There’s something magic that tends to happen when you create with others - often, the positive effects are amplified, because you’re not just doing something creative, you’re also part of something creative.

So here’s your gentle encouragement to find a friend or several friends and spend some creative time with them. Read on for more ideas…

Colouring in is good for your brain. Here’s a few reasons why you might want to give it a try, particularly if you’re like me and find that other kinds of meditation are more frustrating than helpful!

So, why art therapy? I’m glad you asked (she says, pretending that you did). Here are a few ways that art therapy can be a very enriching thing to engage in.

There is a way for change to be a bit easier without us having to ‘effort harder’.

What if instead of trying to change our identity and our behaviour at the same time, we changed our external world so it’s easier to do the thing than it is to not do the thing?

Kind of like we’re the river – we’re going to run down the path of least resistance.

How do you change the river? Shift the banks that guide it.

What’s it like to work with me?

This is a question I get a bit, given all the different things I offer, so here’s an idea of the different things we might focus on together if you were a client of mine.

What’s the difference between art therapy and using art as therapy? Is there a difference?

Short answer - yes! There is some overlap, but they are different things.

Read on for more…

Here’s an art therapy exercise you might like to try - a body map.

A body map is good as a check in – it’s a way to pause and notice: where are you right now, how are you feeling, and what might you need?

This can be really useful, as can help you to notice patterns you might not be aware of otherwise.

Art can be healing, and can be used as a therapeutic tool - but when you’re just getting started (or when you’ve been doing the same old thing for a while) - how do you know what to draw?

This is the first in a series of posts offering some suggestions. We’ll begin with spontaneous drawing. These suggestions are written as if you’re going to draw in an art journal, but you can give these a go on a piece of loose paper, on a wall… whatever you have to hand.

Creativity is freedom.

When you write or draw or make things or sing - you can do anything you want.

Put red here. Blue there. Burn it and begin again.

Write some words, fit them into sentences, read them back and reorder them so they sound like poetry.

Creative freedom is absolute within whatever limits exist.

It’s a nice puzzle. You’re not free, because there are limits, but within these limits, you are completely free. 

Seasons never get stuck. Have you noticed?

They roll on, one into the next, in their own time. Sometimes winter will be long, or sometimes summer will be cooler than usual, but the seasons keep on moving through their cycle, one after the other.

The moon is the same - it’s never stuck. It cycles through its phases, one into the next, drawing the tides with it as it goes.

There’s something comforting about seasons and the way they keep on moving. Maybe we don’t like the season we’re in, but if we’re attuned to our internal seasons, we can have some idea of where we’re at, and of what might be coming next.

“Well, the thing about trauma is that people suppress a lot of their feelings, a lot of their experiences, and art by definition is the opposite of suppression, it’s expression. Instead of pushing it down, you get it out.

Now, when that’s done consciously, when there’s conscious expression, that’s where the healing takes place. And that conscious expression, that conscious pushing it out, can be verbal, it can be emotional, but it surely can be facilitated by artistic expression, which bypasses the intellect and comes right from the emotional, gut level…”

Into the woods…

In the woods, you can’t see the forest for the trees. Can’t see anything for the trees, and that’s kind of the point - when you journey into the woods, you’re leaving certainty at the door. Check in any inkling that you might know what happens next - you can collect that again when we return. If we return. If you want it back..

Making tiny altars is one way that I bring moments of space and sacredness into my ordinary hours. They're a way of intentionally connecting with the unknown. They’re also good way of bringing some kind of creative practice to your day without needing to know how to draw - art therapy can take many forms!

I build tiny altars usually for one of two reasons. To hold an intention, or to hold a meaning.

When you’re stepping into using art and creativity to heal or to grow or to manifest what you want in your life, how do you know where to start? “Make something” could mean literally ANYTHING (that’s part of its magic), so how do you choose where to focus?

One of the best ways to start exploring the healing and growing and manifesting potential of making and creativity is to hire an art therapist! We’re basically your guide on the path - it’s our job to create a way in for you.

Spontaneous gestural drawing is one of my favourite things to fill my art journal pages with.

That’s a lot of big words - what do they mean?

It's a way of making an image that encourages stepping away from our thinking mind and letting a different part of us choose colours and marks.

Instead of thinking about what colours, and what shapes, I like to let my eyes go a bit soft, a bit blurred, and instead FEEL the colours and shapes. What colour jumps out at me? Start with that. What shape feels nice to draw? Draw that.

I don’t have a 10 step process to anywhere.

My lack of answers sometimes dismays me.

I want to be able to tell you - here’s the path. Do these ten things, one after the other, and then you will arrive, and live happily ever after.

Alas…

Life, relationships, healing and growth don’t really work like that.

Know what they DO work with, though? Curiosity.

Trees (and the rest of nature) have no concept of progress. They grow because the conditions are right.

What if we did the same? Instead of trying to force progress, instead of frantically reading more self help books and beating ourselves up for not healing fast enough, what if we recognised that perhaps right now the conditions aren’t right for us to be where we’d like to be?

And instead of forcing ourselves, we started creating the right conditions for us to heal, grow and thrive?

Know what’s missing lately?

Silliness. Absurdity. The whimsical and strange.

Not as a way to bypass the weight of the world, not as a way to stick your head in the sand or your fingers in your ears singing ‘la la la I’m not listening’ (although - good strategies, sometimes necessary).

But as a way to help us stay human, and to resource us for the hard times.

If you're someone who is saving a nice journal (or two, or three) for ‘someday’ when you have a nice enough thing to use it for, this is your gentle encouragement to get out the nice journal, and use it. Not someday, (someday is not a real day) but today.

Use the nice journal.

When your feelings feel bigger than you, what do you do? There’s not enough room in you for all of your anger, there’s too many tears for you to ever cry them all, the heaviness pins you to the floor, life is overwhelming and confusing, the bigness of what you’re experiencing is too much and it’d be so nice to have somewhere else to put it.

That’s one of the things that art therapy can help with - it gives you somewhere else to put some of those things.