What is Art Therapy?
Art Therapy is an integrative mental health and human services profession that enriches the lives of individuals, families, and communities through active art-making, creative process, applied psychological theory, and human experience within a psychotherapeutic relationship.
Expressive art therapy integrates all of the arts in a safe, non-judgmental setting to facilitate personal growth and healing. To use the arts expressively means going into our inner realms to discover feelings and to express them through visual art, movement, sound, writing or drama. This process fosters release, self-understanding, insight and awakens creativity and transpersonal states of consciousness.”
- Natalie Rogers, PhD, REAT
Art therapy has many benefits:
Benefits of Art therapy, facilitated by a professional art therapist:
assist in communicating untapped thoughts, feelings and emotions that are difficult to express in words,
effectively supports personal and relational treatment goals,
address community concerns and foster community connections,
improve cognitive and sensorimotor functions,
foster self-esteem and self-awareness,
cultivate emotional resilience,
promote personal insight: helping one move from a state of contraction to one of expansion,
enhance social skills,
reduce and resolve conflicts and distress,
deepen one’s creativity and internal resources,
and advance societal and ecological change.
