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Exploring Attachment Through Clay-based Therapy: A Parent-Child Community Engagement Project
Get PDFThis research project explores the therapeutic potential of clay, particularly as a creative, sensory-rich process that facilitates access to pre-verbal memories. Grounded in attachment theory and the innovative approach to trauma healing by Cornelia Elbrecht, known as Trauma Healing at the Clay Field®, the study investigates clay\u27s regressive and healing qualities. It examines how its smooth, skin-like texture can activate our implicit memories through sensory experiences. Utilizing a community engagement format, this study aimed to assess the effectiveness of parent-child clay field sessions in addressing intergenerational attachment trauma and unmet attachment needs. The research revealed that the unique properties of clay encouraged sensory and cognitive engagement, fostering relaxation and connection within dyads. The community engagement project prioritized accessibility for urban community members and provided valuable insights for clay field session formatting. The researcher\u27s personal experience with attachment was illuminated through a clay field session conducted after observing and processing the parent-child workshop. While this study offers promising results, further research is needed to determine the efficacy of this approach in healing attachment trauma
A Trauma-Informed Socially Just Approach to Working with Juvenile Justice-Involved Youth Utilizing Expressive Arts Therapy
Get PDFYouth involved with the juvenile justice system often have a history of trauma and oppression resulting from their positionality and circumstances. Most juvenile justice-involved youth are boys, youth of color, low-income, LGBTQIA2S+, disabled, and traumatized. This literature review explores the history of the juvenile justice system, issues with the present-day model, and trauma-informed and transformative justice approaches to practice. The implementation of socially just, trauma-informed expressive arts therapy programs is proposed as a more equitable practice to replace commonly used punitive practices across the United States. More research is needed to understand the impact of such programs on this population within a system laden with inequities furthering the traumatization and oppression of youth
A Route to Resourcing: Improvisational Expressive Arts Dismantle Barriers to Sexual and Reproductive Health: A Literature Review
Get PDFExpressive arts has deep roots in Black and Indigenous traditions of individual and collective healing, empowerment, and social change which have sustained marginalized groups for centuries. Improvisation has often been a key feature in these traditional practices, requiring participants to engage in an embodiment of the self in context, interpersonal attunement, group cohesion and connection, collaboration and power sharing, empathy, and the unearthing and creation of knowledge and reality. These qualities bear many similarities to theoretical principles upheld in Westernized expressive arts therapy practice and the conditions necessary for social change. Recognizing improvisational expressive arts as an invention and therapeutic tool of marginalized populations that by nature privileges non-dominant ways of knowing and positioning it within the context of social change makes it uniquely suited to combat systemically oppressive dominant cultural ideals. Comprehensive sexual health education is not federally or locally mandated in the United States, and the information that is available to youth is often not inclusive, fact-based, nor medically accurate, and tends to be biased toward values held by dominant outside stakeholders. A culture of oppression further restricts access to much-needed information and often deliberately excludes those within marginalized populations. This paper explores the use of improvisation in expressive arts as an entry point into the work of increasing access to relevant sexual and reproductive health resources
Colorful Conversations: Enhancing Communication in Nonspeaking Toddlers Through Art Therapy
Get PDFThe purpose of this study was to learn how art therapy helps non-speaking children ages two years old build up their communication with others. Although there are not many early publications on the benefit of art therapy to children ages two, the existing research suggests that art therapy can aid those children in speaking based on the experience of art making. During the art creation process, engaging with art materials and their potential power can enable the expression and conveyance of emotions as art serves as containment. Therefore, art therapy can assist nonspeaking toddlers to begin communicating verbally. This writer has worked on developing different methodologies in communication with nonspeaking toddlers. These methodologies combined the work of art therapy with ongoing speech therapy through a client aged two who is enrolled in the Early Intervention Program of a hospital due to speech and developmental delays. With the work of these methodologies, the collected data identified themes of emotional connection establishment, emotional expressions, and verbalization enhancement. The findings have shown significant progress in the participant such as increased vocabulary, consciousness of the environment, enhanced interaction with others, and improved emotional expression
Exploring Burnout in the Mental Health Field through Dramatic Projection and Puppets: A Group Experiential
Get PDFMental health clinicians are more likely to experience burnout within their profession because of the influence of experiences of secondary trauma and compassion fatigue. Often within a professional space where mental health workers are employed, the topic of self-care is mentioned but not explored in the context of skills to engage in self-care and combat burnout. The following community engagement project explored how burnout is experienced by current mental health professionals through the execution of creating and using puppets. Puppets were used to explore how burnout affects professional mental health workers in a partial hospital program (PHP) in Norwell, Massachusetts. This paper will discuss the use of puppetry as a way to connect with co-workers in an expressive manner, exploring the themes of burnout and self-care
Glue Gun Stories: Public Art Educators’ Perceptions of Trauma and Its Impact on Their Pedagogy and Praxis
Get PDFPublic School visual arts educators play a vital role in implementing trauma-sensitive practices within schools. Through a collaborative arts-based research design the researcher worked alongside four public school visual art educators to portray their knowledge, beliefs, and values surrounding trauma while also gaining a nuanced and in depth understanding of how perceptions of trauma influence their pedagogy and praxis. Data collection methods included interviews, focus groups, participant and research observations, photo documentation, and art-based data. Participants viewed trauma as chronic adverse events that lead to maladaptive responses within students. They felt these responses had widespread impacts on the entire school community. Informed by their perceptions of trauma, participants held a variety of pedagogical mindsets that informed their praxis, including community, competency-based, inclusive, students as artists, and resilience. They applied these mindsets in dynamic and adaptive ways such as building social connections, affirming students on a holistic level, adapting practices, co-constructing knowledge alongside students and colleagues, and empowering students to act as their own agents of change. This study highlights how art educators are uniquely positioned to support traumatized students\u27 dynamic needs and act as levers of change within trauma-sensitive schoolwide reform. However, for schools to develop long-term sustainable trauma-sensitive practices, art educators’ voices must be heard and amplified. Including art educators in trauma-sensitive project teams and leadership positions works to ensure these practices beyond the art room and into the heart of school culture
The Reinfusion of Mindful Roots into Power Yoga: A Mindfulness-Based Yogi Manual
Get PDFThe practice of modern yoga emphasizes the physical aspect of what was originally a contemplative tradition. Power yoga is perceived as a fitness experience that lacks an explicit articulation between the physical body and the mind. Investigating the roots of contemplative yoga through the language of mindfulness can bridge the divide between an intense external practice and one that can ultimately calm the mind. This thesis focuses on the recovery of mindfulness underlying modern yoga and encourages yoga teachers to reinfuse their power classes with the ancestral wisdom rooted in the practice
The Hero’s Journey Through Therapy: A Literature Review
Get PDFThe Hero’s Journey (Campbell, 1949) is a common narrative structure throughout ancient mythology and modern storytelling which describes the transformation of a hero through a journey of trials and represents the experience of psychological healing throughout various cultures. Because of the ancient and common nature of this structure and the psychological importance of personal narrative and storying even from an early age (Boyd, 2018; Klees, 2016), this thesis hypothesizes that a client’s experience throughout psychotherapy will follow the stages of the Hero’s Journey and that invoking this structure within the therapy room, particularly for drama therapists, will empower clients toward change and transformation. This thesis lays out the three stages of the Hero’s Journey (departure, initiation, and return) and key subsections of each stage and draws parallels with client’s progression through drama therapy and dramatic reality. The literature on psychotherapy and narrative supports the empowering structure of the Hero’s Journey and framing client’s experiences in therapy as heroic. For drama therapists, exploring the history of the Hero’s Journey grounds the work of drama therapy in the past and promotes spiritual integration into the therapy room. Though some work has been done to integrate the Hero’s Journey with certain drama therapy interventions (Klees, 2016; Minerson, 2017) the work has been limited in scope. This thesis aims to draw parallels throughout all drama therapy processes in therapy with the Hero’s Journey and to encourage therapists to promote empowerment and transformation in their clients through this narrative structure
Death, Sex, and Hope Through the Arts: Developing an Expressive Arts-Existential Therapy Method for the Treatment of Compulsive Sexual Behavior Disorder
Get PDFCompulsive sexual behavior disorder (CSBD) is a newly recognized disorder mired in a history of terminological and diagnostic controversy. Emerging research into the disorder has pointed to shame as an intrinsic motivator of the compulsive cycle, which provides potential for therapeutic intervention. Although most empirically-based treatments approach CSBD through a behavioral, abstinence-based model, an integrated expressive arts-existential therapy approach may provide opportunity for effective, person-centered treatment which mitigates the risk of reinforcing the shame cycle. For this capstone thesis, I developed and implemented a three-session treatment method which uses expressive arts therapy to investigate existential themes of guilt, non-being, isolation, freedom, and responsibility in treatment for a client presenting with CSBD. The client responded well to the use of intermodal artistic intervention and was able to process existential anxieties/themes; consider alternative perspectives; take a compassionate understanding of their challenges; and envision a values-based, meaningful future away from his compulsive behaviors through this method. The success of this method supports the potential benefit of integrating expressive arts therapy into existential treatment for CSBD and may offer additional future direction for the treatment of addictions and compulsive behaviors in general
History Matters Exploring Intergenerational Trauma and Human Connection - A Community Engagement Project
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Drama Therapy and trauma centered psychoeducation have been utilized as an intervention for groups in urban schools. The following research expands upon this foundation by exploring intergenerational trauma (IGT). The following research aimed to answer this question, will learning about intergenerational trauma observationally improve adolescents\u27 relationships to others? For eight weeks, I engaged a group of male and female minority adolescents in an urban high school in Connecticut to explore IGT as an element of human existence. Drama Therapy tools such as utilization of the playspace, elements of DvT, the integrative five phase model theater games and poetic inquiry guided this exploration. This process highlights IGT as a global phenomenon many individual families choose to not discuss, despite IGT being a collective history needed as adolescents ascend toward adulthood. Participants displayed improved adolescent relationships with peers, but continued trepidation and avoidance of other adult figures in their lives. Student participants continue to yearn for human connection (Kulkarani, 2009) and have difficulty regulating their emotions and somatic reactions due to IGT (Cisler, 2017)