What Is Expressive Arts Therapy?
Since the beginning of time, individuals, families, and communities have used art in sacred rituals
and ceremonies to heal – to recover their wholeness and revive their culture and identity.
A way of expressing your life story…
That story includes all areas of your life: your struggles, triumphs, hopes, and dreams.
We’ll use any one of many art modalities – drawing, painting, poetry, storytelling, dance, music, or drama – along with talk therapy to examine concerns, express feelings, and solve problems.
Together, we will choose the modality that you are most comfortable with.
To start, we would bring your concern to the surface. Instead of exploring it through words and reasoning, we would begin to focus on where the concern lives in your body. Maybe a song or line from a movie or poem expresses closely how you experience the concern.
Sitting with a blank piece of drawing paper and oil pastels, I will ask you to focus on the sensations of concern and begin to describe these in a few words. Then, you choose a color or colors for the sensation. With continuous focus, I will guide you through drawing the sensations with simple lines, circles, and images that bring the energy you are holding outside onto the paper.
Or you may be experiencing yourself overwhelmed and not know what you are feeling. We would focus again on trying to locate the overwhelm in your body and find the sensations that inform you of the overwhelm.
What happens if this is not clear to you at the time?
I will ask you to tell me what it feels like to you – how you are in these demands that don’t stop coming at you. I will facilitate you gently imagining yourself in this scene and then bringing movement to the experience through your hands, arms, and torso as you are seated to help your body activate the feelings.
We will gently start to name the feelings and then bring colors and shapes to each on blank art paper. The images begin to take shape onto the paper from what is inside you. The drawing and use of your imagination will lead the process.
When you feel it is finished, you will have brought forward feelings from the inside, which can shift how you feel and experience yourself.
Often, when we are burdened with problems, we find they are complex and overwhelming to keep all the pieces together. Through art materials, we can bring the pieces out onto the paper and form to observe and analyze them with more perspective. Connections are visible. New ideas come forward to freshen your point of view. You gain new solutions that were previously hidden from your awareness.
It’s not about the art itself.
It’s about the ACTION of art!
It’s about the PROCESS you use to make it.
It’s about the CREATIVITY you employ as you bring your internal experience into the outer world.
In these symbols, images, and metaphors, we find insight into the deepest parts of ourselves. That artistic expression helps us connect to what lies within, uncovering important meanings that can guide us toward healing.
When you feel stalled, curious, or activated…
Expressive arts allow you to explore yourself and create a new path.
The colors, lines, and process of creating art bring insight, relief, and acceptance, helping you become whole.
Those insights will then permeate other areas of your life, like your work and relationships, creating a more satisfying and grounded way of life.
Curious? Telling yourself, this is not your thing?
Tired of being in the same cycle of feeling STUCK?
Those are signals to encourage you to give it a try!
I offer a free 30-minute consultation to give you a brief experience of using the expressive arts to help you get in touch with what is really going on with you and help you make the shifts and pivots you are looking for in your life.
Call me at (208) 843-3638 today!