What We Do
Expressive Arts Therapy
Expressive Arts Therapy is a process oriented approach to psychotherapy combining the five art modalities of visual art, music, writing, movement, and drama. These are explored in a structured and safe environment for the purpose of achieving an insight to our conscious and unconscious imagination and feelings. These modalities are used along with verbalization to resolve emotional conflicts, create clarity, and increase self awareness and self expression. A fundamental function of the arts in therapy is to offer an alternative means of expression.
Painting horsesExpressive Arts Therapy gives permission to play!
- What's involved?
- Love of the arts
- Belief in the healing powers of the creative process
- The power of play and spontaneity
- Direct involvement in the experience through art making
- Focus on process, not just product
Equine Therapy
Client painting symbols on PeppyHorses are large animals, often weighing 1,000 lbs. or more. Learning safety is foremost when working with such animals. It requires patience, trust, compassion, awareness, and self-confidence, along with defining boundaries. For most people these are the very issues they would like assistance in. Horses are known to get to the root of a situation with their particular intuitive skills; therefore there is less time wasted. In working with horses, the setting is outdoors in a natural environment where the client is allowed to experience the therapeutic process on a basic level.
Integrating Expressive Art Therapy with Equine Assisted Psychotherapy proves to be an exceptional partnership; the horses evoke a mystical quality just with their presence. The arts capture the experience and help maintain the shift in awareness and bring it into a painting, a poem, a dance or even a clay sculpture. Anything is possible! Horses offer a wider view of the world and a way of re-shaping what is present both seen and unseen.
Benefits of Equine Assisted Psychotherapy are numerous; here are just a few of the benefits: breaks down defense barriers, promotes teamwork and individual leadership, encourages responsibility and helps to teach empathy and compassion for others, enhances problem solving skills.