Healing from the Hut & Intuitive Drawing
There is something profoundly simple about sitting in a beach hut. Four wooden walls, a roof that creaks with the wind, and the shifting sound of waves just beyond the door. The hut offers both shelter and openness, a liminal space where inner worlds can surface. For me, this has become a powerful image for intuitive drawing and the way symbols emerge from the unconscious.
When we allow ourselves to draw without a plan—shapes, symbols, and figures that “just come”—we are stepping into the hut and listening for what the sea brings in. A spiral on the page may open into the archetype of the journey. A bird may signal freedom or transcendence. A wave may speak of the unconscious rising to meet consciousness.
Carl Jung once described the psyche as a house: the attic representing higher thought and spiritual aspiration, the ground floor our everyday conscious mind, the cellar our personal unconscious, and the ground beneath the vast collective unconscious we all share. This model gives us a map of the inner life. But what happens if, instead of a house, we imagine a hut by the sea?
The Beach Hut Psyche
The Attic / Roof
In a beach hut, the attic / roof is often where we sleep and dream. Low, slanting, and close above your head. Yet it still points upward, reminding us of inspiration, imagination, and spiritual seeking. When we draw intuitively, the marks that stretch upward—spirals reaching to the sky, birds in flight, shafts of light—speak to these aspirations. They are glimpses of our higher self.
The Ground Floor
The main space of the hut is where we sit, where daily life unfolds. This is the conscious mind, the part of us aware of our choices and surroundings. Here, intuitive drawings might reveal symbols of the everyday: chairs, windows, paths, doors. They are not random—they are metaphors for the structures of thought and the ways we perceive and move through life.
The Sand Beneath
Unlike a house with brick foundations, the hut rests on sand. Beneath the floorboards lies the shifting, buried material of the personal unconscious. When symbols like forgotten toys, broken shells, or half-buried figures appear in intuitive drawings, they echo what has been pushed down in memory. This sandy layer reminds us that what lies underneath is not fixed but shifting, waiting to be uncovered.
The Tide Below (the Collective Unconscious)
Go deeper still, and beneath the sand you reach the sea—the timeless ocean that touches every shore. This is Jung’s collective unconscious, the shared reservoir of archetypes and myths. When universal images arise in intuitive art—mothers and fathers, wise figures, animals, circles, journeys—they are not just personal, but part of a much larger story. The tide pulls these symbols to the surface, offering us connection to something beyond ourselves.
Why the Hut Heals
The beach hut is humble, but it is also a threshold. It is small enough to feel safe, yet porous enough to let in sea, sky, and sand. In the same way, intuitive drawing offers a safe container for vast inner material. It allows the psyche to whisper in symbols rather than overwhelm us in words.
Healing from the hut means trusting this process: letting the tide carry images up through the sand and into the room of consciousness, where they can be seen, understood, and integrated.
Each symbol in a drawing is a message from a different layer of the hut: the roof’s inspiration, the room’s awareness, the sand’s forgotten fragments, or the tide’s deep archetypes. Healing happens when we let these images speak, not by forcing interpretation, but by noticing, honoring, and dialoguing with them.
So next time you sit with a blank page, imagine yourself stepping into the hut. Listen for the creak of the roof, feel the sand beneath, and hear the tide pulling just beyond the door. Whatever symbols arrive are part of your healing journey, waiting to guide you home.