ART THERAPY REFLECTIONS

Saturday, January 17, 2009

Friday, January 16, 2009

"What is split off, not felt, remains the same. When it is felt, it changes. Most people don't know this! They think that by not permitting the feeling of their negative ways they make themselves good. On the contrary, that keeps these negatives static, the same from year to year. A few moments of feeling it in your body allows it to change. If there is in you something bad, sick, or unsound, let it inwardly be and breathe. That's the only way it can evolve and change into the form it needs."
-Eugene T. Gendlin, in Let Your Body Interpret Your Dreams

Saturday, December 6, 2008

Playing with Polairds

Sunday, November 30, 2008

Winter Salon Show

Another piece of mine from the Winter Salon Art Show.

Monday, November 24, 2008

Noel 2008

I hope that you can join Art by 9 at our gallery this Friday for the opening of our Christmas show and sale Noël 2008. There will be great paintings, good food and fine friends.

The Art by 9 is a pan-Canadian artist collective originating in Regina, with members in Ontario, Manitoba, Saskatchewan and British Columbia. As a group, we have been active on the

visual arts scene for over 15 years, and we have had our own gallery for the last three years.

If you are unable to attend Friday, you can always pop by Saturday or Sunday afternoon (this weekend only) or 9 am- 5 pm during the business week.

You are welcome to bring a friend. We look forward to seeing you!

I hope you are enjoying a sampling of my work that will be in the show!

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Karen Wallace M.E.d. BCATR is an Art Therapist, artist, Focusing Trainer, and art instructor living and working in Regina SK. Canada. She has a private practice with adults and children and specializes in depression, trauma and life transition. She facilitates art therapy, creativity and art groups. She teaches internationally. She shows her mixed media art in galleries in Regina, Victoria B.C. and the Gulf Islands. Karen is known for her enthusiastic and dynamic teaching style. Her workshops are rich, playful and creative. Karen’s art work is a reflection of her art therapy work. She expresses her love of nature, her practice of Buddhism and her family in her art. Web site: www.islandnet.com/~kwallace

What is Art Therapy?

Art therapy is typically referred for situations in which words are difficult (ex: grief and loss), if there is a mind-body relationship to the nature of a person's trauma (ex: sexual abuse, PTSD), or for clients who are inept with words (ex: children, persons with a communication disability). Art therapy is also often sought out by clients who seek a more tangibly productive therapy (literally “rolling up your sleeves”), enjoy expressing themselves visually (artists, architects, crafters, etc.), or for whom talk therapy has not achieved the desired outcome and want to try something new. Art therapy is generally described as a highly illuminating, enjoyable, and unique experience.

In my work I see individual clients who are exploring issues such as depression, anxiety, stress, life transitions, abuse and trauma. I use psycho-education, cognitive behavior techniques, solution-oriented and expressive therapies.

I draw on a wide variety of theories to create an integrative approach. I am client centered and use techniques and theories which 'fit' the client. I am a practicing artist and combine theories in a very creative way in my practice to facilitate clients' journeys through change.

Some of the tools I use in my work are sand tray, all forms of art making, life mapping, goal setting, relaxation techniques, guided visualizations, journal and creative writing, movement, somatic experiencing techniques, stress reduction techniques, reframing, EMDR, Focusing, mindfulness meditation techniques and play therapy.

Focusing Oriented Expressive Therapy

Focusing Oriented Expressive Therapy
Do you want to learn how to:
· Be a better listener to yourself?
· Make clear choices?

· Be calm and compassionate to yourself?
· Support yourself through change?
· Feel relaxed and stress free?

Focusing helps you learn how to be Present and listen to yourself so that you can move ahead in your life in an empowered and safe way. Focusing brings you closer to wholeness and allows you to access your inner wisdom. This helps you move in the direction of your potential. It can help you move beyond blocks and get in touch with your goals. Focusing is a gentle and powerful way to develop a deep interpersonal healing relationship with yourself. Awareness of sensations in the body can be blocked through habits of dissociation and repression. This is because the sensation maybe uncomfortable or painful, and we are not trained to focus on this inner knowing and awareness of the body.

Learning Focusing to Help Free the Artist in You

Do you want to learn how to:
· Be a better listener to yourself?
· Make clear choices?

· Be calm and compassionate to yourself?
· Support yourself through change?
· Feel relaxed and less stressful?

Focusing helps you learn how to be Present and listen to yourself so that you can move ahead in your life in an empowered and safe way. Focusing brings you closer to wholeness and allows you to access your inner wisdom. This helps you move in the direction of your potential. It can help you move beyond blocks and get in touch with your goals. Focusing is a gentle and powerful way to develop a deep interpersonal healing relationship with yourself.
In this workshop we will work with:
· artist's blocks
· money issues that we may have around our art
· time issues that we may have for our art making
· why we can’t get into the studio

What is Focusing?
Focusing is "direct access to bodily knowing." It is a practice that takes a person towards a state of conscious perception that goes far beyond knowing something on a mere conceptual level.

As with Somatic Experiencing, Focusing refers to this bodily knowing as a felt sense. As the Focusing Institute's website explains, "You can sense your living body directly under your thoughts and memories and under your familiar feelings." Focusing happens at a deeper level than your feelings. Under them you can discover a physically sensed murky zone which is concretely there. This is a source from which new steps emerge. This murky zone "opens" as you learn to stay with it longer. Being with it increases the ability to sense feelings behind words or images, even when those are not yet formed. Eventually, you can learn how to let a deeper bodily felt sense come in relation to any problem or situation. It is a subtle process, hard to define in words. Focusing was developed by the philosopher Eugene Gendlin in the late 1960s and early 70s, while he was working with the famed psychologist Carl Rogers.

ART THERAPY REFLECTIONS

Saturday, January 17, 2009

Trust the Process

Friday, January 16, 2009

Interpersonal Relationship

Saturday, December 6, 2008

Playing with Polairds

Sunday, November 30, 2008

Winter Salon Show

Monday, November 24, 2008

Noel 2008

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