What is Integrated Creative Art Therapy?

Integrated Creativity embraces and encourages the expression of our whole selves in all aspects of our daily lives. It works to bring in creativity, compassion, curiosity, wonder, and connection in our minds, bodies, hearts, and soul. In an Integrated Creative Art Therapy approach, we work to bring all areas of self into harmony through curiosity, wonder, mindfulness, and body awareness to promote deep embodied healing. I use this as the foundation for my therapeutic work, incorporating other evidence-based approaches as it fits your individual needs.

The Four Main Areas of Self:

Body

We work to cultivate body awareness which involves respecting our senses, sensations, and our breath. Through body awareness, we can begin to recognize the important feedback and information the body gives. We work to dialogue with our Embodied Cognition, which is the belief that the body has its own form of cognition, its own way of understanding, knowing, and experiencing.
Throughout the therapeutic process and creativity, our bodies give input in how this arouses emotion, memories, sensations, and actions within the body. We use this information to recognize patterns, feelings, and actions that we take in response to our environment, and lived experience.
In acknowledging that we are informed by the body in these ways, we then can give our bodies the time and space to express themselves. We work to tune into this feedback through our five senses, our heart space, and breathwork to cultivate communication between mind, body, heart, and soul.
We cultivate respect for our bodies' needs, such as relaxation, movement, ease, or hunger by turning inwards and developing skills to respond and meet the body's needs.

Mind

The mind is the cognitive thinking part of creativity. We acknowledge the mind's capacity to marvel and ask big questions about big things. We work to incorporate mindfulness into daily life.
Encourages curiosity, wonder, contemplation, and self-reflection.
Self Reflection is the ability to inquire and come to terms with the feedback that you gather from the world in relation to yourself through the past, present, and future experiences, heritages, and perspectives of the world.
Supports the neuroplasticity of the mind as the capacity to be reshaped, and refined through specific exercises, constructing different ways of thinking, and strengthening kinder inner self-dialogue.

Heart

Throughout the therapeutic process, we are learning to communicate with the inner emotional world. We often describe feelings as coming from or living within the heart. Similar to body awareness, we work to develop heart awareness. We acknowledge that the heart gives feedback through emotions that are equally as important as the body and mind.
Through acknowledging the heart space and the emotional world we work to cultivate authenticity and connection to others and ourselves.
This connection can be referred to as Heartset. Heartset is our relationship to our emotional world and its space within ourselves. In tuning into our heartset we can begin to dialogue with our feelings and grow awareness of our emotional responses.
Heartset involves being aware of our core values, making choices aligned with those values, and pursuing a life informed by the authentic self’s desires. We combine emotional intelligence and body intelligence, with cognitive intelligence to create purposeful and aligned action.

Soul

Soul is acknowledging the inner knowing that we all contain through self-reflection, imagination, the collective unconscious, creativity, and personal symbols.
It is a reflection of the personal investigation and deeper work of self.
By contemplating life through imagination and creativity, we encounter and work with the symbols, archetypes, metaphors, rituals, and ceremonies that ground the creative aspect of the human experience.

How Do We Start?

We explore our inner world through four pillars of exploration.

Curiosity. We ask questions and explore our thoughts, feelings actions from a place of genuine curiosity without judgment and with a sense of radical self-acceptance.
Mindfulness. We cultivate stillness in order to tune into our mind, body, hearts, and souls to develop meaningful and compassionate self-dialogue.
Body Awareness. We step into our body to meet our needs and develop a deeper understanding of our body sensations, actions, and how it moves through and is affected by our environment.
Wonder. We seek out what inspires us to move through life with courage and compassion and tap into our creative authentic selves,

What Does Integrated Creative Art Therapy Look Like?

Integrated Creative Art Therapy works to provide a means of expression for all aspects of yourself to come into harmony through the therapeutic process. We work to create actionable change by examining different areas of self, life, and how they intersect and inform one another. This intersection can look something like this:

You + Your Work + Your Dreams + Your Life

By feeling grounded in self-understanding, and doing the work to heal and undo problematic narratives, you are able to connect deeper to your authentic self. Through this understanding, you can then become aware of your core values, and dreams. We bring that awareness to our work through meaningful action and steps. This fuels your dreams that in turn inform and illustrate your life.

Your Practice + Your Process + Your Vision

Through mindfulness, and creative practices you explore the inner emotional world and your lived experience. This information helps you craft the process, or actions, you’d like to take. By tuning into body, heart, mind, and soul you grow awareness of your core values, and desires. This helps you craft the vision of how you want your life to change. You can honor what is working, and discuss with self-compassion and understanding what isn’t.

Your Body + Your Mind + Your Heart + Your Spirit

By cultivating communication, balance, and respect for mind, body, heart, and spirit, we aim for overall wellness, compassion, and integration of all your self wisdom, feelings, and desires.

The Burning Desire + The Wild Self + Your Own Path

You tune into what your passions and strengths are. By recognizing your authentic desires, you can take action to what is you want to move towards. It cultivates passion and drive. The Wild Self is an archetypal symbol for the authentic self. By developing the connection to the Wild Self, you can then use the passion, drive, understanding, knowledge, and mindfulness to carve out your own path.

Learn More About Our Approach