A Visual Meditation: The Higher Consciousness

One of the core tools in my practice is a visualisation exercise I learnt in the nineteen seventies from Jungian analyst Phyllis Krystal (Krystal 1995). It is a visual prayer that can communicate a profound sense of safety flowing from a spiritual core that remains undefined or as you like to imagine it. I apply the exercise consistently as a visual aide to picture the client-therapist relationship and how both relate to what she called the ‘Higher Consciousness’. I introduce it to almost all groups I facilitate, and frequently meditate like this on my own.

Somatic Experiencing: Emotional First Aid for Traumatic Times

When traumatic events happen, they challenge our sense of safety and predictability and this may trigger strong physical and emotional reactions. These reactions are normal. Emotional First Aid gives you information on how to help yourself, your family and friends in response to witnessing, hearing or living through the traumatic events.

ANZACATA Guidelines for Art Therapists during COVID-19

e good hygiene practices, washing your hands often with soap and water for at least 20 seconds especially before and after each client.
Ask clients to do likewise and use the sign provided by Australian Physiotherapists on entry to your practice. Some members are emailing clients before visits to remind them of hygiene practices (and to make a new appointment if unwell).
Practice ‘social distancing’, but perhaps explain the need for it and/or call it ‘physical distance’ (1.5 metres)….

Sensorimotor Art Therapies

This professional development Art Therapy training is designed for mental health professional who wish to integrate a trauma-informed, healing-centred, bottom-up approach into their practice. Including Guided Drawing, Clay Field Therapy, Collage and Totem Making. Facilitated by Cornelia Elbrecht and The Institute for Sensorimotor Art Therapy and School for Initiatic Art.

The Primary Shapes in Guided Drawing: The Lemniscate

Lemniscate is the term for a horizontal figure eight. Of all the primary shapes this is the least threatening. It is without exception experienced as positive rhythmic flow without any threat of overwhelm.

The Primary Shapes in Guided Drawing Series: The Bowl

The largest bowl we experience in our body is the pelvis, and while there are other places in the body that can be drawn as a bowl such as the diaphragm or the back of the head, the most common association with this shape is the pelvic floor. The pelvic bowl is the space in which we settle down to relax or which we dissociate, when we are ‘upset’. It is where our spine is anchored

Bilateral Body Movements

At the last weekend workshop we made “gymnast's sticks” from driftwood and branches we found in nature. Cut them to size to make handles, then decorated them with pieces of dyed cheese cloth, other fabric, and ribbons. We painted the materials, some embroidered it and carved “magic” into their sticks. Dancing with music, alone, in pairs and as a group with our sticks was not only fun, it also activated our mirror neutrons, created group synchronicity and connections.

Stabilizing Clients at the Clay Field

Pierre Janet, a pioneering French psychologist who lived over 100 years ago, developed a simple structure for trauma therapy that is still valid today. He defined three treatment phases: stabilization, trauma exploration and integration. If we look at Work at the Clay Field, stabilization is crucial at the beginning of every session in order to create a safe environment for the client.

Haptic Perception: As I Touch the Clay, the Clay Touches Me

Haptic perception is the perception through touch. Our hands are superbly fine-tuned perceptual instruments. They play a far more important role for art therapy than has been acknowledged so far.

Clay Field Therapy as a Sensorimotor Art Therapy

Work at the Clay Field is a sensorimotor, body-focused, trauma-informed art therapy approach. It is not necessarily concerned with an image-making process, but supports the awareness of body memories.

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