Healing Trauma

An iceberg can be a symbol of our different memory system. There is the cognitive part visible above the water line, capable to rationalize and symbolize, and there is the huge hidden part floating underneath the surface. Implicit memory systems are not visible and have little words, if at all. They describe our emotions and all other body memories including learnt action patterns such as walking, eating with a spoon, or riding a bike. Our survival responses from the autonomic nervous system are implicit, just as our heart rate is not something we need to think about in order to make it pump our blood.

Rhythmic Movement as a Vital Trauma Response

In recent weeks I find myself watching dance and movement video clips wherever they appear on social media. My soul craves them. On the days when I cannot go out and walk, I turn off all the lights at night, search for streaming Gabrielle Roth and dance to the 5 Rhythms in the dark. The many posts on Facebook inviting me to visit famous art galleries all over the world, to take virtual tours through the pyramids, and glide along the walls of the Sistine Chapel soon feel strenuous, like yet another thing to focus on. My eyes are hurting from too much screen time and the incessant online bombardment with visual stimuli.

Trauma Healing at the Clay Field: A Conversation with Cornelia Elbrecht

A Conversation

I want to ask about your history with Work at the Clay Field. Where did it all begin?

Well it started when I was in my early twenties and I was studying at the Institute for Initiatic Therapy in the Black Forest. It was a multimodal training and we studied art, music, drama and movement therapy, body work, martial arts, yoga, meditation and Jungian Analytical Psychology….

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.

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: The Spiral

The spiral pattern of growth is found throughout nature as rolled-in fern, in shells on the beach, in the shape of an ear, in a fingerprint, the umbilical cord and how an embryo is curled up in the womb.

“Both the winding forms of the intestines and the brain have been depicted in religious and symbolic art as the labyrinth of spiral path, which creates, protects, and lays the foundation of the new town or centre”. (Purce 1992)

The Primary Shapes in Guided Drawing Series: 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.

The Significance of Colour

There are many different ways to approach the subject of the meaning and significance of colour. In art therapy sessions I encourage clients to honour colour in so far as to choose it according to the felt sense.

The Importance of Art Materials

My recent experience at the International Art Therapy Practice/Research Inaugural Conference in London has highlighted how instrumental good quality art materials are for the outcomes of our work. When working with a focus on the body, Sensorimotor Art Therapy requires tables and chairs. Even the height of the table is important, ideally at or approximately 5 cm below the navel of the client. Chairs should be high enough that the knees are slightly lower than the pelvis, and the feet touch the ground. It is important that one sits comfortably upright while drawing, as it is an exercise of body awareness. A starting position that allows a relaxed upright body posture is important, which is not possible when crouched on the floor.

Masterclass: Work at the Clay Field® Workshop

In February 2019 Prof Heinz Deuser came to Australia to offer a Masterclass on his Work at the Clay Field® at Claerwen Retreat. For over 20 years Prof Deuser was the course coordinator of the first BA in Art Therapy at the Kunsthochschule in Nürtingen, Germany. Today he is the director of the Institut für Gestaltbildung in Hinterzarten, Germany. Work at the Clay Field is a unique Sensorimotor Art Therapy modality Prof Deuser has developed over the past five decades.

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.

Blog & Essays

A Conversation