What is art and how is it therapeutic? I had the privilege of meeting up with one of my mentors in the therapy field the other week and she has quite an interesting approach to therapy.
When appropriate she encourages her clients to express themselves through photography. As they say, “A picture is worth a thousand words” so she asks them to take pictures of themselves, nature, or whatever is around them that best captures their emotional state.
As a former journalist, I have found tremendous healing, insight, and growth when I journal, write, blog, or express myself through words. I also try to stretch my clients with their creativity in this manner.
Within the past few years, I’ve had the privilege of working with a college student who shared her poetry in our sessions. Her poems were dynamic, vivid, and captured the emotional tempest that surrounded her.
Buoyed by creativity, I started dabbling in this forum just to see what would happen. I was quite surprised with the results. I was astonished to see how my writing and point came across in a powerful way that my blogs could not convey.
All this is to say, I am thrilled to be a proponent of creativity and the arts as a therapeutic tool. Be it writing, poetry, dance, photography, painting, or any other artistic form of expression, let’s be open to what we can learn from our clients.
True to this inspiration, I’ve published a collection of poems that I’ve cultivated over the past two years which touch on themes of Asian-American experiences, Christianity, cultural shame, and addictions.
For more information you can go to this site:
http://www.blurb.com/b/5662886-spoken-word-poetry