What is
Expressive Arts
Expressive Arts use creative processes to help clients explore and express unconscious material that is often difficult to articulate in words.
These methods are innovative, participatory and practical: they provide a supportive space for participants to 'try on' and practise new behaviours, and this can be more effective than merely talking about change.
Creativity harnesses the imagination and a sense of play. This can help those who have limited choices in their life to use the safe space of the therapeutic environment and want to:
learn to tolerate the uncertainty of the unknown, and
become more comfortable to be able to improvise and
open up new possibilities in their lives.
For more about Expressive Arts and how it supports clients:
What is a Sensorimotor
Arts Therapist?
Sensorimotor therapy engages the senses and supports the client through a focus on non-verbal ways to express feelings and emotions to connect the mind and the body. Non-verbal somatic sensory processes are used to approach healing and support reduction of anxiety and distress through rhythmed movements, patterning, play, image making and sensory integration.
As humans we cannot talk ourselves into being calm, the body has to be part of the process, the body holds the stress and the narrative may be spoken but if the senses have not been able to process the impacts of traumas, which impacts mental health, ones ability to function in everyday settings, emotional regulation and capacity.
By using sensorimotor and creative art therapy, rather than traditional talk therapies such as counselling or psychology, the pressure of questioning is removed and the client is able to use physical body processes to begin to heal and recreate pathways that are not necessarily cognitively conscious solutions but implicit – These therapeutically supported haptic experiences are able to rewrite the procedural memory systems in the brain stem and midbrain. Such sensorimotor action patterns communicate directly with the autonomic nervous system, even though they are widely unconscious, they influence all higher cortical brain function.
Clay Field Therapy
The Clay Field uses the sense of touch to relate to and manipulate the resource of clay, water and a sponge, it is not a cognitive therapy, it uses sensori-motor impulses to support many different types of mental health and developmental issues, ADHD or ADD, ASD, anxiety, depression and trauma.
A form of Haptic Therapy
While the clay field demands a relationship, it also offers a neutral container to relearn relational life experiences e.g. moving all of the clay makes one feel strong and then be more confident. Or by creating a cave to safely fit one’s hands, feeling safe allows one to downregulate the nervous system instead of constantly being on the run.
This type of therapy is specific and intentional, a technique where the hands engage with the clay and the body responds to the inputs from sensory signals which generate motor signals (movement) which in turn lead to a new sensory input, the clay field has shown to assist children with ADHD or ADD in developing structure and coping mechanisms through body work
Haptic therapy process is not symptom-orientated, the specific problem or crisis do not become the focal point, but rather the sensorimotor discoveries lead to new answers and solutions. The solutions emerge from our universal, anthropological blueprint and are propelled forward by the bodies felt sense. Once these ‘new options’ have been discovered and become integrated in the body, they are remembered, similar to learning how to swim or ride a bike, these are not necessarily cognitively conscious solutions but implicitly learning.
Implicit memory is body memory - ‘implicit memory from conception onward… sets the baseline for nervous systems around regulation for the rest of our lives’