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…
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When I first came to Sensorimotor Art Therapy over 10 years ago it was with the intention to find new ways to support clients to find a pathway through their troubles. As someone who has a leaning towards lifelong learning and deepening knowledge of various options, I had long wondered about the ways that Art Therapy could be utilised with children, adults and in particular at that time, with people impacted by family violence. It has been through the unfolding my own learning journey since those early days that I discovered that many of the tools and techniques I had been using over the years had a definite ‘art therapy’ quality to them.
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Another COVID lockdown, quarantine requirements, back to working remotely and the ensuing social isolation have again highlighted the profoundly human need for embodied contact and touch to regulate our nervous system.
In a London hotel room a few years ago I came across an essay by filmmaker Sebastian Junger where he discusses his experiences as a journalist in an outpost in Korengal Valley in Afghanistan in 2007. He describes war from a neurological perspective stating that while no one wants war, the majority of veterans long to go back because combat gives soldiers an intense experience of connection…
Touch is the most fundamental of human experiences. It is also likely the most under-researched of our five senses. Most art therapists have little awareness of its importance being overly focussed on the optical experience. You can live a successful life being blind, deaf, lack smell and taste, but without touch, we most likely die…
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Crossing the midline is an indicator of bilateral coordination, meaning the ability to use both sides of the body at the same time. The Neuro Sequential Model (NMT) (Perry, 2005) recommends repetitive activities that target both hemispheres of the brain. The bilateral stimulation allows for the left and right hemispheres of the brain to increase communication through the unifying brain structure of the Corpus Callosum. This allows the client to rely on both hemispheres of the brain equally. This action according to the NMT allows the brain to reorganise itself and to therefore continue to develop from where the interruption began...
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When I first came to Sensorimotor Art Therapy over 10 years ago it was with the intention to find new ways to support clients to find a pathway through their troubles. As someone who has a leaning towards lifelong learning and deepening knowledge of various options, I had long wondered about the ways that Art Therapy could be utilised with children, adults and in particular at that time, with people impacted by family violence. It has been through the unfolding my own learning journey since those early days that I discovered that many of the tools and techniques I had been using over the years had a definite ‘art therapy’ quality to them.
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Over a ten-year period in the nineteen-eighties I studied with Jungian analyst Phyllis Krystal. She taught me much about guided imagery and how to apply it in a therapeutic context. One of Krystal’s core questions as a therapist was, how to resource clients in a way, they no longer needed to go over the troubled relationship with their parents hundreds and hundreds of times? How could she introduce exercises that opened up a new perspective and provided them with a different parenting experience? One that allowed clients to access healing and repair, and on this basis, they could go back to the past, but better resourced.
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Peter Levine and Stephen Porges both place their trauma-informed insights on understanding the polyvagal system in the body. While I found the Polyvagal Theory too medical to understand for a long time, when I attended a masterclass with Porges during the Australian Childhood Foundation Trauma Conference in 2014 he turned out to be a clear, simple and engaging speaker; finally, I understood his important research. During his masterclass Porges used the image of traffic lights to explain his Polyvagal Theory in a way that I found even children and parents can easily comprehend. It is one of the printed resources I keep on my desk and show to parents and children alike to assist them in understanding what is happening inside them. The Polyvagal Theory focuses on how the autonomic nervous system impacts on every somatosensory system in our body illustrated by traffic lights…
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Haptic Perception describes touch-perception. While all artists and art therapy clients work with their hands, little attention has been given to the touch experience, when we work with crayons, paint, collage and clay, or play a musical instrument. However, in a society, where individuals spend increasing amounts of time online, children no longer play much outdoors, but instead press keyboards to engage with virtual realities, the need for psychological answers to this lack of touch connection becomes apparent. Not by accident body-focused approaches have been growing in importance in recent decade, and I am sure, so will haptic perception become an increasingly valuable therapeutic tool.
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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.
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The concept of a topside world and an underworld is as old as human consciousness. We have the universal experience of day and night, of light and darkness. The day-light, sunny side is associated with what we know, what we can see and what is familiar, also with rational, logic, linear thinking and planning. The nightly dark side is unknown, mysterious and equally fascinating as it is terrifying. Here we perceive with our intuitive mind, processing the surroundings in associative image-based patterns. The night-side is the world of our dreams and the source of creative ideas. This underworld has different layers of darkness, which we can associate with the moon cycles. At full moon we can perceive, often with heightened awareness, what wonders this unknown world entails, whereas the dark moon can be filled with terrors and existential danger.
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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.
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