It did
for Lily Mazurek, a 50-some-
thing Pembroke Pines artist
and manager of the Sunrise Civic
Center Theatre, a year-round
performing arts facility.
Mazurek’s life was at a
crossroads in 1996, when she
learned she had breast cancer.
“Everything in my life exploded,” she said. “My dad died, I was going through a divorce, I lost my job, and I had a car accident. It was horrible. I had seven years of darkness.”
She began drawing and painting mandalas, round designs known for centuries in many cultures as symbols of wholeness and harmony.
“Mandalas, which I’d heard of eons ago, started appearing in my life,” said Mazurek, who survived surgery and radiation therapy. “From snowflakes, flowers and cells, what I discovered is that everything in nature has a mandala in it. I saw how everything dovetailed into everything else.”
Mazurek has taught mandala workshops at Broward Community College and for various groups, including cancer survivors at Gilda’s Club and the Florida Society of Oncology Social Workers. In July she led a specialized workshop for oncology nurses.
In the workshops, from beginning to advanced levels, Mazurek says many issues can be addressed. Whether the problem is disease, weight loss, relationships or something else, mandalas appear to help those creating them.
“The mind is turned off so as to have access to shapes, colors and feelings, to bring out in the mandala,” she said. “The meaning of the mandala is personal to each creator. At the end, there’s a debriefing to talk about the process.
But what is it about mandalas that is so powerful?
“I think it’s a matter of getting stuff out on paper,” Mazurek said. “We use our bodies in the workshop and problems are lodged in there. The process of making mandalas relieves stress and anger. It has given me a tremendous amount of hope.”
Her own mandalas, kept in an artist’s portfolio, include lively circle designs in crayon, Magic Marker, and colored pencil. With rainbows, flames and images of herself, they are visual journals of Mazurek’s coping with many issues over time. She is finishing a book on the subject and insists the attention she’s receiving for her workshops shouldn’t be focused on her.
“The word mandala in Sanskrit means ‘container of sacred essence,’” she said. “I had to take a back seat in realizing that the teachings are not from me but through me from a higher place.”