The Primary Shapes in Guided Drawing Series: The Arch
The Arch In its Essence.
I Hope you enjoyed our recent Instagram journey where i gave small insights into one of the Archetypes of Guided Drawing; The Arch.
Over the next few months, I will share insights about a couple of the main shapes that characterize this approach but for now we shall take a more in-depth insights of the Arch. The structure of Guided Drawing is based on a number of primary shapes, which all have a universal, archetypal quality. If drawn, preferably with closed eyes, and with both hands in rhythmic repetition on large enough (A2) sheets of paper (minimum size 50 x 70cm, or 23 x 31 inches), they will have a strong resonance in the body.
A structured starting-point for fearful clients can be to practice one or two of the primary shapes, as instructed by the therapist. These movements can be taken into repetition, until clients feel confident enough to start on their own. Gradually many shapes come into play to tell their story.
Another less directive beginning is to just flow with whatever the hands want to do in accordance with the client’s body-perception. In this case one will get a mixture of shapes that will want to be sorted and understood.
In both cases clients experience a number of different movements which appear on the paper as shapes. The therapist, in addition, has the option of introducing certain shapes as a non-verbal intervention.
Such interventions, drawn in repetition, will provoke a different felt sense, an option of change away from the helpless, overwhelmed, down-trodden, angry, terrified or dissociated state the client knows so well. This new felt sense may lead to reviewing old belief systems or simply practicing a different option to life…
The Largest Arch in the body are the shoulders.
Physiology: In the body the arch is most commonly associated with the shoulders. It might include the arms as arching down as an extension from the shoulders. The shoulders, and closely linked to them the neck and throat separate the head from the rest of the body. The throat, neck and shoulders allow impulses from the body to rise, when relaxed; and can block sensations to come up.
Much of our bodily sense of being in control is invested in the shoulders: the keeping cool, the ‘stiff upper lip’, the bracing to confront difficulties. “Keep your shoulders back!”, being upright and in charge manifests in our body posture primarily in the shoulders.
Ego-control is a shoulder issue and highly valued in the corporate world, where the show of emotions and sensitivities is considered inappropriate. The tie as business attire is the symbol for those who have to professionally cut off their body.
The shoulders and neck have the function to inhibit socially inappropriate desires through ‘bottling up’ emotions. The tension held in the shoulders, however, the weight of responsibility we carry, the fear of speaking up, all manifest as often painful contraction patterns in the shoulders and neck.
Children, whose parents are the source of trauma, are caught in the terrible conflict of needing to reach out for support, while fearing to get hurt. Their arms stretch out longing for love and simultaneously pull back in fear. Such conflict manifests in the shoulders and neck as lifelong patterns of tension causing migraines for example or can be the source of stutters and speech disorders. To a lesser extent the arch is associated with the diaphragm…
Archetype: In its positive dimension, the shape is experienced as a shield of protection. It marks a safe place. It can secure something precious or secret. It can be a greenhouse or a pregnancy. In both cases an emerging, growing part of the personality needs a safe, nourishing surrounding, to gain enough strength for survival in the outside world. In its resolved state the arch may become transparent like a rainbow, a well-known symbol for transformation, or may be pierced through and opened up by renewed self-confidence, pushing its way up into freedom and light…
“The original departure into the land of trials represented only the beginning of the long and really perilous path of initiatory conquests and moments of illumination. Dragons have now to be slain and surprising barriers passed – again, again, and again. Meanwhile there will be a multitude of preliminary victories, unretainable ecstasies, and momentary glimpses of the wonderful land.” (Campbell 1949/1993. Page 109)
The female fairy tale version of this struggle is not so much the physical wielding of swords and guns, but the mental sorting of an inhuman amount. In fairy tales this challenge presents itself as ‘sorting the seeds’, the jumbled details of ordinary life. Cinderella sorts peas and lentils, “The good into the pot. The bad into the crop.” (Grimm 1983, page 123) Psyche, in Amor and Psyche, sorts grains; the miller’s daughter in Rumpelstielzchen has to spin straw to gold. The intellectual ability to distinguish, to separate, to differentiate has to be sharpened first before the great fight for freedom can be accomplished. In all these situations the slaving task has been imposed by a negative mother figure….
Intervention: In a full course of drawings one often finds a lengthy series of pictures where everything happens beneath the arch. Some clients draw the arch first thing ‘to make sure’ and then express what they need to underneath it. The arch gives them the necessary secrecy and protection, may be from feelings of shame, as if the conscious mind must not see and judge what happens under the cover. For others, the arch is an integral part of their body experience of dominating shoulders or tension in the diaphragm. The latter clients group tends to be unaware they are drawing the arch as they struggle to have their own voice and make their own choices. The arch in this context represents the collective, circular forces of neighbours, family or peer pressures…
Excerpts taken from Cornelia Elbrecht’s 2018 book:
Healing Trauma with Guided Drawing
References:
Campbell, Joseph. 1949/1993. The hero with a thousand faces. London: Fontana Press.
Elbrecht, Cornelia. 2018. Healing trauma with guided drawing; a sensorimotor art therapy approach to bilateral body mapping. Berkeley, CA: North Atlantic Books.
—. 2006. The transformation journey. Todtmoos-Ruette: Johanna Nordlaender Verlag.
Grimm, Brothers. 1983. The Complete Grimm's Fairy Tales.
