|
Body Centered Art TherapySomatic Art Therapy Somatic art therapy is an integrated somatic and body centered approach used with art making. You can gain awareness of your sensations and feelings in your body as you express yourself through art. Somatic psychology, EMDR, art therapy, and focusing are all part of the context. Somatic psychology links neurophysiology and psychology with the wisdom of the body as it relates to trauma resolution and the inherent stress of daily living. Through art you can explore and expand the authentic creative imagery that comes from the bodywork. Through body awareness and creating imagery, you can work towards transforming trauma. You will experience:- exercises that work with the felt sense - how art therapy can be used to help regulate the autonomic nervous system - self regulation and soothing exercises - exercises for hyper arousal and dissociation - 'repairs' that transform the activation of the autonomic nervous system 
Art Therapy and Trauma Resolution When you have experienced trauma, your autonomic nervous system [ANS] has been affected. I use right brain therapy techniques to help regulate the ANS. Working in the present moment allows access to firing of neural networks so that new wiring can occur creating new patterns of regulation. Through imagery, art, dreams, and archetypal work I can help you create new ways of knowing and regulating. This moves the body away from holding, constricting or collapsing with the event. Beginning in infancy and early childhood traumas accumulate in the body. All trauma involves some level of dissociation from ventral vagal social engagement system. The degree of dissociation reflects the intensity of the trauma. Therapy intends to create association with the disconnected parts of the self. The autonomic nervous system can learn to self-regulate again through 'repairs' that transform the activation of the system. These repairs happen through art therapy, visualizations, somatic experiencing, EMDR, focusing and other right brain therapy techniques. 
EMDREye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) was developed by Psychologist, Dr. Francine Shapiro, in the late 1980s as a treatment for post-traumatic stress syndrome. Many of the emotional problems we have can be traced back to disturbing events in the past. These may be significant traumas, such as rape or a car accident. They may also be less dramatic, but still have a lasting impact: for example, being ridiculed by a teacher or rejected by a best friend in childhood. EMDR seems to be able to kick-start an accelerated natural healing process that allows the memory to move into the past. In the actual EMDR session, I help you bring forth the different aspects of the memory as it is at that moment (the image, thought, emotion, and body sensation). Then while you hold together these aspects in your awareness, you begin to move your eyes back and forth following the therapist's hand (sometimes alternating bilateral tapping or sound is used instead). The theory behind it is as follows: when a disturbing event occurs, the memory can become "locked" into your nervous system as an isolated network incorporating imagery, emotions, body sensations, and negative beliefs. Focusing is "direct access to bodily knowing." It is a practice that takes a person towards a state of conscious perception that goes far beyond knowing something on a mere conceptual level. As with Somatic Experiencing, Focusing refers to this bodily knowing as a felt sense. As the Focusing Institute's website explains, "You can sense your living body directly under your thoughts and memories and under your familiar feelings. Focusing happens at a deeper level than your feelings. Under them you can discover a physically sensed murky zone, which is concretely there.  This is a source from which new steps emerge. This murky zone "opens" as you learn to stay with it longer. Being with it increases the ability to sense feelings behind words or images, even when those are not yet formed. Eventually, you can learn how to let a deeper bodily felt sense come in relation to any problem or situation. It is a subtle process, hard to define in words." The philosopher Eugene Gendlin developed Focusing in the late 1960s and early 1970s, while he was working with the famed psychologist Carl Rogers. Somatic ExperiencingDr. Peter Levine developed Somatic Experiencing (SE) by observing how animals regulate and discharge high levels of energy when encountering life-threatening situations in the wild. Unlike humans, who have been trained to use the rational faculties of the mind to cope with stressful situations, animals exhibit an innate ability to restore themselves to equilibrium after being attacked. They do not hold in their bodies the intense energy they needed to temporarily mobilize for survival. Thus, they do not get traumatized as people do are after a frightening trigger event. As Dr. Levine puts it, "Traumatic symptoms are not caused by the dangerous event itself.  They arise when residual energy from the event is not discharged from the body. This energy remains trapped in the nervous system where it can wreak havoc on our bodies and minds."Dr. Levine argues that humans also possess this energy-releasing ability, and can learn how to employ a body awareness he calls felt sense to renegotiate and heal the trauma. Learning how to access this felt sense in the moment and release residual tension is the basis of SE. SE is considered valid for both shock traumas-single-episode traumatic experiences such as war, rape, or natural disasters-and developmental trauma, which refers to interruptions in the predictable psychological stages of growth. Body SensationAwareness of sensations in the body can be blocked through habits of dissociation and repression. This is because the sensation may be uncomfortable or painful, and we are not trained to focus on this inner knowing and awareness of the body. Transformation of trauma involves the acknowledgment, and information of the inner movement of sensation.  This energy and awareness is essential to reconnect what has been fragmented by a trauma. Fragmented aspects involve the disorganization of interconnecting systems. Reconnection can occur when we stay in the consciousness of sensation long enough to experience the sensations of both the discomfort of the unresolved trauma as well as the vital healing life force.Questions to help you increase an awareness of sensation: 1. When you describe what happened to you, what do you notice is going on in your body? 2. Notice the sensations that are triggered with the thought you just expressed. 3. Feel the sensations that are beneath that emotion. What in your body is telling you that you have that emotion? 4. When you scan your body, what sensation do you notice? Somatic Functions: 
I will help you learn bodywork for:- connecting - postioning - balancing - centering - grounding - boundaries - managing energy - self expression - releasing - resourcing Body Mapping I will introduce you to several ways of working with art in connection to somatic bodywork such as: resourcing, strengthening through imagery, and body mapping. A body map shows where you are holding your trauma and where your resources are in your body. It also includes defence mechanisms, schemas and archetypes. For more information you may want to visit these web sites: The EMDR Institute: www.emdr.comEMDRIA, the International EMDR Association: www.emdria.org EMDRAC, the EMDR Canada Association: www.emdrac.ca www.traumainstitute.org www.traumahealing.com www.instincttoheal.org www.focusingresources.com |
This process facilitates a deepening of the body/mind connection and allows a richer integration of experiences with the resolution of traumatic or overwhelming events.
This network can be triggered when any kind of associated or related experience comes along. This can cause an overreaction in the present situation that may result in you feeling almost as upset or powerless as you did in the original event. The traumatic memory is primarily stored in the right hemisphere of the brain where it does not have access to networks in the left hemisphere, which contains important thoughts and awareness that could relieve the distress if a connection could be made. An example might be the simple truth that "It is over," "I survived," or "I did the best I could." You might think those thoughts, but it as though you were unable to apply that awareness to the painful memory, and so the distressing feelings and reactions continue to affect you. Eye movements (or other forms of side to side stimulation) seem to unlock the memory network and allow a connection to be made between the networks on either side of the brain. The result is that the memory is laid to rest in the past and you are no longer hampered by the effects of the original disturbing event or later incidents that may have been added to the memory of it.