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Art Therapy

Creative exploration can be a powerful tool for self-discovery and healing.

What is Art Therapy? 

Art Therapy combines visual art and psychotherapy in a creative process using the created image as a foundation for self-exploration and understanding. Thoughts and feelings often reach expression in images rather than in words. Through the use of art therapy, feelings and inner conflicts can be projected into visual form. In the creative act, conflict is re-experienced, resolved

and integrated (BCATA).

Sometimes there are no words to describe an experience or feeling. We can use creative expression like modality, colour, shape, size, texture, and movement - paired with embodiment, and mindfulness as a way of processing and exploring in a new way beyond the limits of traditional talk therapy.

"Through integrative methods, art therapy engages the mind, body, and spirit in ways that are distinct from verbal articulation alone.

Kinaesthetic, sensory, perceptual, and symbolic opportunities invite alternative modes of receptive and expressive communication, which can circumvent the limitations of language.

Visual and symbolic expression gives voice to experience, and empowers individual, communal, and societal transformation." (AATA)

  Using creativity for healing is not new. 

"For thousands of years, humans have been turning to the healing rhythms and synchrony of the arts to confront and resolve distress. After all, aliveness is not an experience we think or talk ourselves into; it’s state of being we enter when we feel things like joy, compassion, and inspiration, a state the expressive arts have helped people experience since the very dawn of civilization." (Malchiodi, 2019)

"Creativity is the natural order of life. Life is energy: Pure creative energy."

- Julia Cameron, author of The Artist's Way.

Notice your inner reaction to the idea of being creative.

For many of us, there is a resistance or fear that arises in relation to art-making and creative expression. We become adults and think "creativity is just for kids" or "art is just for artists." My belief is that creativity is innate to all of us and is our true nature. By returning to our creativity, we gain access to a part of ourself that has been forgotten.

 

 

Art Therapy/Creative Exploration sessions can support you in:

  • Working through creative blocks

  • Exploring inner conflict

  • Processing emotions

  • Fostering connection to your inner child

  • Inner critic work

  • Perfectionism

  • Feeling disconnected & returning to connection with Self

  • Self-esteem & self-worth

  • Depression

  • Anxiety

  • Relationship struggles

  • Moving through stuck energy

  • Stress & Burnout

  • Childhood trauma

  • And more

And..Don't worry.. Your final product will not be graded, analyzed or used for diagnosis. Art therapy focuses on the process of creating, not the final product. These sessions can be beneficial to anyone, regardless of age or previous art experience.

Click here for how to prepare for your session

“In many shamanic societies, if you came to a medicine person complaining of being disheartened, dispirited, or depressed, they would ask one of four questions: "When did you stop dancing? When did you stop singing? When did you stop being enchanted by stories? When did you stop being comforted by the sweet territory of silence?”

 
― Gabrielle Roth

You are welcome here!

Located in Vancouver, BC.
Services offered virtually.

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I acknowledge that I am a settler living & working on the stolen territories of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), and Sel̓íl̓witulh (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations.

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