Clay Work and Body Image in Art Therapy

Clay Work and Body Image in Art Therapy
Author: Trisha Crocker
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 205
Release: 2021-05-09
Genre: Art
ISBN: 1000374068

Clay Work and Body Image in Art Therapy provides an important addition to resources available in the field of clay work and art therapy, highlighting the unique sensory aspects of the medium and its ability to provide a therapeutic resource for women who experience body image issues. Chapters offer a comprehensive distillation of current knowledge in the field of body image, clay work, neuroscience, and art therapy, building a theoretical framework around personal narratives. Case studies examine the benefits of exploring body image through clay work within art therapy practice, providing a positive and contained way to find personal acceptance and featuring photographs of clay body image sculptures created by research participants that highlight their individual stories and experiences. As well as offering both clinical and practical implications, the text provides a full protocol for the research and evaluation methods carried out, enabling further replication of the intervention and research methods by other therapists. This book highlights clay work as a significant resource for art therapists, arts in health practitioners, and counsellors, providing an emotive yet contained approach to the development of personal body image acceptance and self-compassion.

The Art of Body Acceptance

The Art of Body Acceptance
Author: Ashlee Bennett
Publisher: Page Street Publishing
Total Pages: 224
Release: 2021-05-25
Genre: Self-Help
ISBN: 1645672727

Make Bad Art. Make Messy Art. Make Art that Heals You, Grounds You and Inspires You to Have More Compassion for Your Body and Yourself. You are inherently creative. Yes, you. Even if you’ve never picked up a paintbrush before, registered art therapist Ashlee Bennett will teach you how to reclaim your creativity and make amends with your body using art. In our image-obsessed society, it’s easy to be bogged down by the negative messaging that you’re not enough, that your creativity and self-expression aren’t “right” and that your body isn’t worthy of love and respect. But Ashlee sees the falsehood in those messages and is here to guide you to a place of greater compassion, acceptance and connection with your body and your inner self. Therapeutic art exercises give you unconditional permission to express yourself. Creating a sensations map helps you connect your body and mind, forming sculptures allows you to represent your inner qualities using clay and making a collage gives you the opportunity to express the way you wish media reflected bodies and appearance. The goal isn’t to create art worthy of a museum or even your refrigerator door—the goal is to use art as a way to reconnect with your body, reject harmful beauty standards enforced by our society and learn that you are worthy of taking up space, just the way you are.

Reflections of Body Image in Art Therapy

Reflections of Body Image in Art Therapy
Author: Margaret R. Hunter
Publisher: Jessica Kingsley Publishers
Total Pages: 210
Release: 2012
Genre: Psychology
ISBN: 184905892X

This book is packed with simple, inexpensive art-based activities that use a range of media to engage with common body image concerns openly and creatively. The activities employ basic principles from Behavioural Therapy including mindfulness and emotion regulation and use common and familiar objects to create a reassuring environment.

Trauma Healing at the Clay Field

Trauma Healing at the Clay Field
Author: Cornelia Elbrecht
Publisher: Jessica Kingsley Publishers
Total Pages: 338
Release: 2012-09-15
Genre: Psychology
ISBN: 0857006878

Using clay in therapy taps into the most fundamental of human experiences - touch. This book is a comprehensive step-by-step training manual that covers all aspects of 'Work at the Clay Field', a sensorimotor-based art therapy technique. The book discusses the setting and processes of the approach, provides an overview of the core stages of Gestalt Formation and the Nine Situations model within this context, and demonstrates how this unique focus on the sense of touch and the movement of the hands is particularly effective for trauma healing in adults and children. The intense tactile experience of working with clay allows the therapist to work through early attachment issues, developmental setbacks and traumatic events with the client in a primarily nonverbal way using a body-focused approach. The kinaesthetic motor action of the hands combined with sensory perception can lead to a profound sense of resolution with lasting therapeutic benefits. With photographs and informative case studies throughout, this book will be a valuable resource for art therapists and mental health professionals, and will also be of interest to complementary therapists and bodyworkers.

Clayworks in Art Therapy

Clayworks in Art Therapy
Author: David Henley
Publisher: Jessica Kingsley Publishers
Total Pages: 226
Release: 2002-01-15
Genre: Psychology
ISBN: 184642318X

Clay is universally recognized as a medium of creative expression, and it also has great potential for therapeutic application. These two properties of clay are celebrated together in a book that explores the history, theory and techniques of claywork in eliciting therapeutic outcomes. Vignettes and case material explain and expand the text, which interweaves an appreciation of clay in art with many practical suggestions for its use in therapy. By according equal status to aesthetic outcomes and artistic integrity, the author offers a new and holistic approach to claywork. Practitioners and educators in the fields of therapy and art will find his book to be an essential source of information and ideas.

The Healing Art of Clay Therapy

The Healing Art of Clay Therapy
Author: Patricia Sherwood
Publisher: Acer Press
Total Pages: 120
Release: 2004
Genre: Education
ISBN: 0864316917

This engaging handbook is designed to guide therapists working with clay in a therapeutic context. Using clay in therapy provides therapists with a powerful medium to help clients work through many core issues such as anger, grief and fear.

A Multi-modal Approach to Creative Art Therapy

A Multi-modal Approach to Creative Art Therapy
Author: Arthur Robbins
Publisher: Readers Digest
Total Pages: 410
Release: 1994
Genre: Art
ISBN: 9781853022623

This text recasts Arthur Robbins' early work within the framework of modern psychodynamic theory. The creative intent of this text is to offer a structure that is not limited to one therapeutic model and to open up the doors for the creative art therapist to be effective with a wide range of patient populations.

Drawing from Within

Drawing from Within
Author: Lisa Hinz
Publisher: Jessica Kingsley Publishers
Total Pages: 194
Release: 2006-07-15
Genre: Psychology
ISBN: 1846425433

Drawing from Within is an introductory guide for those wanting to explore the use of art with clients with eating disorders. Art therapy is a particularly effective therapeutic intervention for this group, as it allows them to express uncomfortable thoughts and feelings through artistic media rather than having to explain them verbally. Lisa D. Hinz outlines the areas around which the therapist can design effective treatment programmes, covering family influences, body image, self-acceptance, problem solving and spirituality. Each area is discussed in a separate chapter and is accompanied by suggestions for exercises, with advice on materials to use and how to implement them. Case examples show how a therapy programme can be tailored to the individual client and photographs of client artwork illustrate the text throughout. Practical and accessible to practitioners at all levels of experience, this book gives new hope to therapists and other mental health professionals who want to explore the potential of using art with clients with eating disorders.

Healing Trauma with Guided Drawing

Healing Trauma with Guided Drawing
Author: Cornelia Elbrecht
Publisher: North Atlantic Books
Total Pages: 345
Release: 2019-06-04
Genre: Psychology
ISBN: 1623172772

A body-focused, trauma-informed art therapy that will appeal to art therapists, somatic experiencing practitioners, bodyworkers, artists, and mental health professionals While art therapy traditionally focuses on therapeutic image-making and the cognitive or symbolic interpretation of these creations, Cornelia Elbrecht instructs readers how to facilitate the body-focused approach of guided drawing. Clients draw with both hands and eyes closed as they focus on their felt sense. Physical pain, tension, and emotions are expressed without words through bilateral scribbles. Clients then, with an almost massage-like approach, find movements that soothe their pain, discharge inner tension and emotions, and repair boundary breaches. Archetypal shapes allow therapists to safely structure the experience in a nonverbal way. Sensorimotor art therapy is a unique and self-empowering application of somatic experiencing--it is both body-focused and trauma-informed in approach--and assists clients who have experienced complex traumatic events to actively respond to overwhelming experiences until they feel less helpless and overwhelmed and are then able to repair their memories of the past. Elbrecht provides readers with the context of body-focused, trauma-informed art therapy and walks them through the thinking behind and process of guided drawing--including 100 full-color images from client sessions that serve as helpful examples of the work.