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Uniqueness Expressive Arts Therapy There is an old Chinese saying, "A picture is work a thousand words." That is what expressive therapy is about. Words certainly are important to the every day functioning of human beings. However, to believe they are what everything is all about is limiting to us. In our Western culture, especially the American culture, we tend to rely too heavily on words to communicate as well as to understand ourselves and the world around us. The reality is that words are boxes and boxes confine and contain things. Reality and experience is much more sweeping and colorful than the confines of these little packages of concepts that are contained in words. But, when we expand that to creative expression, the depth and breadth of what we are trying to understand and communicate expands enormously. The experience moves from black and white into technicolor. Furthermore, for many of us what we are trying to say, the experience, the feelings to be articulated just don't fit into the confines of words. They are either too big, there are no words to express them or words just dry them out. This is where expressive therapy steps in to add the dimension in the session that verbal work cannot accomplish. At the Center, we are able to go beyond the words in helping the individual work through the wounds and accompanying pain of the past. It brings to the work an expansiveness that the person can choose from when the use of words just doesn't seem to be working. Of course no one has to do the expressive work, but the difference is that it is available whenever it might be needed. For more in depth expressive work, there is the fully equipped art studio with an array of art materials for drawing, painting or sculpting. Expressive work, however, is not limited to just art materials. We are skilled at the Center in helping people move their bodies as a way of expressing what will not fit into words. We help people make the sounds that have been buried ‘forever' as a way of being freed from the past. We encourage journaling, the writing of poetry, story telling, doing mini dramas as further tools in the expressive modality. In addition to these modes in which the individual is the active creator, we also believe it can be helpful and enriching to use the art of others to help articulate and experience what we need to in the healing process. In that context, we encourage the viewing of films, plays, works of art, music and poetry by other artists. Back To Uniqueness |
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