Healing Modalities
About Expressive Arts Therapies.
The expressive arts are a multi-modal approach that combines the visual arts, movement, drama, music, writing and other creative processes to foster deep personal growth and help us gain access to our inner resources for healing, clarity, illumination and creativity.
Expressive arts therapy nurtures deep personal growth and transformation. In expressive arts therapy you use multiple senses to explore your inner and outer world through the experience and creation of different art forms. Because art comes from a deep emotional place inside you, creative endeavors enable you to undergo a profound process of self-discovery and understanding. Creativity becomes the pathway to the expression of inner feelings, leading to a process of self-discovery and understanding. In other words, your creative process becomes your road to emotional health.
The expressive arts teach people how to heal themselves instead of thinking that someone else can heal them. We heal through our creativity, through our interactions with our world, through being present, curious, and compassionate. The arts lend themselves to cultivating these qualities, which are the conditions for healing.
Expressive Arts Include:
“I had found a creative path that actually worked for me just the way I was. I didn’t have to fit into it. I didn’t have to change myself. I learned that all I had to do was show up and trust the process. This was not always easy but through the expressive arts I found ways to heal those wounded parts of myself, enlighten those parts that had gone dim, and let go of things that no longer served me.
I believe we all have an innate inner wisdom that is just waiting to be tapped into. If we listen to our body, our own being, we will find that we just might have had the answers all along. We just weren’t ready to hear them. The expressive arts are a powerful process that has the power to promote wellness, healing, transformation, personal and professional growth.”
Expressive arts therapy nurtures deep personal growth and transformation. In expressive arts therapy you use multiple senses to explore your inner and outer world through the experience and creation of different art forms. Because art comes from a deep emotional place inside you, creative endeavors enable you to undergo a profound process of self-discovery and understanding. Creativity becomes the pathway to the expression of inner feelings, leading to a process of self-discovery and understanding. In other words, your creative process becomes your road to emotional health.
The expressive arts teach people how to heal themselves instead of thinking that someone else can heal them. We heal through our creativity, through our interactions with our world, through being present, curious, and compassionate. The arts lend themselves to cultivating these qualities, which are the conditions for healing.
Expressive Arts Include:
- Visual Art (all media)
- Movement/Dance/Yoga
- Drama/Enactment/Presentation
- Music (Receptive and Active with Instruments)
- Writing
- Poetry
- Guided Meditation/Visualization
- Ceremony/Ritual
- Nature
- Storytelling
“I had found a creative path that actually worked for me just the way I was. I didn’t have to fit into it. I didn’t have to change myself. I learned that all I had to do was show up and trust the process. This was not always easy but through the expressive arts I found ways to heal those wounded parts of myself, enlighten those parts that had gone dim, and let go of things that no longer served me.
I believe we all have an innate inner wisdom that is just waiting to be tapped into. If we listen to our body, our own being, we will find that we just might have had the answers all along. We just weren’t ready to hear them. The expressive arts are a powerful process that has the power to promote wellness, healing, transformation, personal and professional growth.”
About EMDR.
Trauma can be defined as extreme stress—any past experience that you perceive as negative and that negatively affects your present life. EMDR is a therapy that helps people find relief from their pain and suffering caused by traumatic events that have hurt them and left them in a state of distress. The goal of this therapy is to empower people to feel, think, and behave in new and healthier ways.
How Does it Work?
Any event that has had a lasting negative effect on the self or psyche is, by its nature, “traumatic.” When confronted with a traumatic event, the brain is overwhelmed with information in the form of images, emotions, physical sensations, smells, and sounds. The stress causes a neuro-chemical cascade that can disrupt the normal processing of information by compromising the hippocampus and disrupting the connection between the hippocampus and the amygdala. When that happens, what’s remembered remains in the amygdala is fragments of memory in their original distressing – “pulled apart” – state. Visual images are stored in the visual cortex, sounds in the auditory association area of the temporal lobe, smells in the olfactory cortex, thoughts in the prefrontal cortex, emotions in the amygdala, and so forth. These are spread out memories are linked through memory networks which are memories that have been linked in the brain through association.
The networks or like a spiderweb with almost infinite strands and connections. When something happens that affects your body and mind, it’s as if something has touched the web. Often, this will remind you of something else, consciously, subliminally, or unconsciously. This will link the present experience by association to previous memories. When a person is traumatized, thoughts, memories, images, emotions, and sensations related to the traumatic event are linked together and stored through these associations. However because the damaged hippocampus has failed to categorize them, they remain as memory fragments in the amygdala in their original distressing state.
If you haven’t been able to integrate a traumatic event into your life, then one or more of these memory fragments can be triggered at any time, and apparently for no reason. You hear a noise and break out in an anxious wet. Why, you wonder? The noise was no big thing. Some triggers are even subliminal. Whenever something happens that you are unable to process and you are left feeling in distress, with symptoms that just won’t go away, that’s considered a trauma response. EMDR trauma work is designed to help you process a traumatic memory that for some reason did not get processed at the time it was experienced. This lack of processing could have happened for many reasons.
Perhaps the event was too overwhelming and you didn’t know how to process it. Maybe there were too many things going on in your life and you couldn’t handle one more thing. Or perhaps you were too young and might not have had enough support in your life to help you sort out the situation. Whatever the reason, because you were unable to process this event, it got locked in your brain, with all the disturbing emotions and sensations that you originally experienced, unchanged. When something traumatic interrupts the natural progression of processing a memory, then memories of a traumatic event can get locked in their own neural network. Physical sensations, emotions, and thoughts associated with the traumatic event get locked up in a way that, without treatment, may lead to increasingly dysfunctional behavior or disturbing symptoms. When traumatic memories have been cleared and everything in your system is working efficiently, the brain can take in information, sort it accurately, and process it into long-term memory. You will still remember the traumatic event and will have a story to tell about it. But you will be able to remember the story without the emotional charge that was so disturbing before EMDR.
How Does it Work?
Any event that has had a lasting negative effect on the self or psyche is, by its nature, “traumatic.” When confronted with a traumatic event, the brain is overwhelmed with information in the form of images, emotions, physical sensations, smells, and sounds. The stress causes a neuro-chemical cascade that can disrupt the normal processing of information by compromising the hippocampus and disrupting the connection between the hippocampus and the amygdala. When that happens, what’s remembered remains in the amygdala is fragments of memory in their original distressing – “pulled apart” – state. Visual images are stored in the visual cortex, sounds in the auditory association area of the temporal lobe, smells in the olfactory cortex, thoughts in the prefrontal cortex, emotions in the amygdala, and so forth. These are spread out memories are linked through memory networks which are memories that have been linked in the brain through association.
The networks or like a spiderweb with almost infinite strands and connections. When something happens that affects your body and mind, it’s as if something has touched the web. Often, this will remind you of something else, consciously, subliminally, or unconsciously. This will link the present experience by association to previous memories. When a person is traumatized, thoughts, memories, images, emotions, and sensations related to the traumatic event are linked together and stored through these associations. However because the damaged hippocampus has failed to categorize them, they remain as memory fragments in the amygdala in their original distressing state.
If you haven’t been able to integrate a traumatic event into your life, then one or more of these memory fragments can be triggered at any time, and apparently for no reason. You hear a noise and break out in an anxious wet. Why, you wonder? The noise was no big thing. Some triggers are even subliminal. Whenever something happens that you are unable to process and you are left feeling in distress, with symptoms that just won’t go away, that’s considered a trauma response. EMDR trauma work is designed to help you process a traumatic memory that for some reason did not get processed at the time it was experienced. This lack of processing could have happened for many reasons.
Perhaps the event was too overwhelming and you didn’t know how to process it. Maybe there were too many things going on in your life and you couldn’t handle one more thing. Or perhaps you were too young and might not have had enough support in your life to help you sort out the situation. Whatever the reason, because you were unable to process this event, it got locked in your brain, with all the disturbing emotions and sensations that you originally experienced, unchanged. When something traumatic interrupts the natural progression of processing a memory, then memories of a traumatic event can get locked in their own neural network. Physical sensations, emotions, and thoughts associated with the traumatic event get locked up in a way that, without treatment, may lead to increasingly dysfunctional behavior or disturbing symptoms. When traumatic memories have been cleared and everything in your system is working efficiently, the brain can take in information, sort it accurately, and process it into long-term memory. You will still remember the traumatic event and will have a story to tell about it. But you will be able to remember the story without the emotional charge that was so disturbing before EMDR.
About Restorative Partner Yoga.
Feel more at home in your body. Restorative Partner Yoga (RPY) is a moving meditation one on one yoga practice where you get moved through a sequence of assisted yoga stretches. As a receiver of RPY, you lie on a mat while Kalli moves your body through yoga stretching, with work on marma points and sen lines from the Thai Yoga tradition. RPY helps you connect to you and find a doshic balance in your system. It opens you up in a different expanded way to the wisdom of yoga which moves through you and helps you find balance, inner connection, and a sense of wholeness.
Becoming an Expressive Arts Therapist
I receive many emails with questions about becoming an expressive arts therapist and don’t have time to meet with or answer all the requests for information. So this section is written for those of you interested in this path as a career.
My path to becoming an expressive arts therapist was not traditional. I graduated with a bachelor’s degree in elementary education and taught elementary school for seven years before transitioning into the world of psychology. While teaching I pursued a masters degree in marriage, family, and human development in which I focused my studies on the social and emotional development of elementary school aged children. A few years later I learned about expressive arts therapy and felt intrigued. I contacted Lesley University and learned about their programs in art therapy, music therapy, dance movement therapy, drama therapy, and expressive arts therapies (a combination of all the arts in therapy). I loved all the arts and couldn’t choose just one and so applied for the expressive arts therapies masters level program at Lesley University.
The next summer I began a distance program in which, for three years, I would take classes on the Lesley University campus in Cambridge, MA during the summers and continue teaching at my regular job at home during the school year. After my first summer immersed in the summer intensive expressive arts program at Lesley I was hooked. I quit my teaching career of seven years and moved to Boston to pursue my degree in expressive arts therapies and mental health counseling full time. Initially I was enrolled in their 45 credit program which would train me to be an expressive arts therapist. I transitioned to the 60 credit program which would also allow me to be licensed as a mental health counselor. Having my mental health counseling license (LMHC/CMHC) in addition to being trained as an expressive arts therapist has been very helpful in my career path.
If you are interested in pursuing this path and need information about where you can enroll in an expressive arts program, see the IEATA resources website:
My path to becoming an expressive arts therapist was not traditional. I graduated with a bachelor’s degree in elementary education and taught elementary school for seven years before transitioning into the world of psychology. While teaching I pursued a masters degree in marriage, family, and human development in which I focused my studies on the social and emotional development of elementary school aged children. A few years later I learned about expressive arts therapy and felt intrigued. I contacted Lesley University and learned about their programs in art therapy, music therapy, dance movement therapy, drama therapy, and expressive arts therapies (a combination of all the arts in therapy). I loved all the arts and couldn’t choose just one and so applied for the expressive arts therapies masters level program at Lesley University.
The next summer I began a distance program in which, for three years, I would take classes on the Lesley University campus in Cambridge, MA during the summers and continue teaching at my regular job at home during the school year. After my first summer immersed in the summer intensive expressive arts program at Lesley I was hooked. I quit my teaching career of seven years and moved to Boston to pursue my degree in expressive arts therapies and mental health counseling full time. Initially I was enrolled in their 45 credit program which would train me to be an expressive arts therapist. I transitioned to the 60 credit program which would also allow me to be licensed as a mental health counselor. Having my mental health counseling license (LMHC/CMHC) in addition to being trained as an expressive arts therapist has been very helpful in my career path.
If you are interested in pursuing this path and need information about where you can enroll in an expressive arts program, see the IEATA resources website: