We recently ran a pilot weekend where eight people were given the opportunity to take part in Art Therapy. We had an experienced therapist/psychotherapist who lead the weekend and guided us through the process of using colour to express our feelings. Being artistic was not necessary as it was about expressing ourselves and not about producing works of art!
We had a discussion about confidentiality and the importance of feeling safe and comfortable knowing that we could share our thoughts and feelings without being judged. We did a short relaxation exercise to help us to clear our minds and feel comfortable. We were then asked to paint a picture of before the traumatic event. That painting session only took about 10 minutes and we all felt it was too short but Sara our therapist was strict with us and insisted that we stop at that point. We didn’t realise it at that time but it was important to keep this session short so that no one got into heavy or traumatic feelings.
Throughout the weekend we did various exercises using painting and then went into pairs to talk about what we had produced and how we were feeling. As the weekend progressed we became aware of the powerful use of painting in helping us to deal with our trauma. We each painted a mandala (from the Sanskrit word for circle) that was special and meaningful to us. It was so interesting to see everyone’s mandala and to have us explore for ourselves the significance of what came up for us in the painting..
As the weekend came to a close I think we were all aware that we had shared a very special time with each other and that we had got a lot of help and support from Sara and from each other. We will be running more of these weekend in the future so if you are interested then please contact the office and tell Heather you would like to go on one of them.
