April / May 2006

THE FIVE PHILOSOPHICAL PRINCIPLES OF AN EXPRESSSIVE ARTS PRACTITIONER
—Patricia Thomson

Five principles guide my philosophy and approach to expressive arts therapy.

One: Everyone is profoundly creative.

During fourteen years of involvement in Expressive Arts and ten years teaching dance, I have seen that each person is unique, with a wealth of feelings within. As a facilitator my job is to support people keeping open access to their hearts. When given a supportive setting, in an atmosphere of respect and play, each participant is profoundly creative. Additionally, in a group setting, an important byproduct emerges: We each witness the rich world of each participant. This lessens feelings of isolation and the debilitating hierarchical standard of finding out who is the most talented in the group.

In the healing setting of Expressive Arts, I attempt to offer all participants an opening for authenticity, wholeness, and creativity. Julia Cameron, who stimulated a new interest in the arts as personal experience with her book The Artist’s Way, says that neurosis comes from withholding our creative expression. “My feeling is that an enormous amount of what we think of as neurosis is actually blocked creativity. When people begin living in their creativity, the ‘neurosis’ disappears. I am not certain that we are a neurotic culture; I think we are more a stifled culture, needing to express the self ” (Interview by Samuel Bercholz, founder/president of Shambhala Publications, with Julia Cameron, 2005).

There is a vitality, a life force, an energy, a quickening that is translated through you into action. And because there is only one of you in all time, this expression is unique, and if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and be lost. The world will not have it. It is not your business to determine how good it is, nor how valuable, nor how it compares to other expressions. It is your business to keep the channel open. You do not even have to believe in yourself or your work. You have to keep open and directly aware of the urges that activate you. Keep the channel open. — Martha Graham

Many people come to creative arts classes with a deep urge to express the creativity that they know is within them. They know that something is not right when that expression is held back, and they may struggle with a reticence derived from negative experiences and elitist attitudes in the arts.

When supported, people listen to and give voice to their natural urges, and those around them including the practitioner see a blossoming and fulfilling of what it is to be human. The outcome is wholeness, a dialogue between the inner and outer worlds, as well as the acceptance of one’s own creative expression as one’s birthright.

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Two: Movement-based creativity provides a rich access to the creative muse.

Movement opens our energy for expression in several ways. It gives us permission to be spontaneous with others, opens physical blocks, and connects the individual to mind, body, and heart.

Starting sessions with movement and completing art projects with movement offer insight into deeper meanings of the art works, and a connection to the place in oneself that combines insight with mental ability. In a college acting class, while walking off the stage after performing a scene, my inner voice spoke up loudly, saying, “I think through my body!” It is through my training in Expressive Arts that I now understand the significance of that awareness. When we are invited to explore another person’s art work by dancing to it, for example, we learn more about the lines, colors, and imagery and become more empathetic toward the artist. We know what we know from a combined sensory and analytical awareness. I engage movement in the work for the joy of being in the moment physically and to allow participants to “think” from a place that is not only from the brain, but from the whole gestalt of being— from the brain, heart, solar plexus, gut, and toes.

Three: Surprises from the unconscious appear that otherwise might not find an outlet.

The experience of my mentor in guided-imagery studies, Marielle Fuller, showed me the significance of our capacity for self-healing. When Marielle began working at the University of California Los Angeles at its Neuro-Psychiatric Institute (NPI), in 1963, her counseling was rooted in guided imagery. The staff psychiatrists were stunned to see that their patients were getting better. As they discovered that visual imagery allowed clients a bridge to new insights in ways that mental/verbal methods alone did not, they began weekly training sessions with Marielle in which she taught the doctors the use of guided imagery with their patients. These sessions continued throughout her thirty years at NPI until she retired. [An article on guided imagery by the author will appear in a forthcoming AHP Perspective.]

Four: My job in a therapeutic setting is to hold the image of wholeness for each participant.

Therapeutically, I hold the place where the individual has never been hurt, harmed, or endangered. I firmly believe in this and in the ability of each person’s capacity for self-renewal and their knowledge of what is best for them. This is a cornerstone of Person-Centered Expressive Therapy Institute teaching and of my philosophy. I find it gives respect and safety to clients and students.

I have a student who has been in a substance abuse program at her hospital. She came to the “Creativity Workshop” to address the challenges of her overwhelming feelings during recovery and to reaffirm her belief in herself. She stated that in her program the leaders lectured the clients continually about the negativity of drugs but offered nothing to replace them nor explanation of the reasons for using them. In the studio, she directed her energy into art projects and blossomed in many ways. She had not previously made art and now drinks in everything offered to her creative spirit. She also now paints with her two children, opening up new lines of communication with them.

The dynamic principle of fantasy is play, and it appears to be inconsistent with work. But without this playing with fantasy no creative work has ever yet come to birth. — Carl G. Jung

Early on she told me that she had been raped more than twenty years ago and had begun smoking marijuana to escape some of her feelings. She has two therapists, one in the hospital program, the other private. Both therapists encouraged her to express her anger and to beat pillows with a baton. She told them that she did not want to experience that anger, that she could take care of her feelings herself, and that she did not need to be pushed, which made her feel unsafe with them. I asked if she was afraid that the anger might not turn off once it was opened up, or afraid of what she might do. Her answer was yes. Just that morning one of her therapists told her she was wasting her time by going to art and meditation classes.

Symbols are not about things. They represent feelings. In Imagery people never get wrong advice. Never. No matter what. — Marielle Fuller

During the months I have known this lovely person, I have seen the inspiration she gives to others and how happy she is with the river of her creative spirit. I trust her totally to know her own timing. As we talked, she then shared her story with me. As tears rolled down her cheeks, she told me of the men who had raped her and of the shame she still feels. She said she feared feeling crazy because of the images that keep returning now that she is sober, and that she feels more isolated by the therapists’ insistence on a direction with which she is uncomfortable. We then spent an hour drawing with oil pastels.

The anger appeared on the paper, finding safe expression. She is releasing it bit by bit in her own time and in her own way. Art and safety are opening doors to her healing, replacing the old method of dealing with feelings through alcohol and marijuana with life-giving expression.

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Five: Images appear in both visual art and writing that seem to come from a connection to a larger, universal world of symbolism and time.

Carl G. Jung’s phrase, “The Collective Unconscious,” Teilhard de Chardin’s “Noosphere,” and Joseph Campbell’s writing about the archetypal hero’s journey—all have made modern thinkers aware of participating in a larger cosmology than our social environment. Perhaps expressive art will lead to a new spirituality for its way of seeing ourselves not only in our time, but also within all of time.

In a 1996 interview with Marielle Fuller, she stated: “The archetypes that live inside of us, the guides that live inside of us, have a life independent of us inside of us. They continue growing and moving. And they have a connection with the collective unconscious. That is all the ideas, all the knowledge, that has gone up in the atmosphere and is there to be brought down. And so they get answers from a different place. Often I’ll say, ‘My patient is not knowledgeable enough to come up with these fantastic things, things that they’ve never heard before.’ Their guides are in touch with a knowledge which is unavailable to the conscious mind.”

In expressive arts making, profound images and symbols appear that one does not expect. For example, in my work, an image of Mercury has appeared spontaneously many times. A colleague said that, in mythology, Mercury is a messenger between heaven and earth.

I am grateful for these creative and healing multimodal processes, and in particular for their inherent respect for participants. I am grateful for the expanding family of practitioners in this field and to the many people who have contributed to my professional growth. As an Expressive Arts practitioner, I offer a dedication to body-based creativity, grounded in guided imagery, engaging the whole person in a synergy of mind and body. Expressive art processes offer respect and tools for personal choice, while building a journey toward life’s fullness.

PATRISHA THOMSON is a certified expressive arts consultant and artist, with 30 years of experience that includes visual art, photography, public art, and movement. She is presently developing her fine art with projects that combine writing and painting. She has studied in Natalie Rogers’ Person-Centered Expressive Art Therapy Institute certification program. Her seminars integrate the arts in a bodymind approach. She has taught workshops in personal growth and creative expression and group staff development for more than eleven years. She can be reached at ptdesigns@yahoo.com, www.ptdesigns. org, ahpweb.org

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MANAGING LEAPS INCONSCIOUSNESS
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