Art Therapy

“Art therapy combines the creative process and psychotherapy, facilitating self-exploration and understanding. Using imagery, colour and shape as part of this creative therapeutic process, thoughts and feelings can be expressed that would otherwise be difficult to articulate.”
- Canadian Art Therapy Association

What is Art Therapy?

Art Therapy can take as many shapes and forms as your creative juices can imagine. Sometimes art IS therapy and other times we can work with art AS therapy. Sometimes we engage in art making during session, and other times we find ways to make a little more space for noticing the art in your own day to day life. One way or another, noticing, allowing, and expressing creative energy is essential to the health and wellbeing of humans. We have always had an innate primal instinct to create, build, innovate and emerge. Returning to this source energy is vital not only in the recovery portion of someone’s healing journey, but in finding their way back to who they truly want to be in this lifetime.

From a more scientific perspective, Art Therapy engages the whole brain to help access stuck thoughts and feelings, finding a path to bring them forward and process them through. Different modalities can help access different parts of the brain, as well as different types of emotion. Knowing what type of art to use, as well as when and how to use it, is part of advanced, effective Art Therapy approaches.

Where to find more info on Art Therapy:
You are welcome to bring any questions/concerns to your therapist. For further information and research, please see the Canadian Art Therapy Association website.