Expressive Arts & Play

The most wonderful course I ever joined was an Expressive Arts certificate program at a community college in Haliburton, Ontario. I completed the Graduate Certificate Program there in 2016. Expressive arts includes any and all creative modalities that you can think of: visual arts, writing, tactile activities such as clay or Sand Play, pipe cleaners, fabric or yarn, storytelling, drama, music and movement, clowning, and puppetry, to name a few. Bringing expressive arts into my psychotherapy work was probably the most powerful way that I could help facilitate healing, my own and those under my care. In psychiatry, the focus is too often on deficiencies and mental pathology, where what is needed are avenues for healing.

Julia Cameron, author of The Artist’s Way: A Spiritual Path to Higher Creativity, encourages a regular “artist’s date,” and she views our creative self as akin to what therapists refer to as our “inner child.” Like any child, our creative self needs care and time to play and it needs nurturing. It’s a simple thing, which all good parents learn from their children. Life is miserable when there isn’t enough space to play.