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EXPRESSIVE ARTS THERAPY/CREATIVE BODY MAPPING

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Expressive arts therapies include art, music, movement, play, writing, and drama interventions. It is an approach that assists the individual to self-regulate and modulate the body’s reactions to traumatic experiences. It can re-connect the safety of attachment and self-soothing resources. This eventually builds strength by using art to normalize and enhance resiliency (Malchiodi, 2011).  According to Kolk (2014), “Dance movement adds the element of rhythm, which can help people attune to their heartbeat and bodily rhythms, and then to others. Singing is like sending out restful waves and relaxes the nervous system. Singing has also been found to increase Oxycontin I think you mean oxytocin – Oxycontin is the opioid prescription medicine, also known as the love hormone because it makes people feel closer to one another.” (Kolk, 2014, p. 333)

 

“Expressive Arts Therapy uses an approach to help stabilize the body's responses. It identifies of the body's reactions to stressful events and memories through trauma-informed evaluation and sensory-based activities using expressive arts. Somebody reactions show through using somatic and sensory approaches to self-regulation. Expressive Arts can reinforce a sense of safety through reconnection with positive attachment and self-soothing, as well as build on strengths by using the arts to normalize and enhance resilience.” - Cathy Malchiodi

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Please see Expressive Arts Therapies for more information.

Creative Body Mapping

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Body Mapping is a creative therapeutic process that allows you to explore and creatively communicate the stories that live in your body. It involves painting a life-size representation of your body onto canvas and using images, symbols and words to map out places in you that are full of life, places that have pain, and places that hold hope and potential for the future. In the process of creating the body map you will discover new links between these places in you and gain a deeper understanding of your own power to create health within you and through your way of living in this world.

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Body Mapping is also a form of Pendulation.

 

Pendulation is a healing tool that is part of Somatic Experiencing therapy developed by Peter Levine.

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Definition of Pendulation: “is an exercise to develop a relationship between the “unresourced” and the “resourced” parts of our consciousness or inner universe. Between the lost and the found, the fragment and the whole.”

 

13 Benefits of Pendulation:
(Somatic Experiencing therapy)
1. Embodiment – Being In The Body
2. Becoming an Observer of Self
3. Making the Uncounscious Conscious
4. Learning that We are a Multitude
5. Self-Connection
6. Finding Goodness in Self and World
7. Learning to See Resources
8. Learning to Recieve Resources
9. Learning Self-regulation
10. Becoming Empowered to Manage Own Symptoms
11. Building a Flexible Nervous System
12. Stopping The Overwhelm
13. Bringing Safety and Security to our Inner Child

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For more information, contact Tiffany.

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