Reflecting on Art Therapy Exercises and Sandtray

Exploring body image

A Sandtray in therapy, is multidimensional experiential therapeutic tool. In a tray of dry and/or wet sand clients build worlds. Using miniature objects, natural objects, dolls, cars, shells, dishes, and others things that represent all the bits and pieces of things that make up our everyday world, they create scenes and pictures in the sand.  These scenes made by adults and children may reflect what home, work, the playground, the bedroom, a friends house or many other places may look and feel like. There is the unmistakable feeling of playing as a young child in beach sand, but also of being a giant in a world of miniatures.  We can shape new images, recreate old memories, express feelings and if we need to destroy what we just made. We can connect and reconnect with imagery through the diverse ways of playing within it. From this new perspective we can plan new futures and revisit past experiences.

Historically, it was Margaret Lowenfeld, a child psychoanalyst in London, U.K. who pioneered Sandplay in her therapeutic work with children during the 1920s. 

The therapist has an collection of miniatures for clients to work with. These maybe bridges, ships, people, twigs, rocks, flowers, cars, food, fantasy creatures, spiritual figures and many other things. They then make a scene with their collection in the sand maybe after a visualization, talking, doing a focusing session or a painting. A whole family could recreate the conflict that they had last night, a female client may express her confusion when her boyfriend cheats on her and a child may show what his new blended family looks and feels like.   

My new family

 Sometimes client may re-experience pre-verbal states, sometimes they can use the sand to make cognitive decisions and or to reconnect with a felt sense.

This is a very open ended, free, nonjudgmental way of working with figurines, objects, ideas and feelings. The therapist may be the witness to what happens for the client by holding space and being quiet, may ask questions and guide or be part of the creative process by also building. Client by communicate with the figures, write a story, poems, explain to the therapist what is happening or remain silent. Sometimes the client talks about her life issues. Clients may want to interpret what they have created or keep it in process and not talk about meaning. As with working in other mediums and with other techniques in art therapy, what happens is what needs to happen for each individual client.

My village

 Sandtray image: A child's village where an accident happened and a friend was killed.

Reflecting on Depression

Working with the sorrows of the psyche is similar to working with sorrows of the flesh. If you have a cut you don't immediately want to change it, make it into something else, you meet it where it is. You want to hear its story, find out what it needs to heal and tenderly give it what it needs. The cut starts to heal itself with your support. Depression is something that needs listening, gentle caring and holding. Childhood depression is a relatively new diagnosis.
 There is no longer room for darkness in childhood. Where do things that we as a society push away, gloss over, fix up? Instead of medication, we need to accept whatever is present. Acceptance of depression, shame, and or fear stops the mental or emotional resistance in the body and creates a space for re-alignment or resolution. Acceptance of feelings, behaviors, and /or thoughts frees the body to move to new feelings, behaviors, and thoughts. Non-acceptance sets up resistance or locks the body into rigidity. Art Therapy can be used to accept and work with what is, in a creative way. We can't push away the darkness without also losing the light. Rilke said"no feeling is final."

 

Reflecting on working with addictions

As art therapists, we bring our own paradigms to the work. When working with clients who struggle with addiction, I combine A.A., Harm Reduction, The Transtheoretical Model of Change, Mindfulness Practice, Somatic Experiencing and Focusing. The creative process itself is healing and when combined with other paradigms, it comes a powerful tool to help heal addictions. Making art can be a way to relax, change focus and mood. Clients can make art when they are feeling urges or feeling restless. Clients can review the art that they have made to see how far they have come in their recovery process.  Making art in therapy sessions can lead to a hobby as candle making, painting, or working with clay. It means that there is always something to pick up and focus on which helps the client move into a new lifestyle.  The client can feel a creative high instead of a chemical one. 

The appeal of using art therapy in recovery work is that art can bypass conscious defenses and enliven treatment. Creativity is open-ended and dynamic.  It is in direct contrast to a rigid, self-perpetuating addictive activity.  Creating also helps integrate right and left hemispheres of the brain, increases self-awareness and allows access to nonverbal communication.

Creating helps clients focus on their islands of competence. Getting into art can help people become more resilient.  Working on an art project can help provide physical and psychological stabilization.  There is no right or wrong way to create art, each person has their own individual expression, it is something that everyone can do and creating moves people towards health. Creating a piece of art gives people a feeling of accomplishment and pride. It can also give clients a sense of optimism, ownership and personal control to create something they feel good about.  Connecting with their innate creative process helps people reconnect with themselves and it enhances self-esteem.  Creating art can help foster hope. 

Reflecting on Making Mistakes

 We all make mistakes. We sometimes say the wrong thing, sometimes overreact, and sometimes move to fast into situations that are wrong for us. What we don’t remember is that everything is impermanent and temporary. Things are always changing and we can change with them. Often if I make a mistake, my mind fights hard to stay with that memory and go over and over it until I feel full of guilt. If I can forgive myself and let go then I can move away from the build up of aggression, anger, and feeling bad about myself. This can keep me in a habitual habit of blaming others, blaming myself, or seeing the world as unfair.

What I want to practice is seeing the impermanence of situations more and understanding how blaming others, is really discomfort with myself. What I want to practice is self-forgiveness when I make a mistake.  This is the way to creating peace within myself.

I make mistakes in creating art, talking to others, writing, and in my professional work. I am going to try to see future mistakes making as a way to practice compassion and forgiveness.

How do you feel about making mistakes?

Learning Focusing to help Free the Artist in You

Join us at the beautiful Vally Ridge Art Studio in Madison Wis. to learn Focusing in a peaceful healing setting. http://valleyridgeartstudio

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.

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. Transformation of energy involves the acknowledgment, and information of the inner movement of sensation. This energy and awareness is essential to reconnect what has been fragmented by life stress, injury or trauma.

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

SPECIAL NOTE:
This program begins the evening of Friday, September 10 from 6:30 to 9:30 PM, , and continues on Saturday and Sunday between 9:30 AM and 4:30 PM

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.

You will learn the skills of and receive credit for Level One Focusing by taking this workshop. You can continue to take Level 2 to 4 with Karen or another Focusing Teacher after this workshop.