Whole Health

As founder and program director of the Humboldt Veterans’ Clay Group, Joe Fox shows fellow Veterans how working with clay can help them mold their pain and trauma into hope and healing.

Struggling with severe chronic pain, opiates, depression, and suicidal ideation, Air Force Veteran Joe Fox was looking for a way out that didn’t include more pills. Upon returning to school decades after his service, he found his way to a ceramics lab where he discovered pottery, mindfulness, community, and hope.

Body, mind, and spirit work together to create Whole Health

For years Fox has suffered with severe pain from spine-related problems, including pain and weakness in the back, legs, and arms and difficulty walking. Trauma compounds his physical pain.

"Significant emotional pain and traumatic pain — it makes the physical pain even worse, like unbearable,” Fox explained.

Worsening to the point where he could not work and movement was difficult, opiates were the first-line treatment. “It worked, I guess, but it caused so many problems with dependencies,” he noted

Not wanting to live on pain medication and the side effects, Fox began exploring other options which led him tocognitive behavioral therapy, meditation, and a seven-year higher education journey. In the hope of helping others with similar experiences, he initially enrolled in an Addiction Studies program at College of the Redwoods. His coursework eventually led him to behavioral sciences, a discipline for which he received an associate’s degree. He then transferred to Cal Poly Humboldt to pursue a Bachelor of Arts in Social Work. It was there that he discovered the ceramics lab.

"When you touch the clay, or when you get on the [pottery] wheel, the world shuts off, and it’s this Zen moment to where you’re there, you and the clay, and there's nothing else, … there's a flow state that's hard to explain in words. … That’s where the healing comes from,” Fox explained.

Guiding other Veterans on the path

Having discovered pottery as his new prescription, Fox wanted to help others who were dealing with pain and trauma, so he started the Humboldt Veterans’ Clay Sessions in partnership with Whole Health at the San Francisco VA Healthcare System and Ink People Center for the Arts in Eureka, California. As many as 20 Veterans participate in the classes each semester at the Eureka campus of College of the Redwoods.

The Humboldt Veterans’ Clay Group is founded on the idea that community and clay combine to foster wellness and resilience. The focus is the proven capacity of working with clay to increase resilience, improve emotional health, and psychological well-being.

Transforming the pain and creating community

The process of working with clay not only distracts people from their pain but also helps them process the pain itself, contemplating the pain while they are working, even crying during the process. In a way, people can transfer their pain to the clay, Fox said. 

Potters create a natural community, usually sharing communal workspaces and teaming up to help each other with their work and in maintaining a wood-fired kiln.

“And it's not just working with clay, and it's not just community … it's all these things together. We have a common identity and a common purpose, and we're unlocking our creativity and expressing ourselves,” Fox said. 

For more information on Veterans’ Clay Sessions, contact veteransclay@inkpeople.org. Many VA medical centers collaborate through community partnerships to offer art, music, recreation, and other activities that support Whole Health. To find out about Whole Health offerings in your area, contact your local VA facility.