Art therapy offers a compatible, integrative approach to Yoga Therapy. As yoga therapists, we aim to support our students’ to experience a state of wholeness and integration while also coming to recognize their innate, indwelling Self. Art Therapy Tools invite a deeper exploration without getting lost in the narrative mind (which generates the story people tell themselves about themselves and the world).
The power of understanding that which we are, at our essence, creates a field of transformation that allows students to more easefully overcome even long-standing challenges. The tools of art therapy enhance this journey as they engage the right brain and the somatic experience of the issues that people carry in their subconscious.
Art therapy tools are simple, accessible, fun, and intriguing. These tools help awaken a person’s creativity, including developing a flexible and creative response to their symptoms, healing journeys, and life opportunities. For example, sketching the gunas or mapping the nervous system through shapes, gestures, colors, or improvisational illustrations allows clients to be in relationship with their body, their nervous system, and the gunas, vrttis, and samskaras, in a more spacious, objective, and curious way. Creating a visual representation of a symptom, state of mind, or inner experience brings nuance and discovery of that which would otherwise be unavailable. It also fosters a relationship with the symptoms, versus being identified with the symptoms as self-defining or self-limiting.
The tools of art therapy often elicit physiological and emotional access points for clients to deepen their understanding of that which is held in their body. That which is held in the deeper layers of the koshas, (considered to be the root causes of symptoms) is often inaccessible as the left brain overpowers the narrative experience of the symptoms.
The ancient tools of Yantra and Mandala are included as explorations in this course. Each of these activities provide opportunities for revealing one’s innermost self while also coming to understand the context in which the inner Self is obscured by samskaras, vrttis, and vasanas. Using the 3-dimensional landscape of art in these activities provides a powerful realization of both that which obscures and that which reveals. The tools of art therapy also create a pathway for exploring what can otherwise seem daunting or difficult, but from a compassionate, spacious perspective. Yoga Therapists can integrate the tools in this training readily and easily. The course will demonstrate how and when to introduce the techniques so that you can add these skills to your existing skillset.
LEARNING OBJECTIVES:
Participants will recognize, and be able to describe to their clients, the relationships between creativity, the right brain, and the held somatic residue of past trauma, conditioning, and samskaras.
Participants will be able to communicate, to their clients, the intersection of Yogic Philosophy, specifically drawing from the Bhagavad Gita, and the art therapy techniques.
Participants will identify and facilitate appropriate art therapy activities in support of their client’s self-reflection and svadhyaya.
Participants will implement art therapy tools to support their clients in accessing the body, mind, breath, emotions for health and well-being. They will explain the process of art therapy for accessing body sensations, body intelligence, their inner witness, as well as vrttis, samskaras, and underlying belief systems that are no longer aligned with their evolving self.
Participants will utilize art therapy tools to enable clients to access their interoceptive, non-verbal, and subconscious realms, those areas that often hold the historical internalized maps that continue to interfere with skillful living. This includes the impact of developmental experiences, life events, and the conditioning that is absorbed through family, culture, social, and religious influences.
Part 1:Introductory Techniques in Art Therapy – No art background needed!
Part 2:Creating a Personal Yantra – Walking the path of transformation
Part 3:Exploring Mandalas – Pre-personal, personal, and transpersonal insights
Part 4:The Castle & The Moat – A journey through self-protection & connection
Part 5:The Lighthouse & The Harbor – Finding stability within change
Part 6:The Bhagavad Gita & Art Therapy – Myth, meaning, and self-discovery
Sarahjoy Marsh has a Masters in Transpersonal Counseling with a Specialization in Art Therapy from Lesley College (now a university in partnership with the Art Institute of Boston for their Art Therapy program). Sarahjoy has been including art and art process in her yoga therapy practice for 25 years.
CE Units Accredited with IAYT and MHACBO
This continuing professional development activity is approved by the International Association of Yoga Therapists, and Oregon MHACBO, Mental Health and Addiction Certification Board of Oregon, for 14 hours of CE Units.
