Expressive Arts Therapy & Coaching
The Expressive Arts use visual arts, movement/dance, theater, poetry, and music to tap into our imagination. Not only is art-making intrinsically therapeutic, it allows us to explore our past, our present, and our future directions in a multi-sensory way. Because each art form connects us to different sensory experiences, a different perspective or a new way of knowing can be discovered through the arts.
We move, we dance. We paint, we scuplt. We listen to and play music. We embody and act. We write and become poets. We dance the painting, paint the poem, and tell the sorrows and the joys of the symphony.
By working in multiple art media, we deepen and amplify the process of self-discovery and personal healing. The arts are a safe container that can hold both our light and our dark. They let us see not only what is lost, broken, and missing from our lives, but also what is strong, vitle, and working. Expressive Arts reconnect and help us to live meaningful, rich, and soulful lives.
Curious for a taste of expressive arts? Click here for an exercise you can try at home.
Healing has to be understood as the restoration of a person's imaginative capacity. Only the restoration of the imagination will heal our souls.
~ Stephen Levine
Just as a musician needs to keep the strings of the violin properly tuned in order to create resonating music, so our body, mind and spirit need to be tuned to keep the channels of our senses, emotions, and imagination fully open.
~ Daria Halprin
You are not here merely to make a living. You are here in order to enable the world to live more amply, with greater vision, with a finer spirit of hope and achievement. You are here to enrich the world, and you impoverish yourself if you forget that errand.
~ Woodrow Wilson
Movement has the capacity to take us to the home of the soul, the world for which we have no names. Movement reaches our deepest nature, and dance creatively expresses it. Through dance, we can gain new insights into the mystery of our inner lives. When brought forth from inside and forged by the desire to create personal change, dance has the profound power to heal the body, psyche and soul.
~ Anna Halprin
Art washes from the soul the dust of everyday life.
~ Picasso
