Mind Body & Soul
Art Therapy
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"The beauty about art is that it bypasses the intellectual processes and goes into the unconscious and you draw from that place."
According to art therapist, Rena Urbach, many people hide behind a wall of words. Talking through their problems may not reveal enough of their feelings for them to be able to find the peace that they are seeking.
Often people who choose to see an art therapist have talked to counsellors or other therapists already but are looking for something that works at a different level.
"It’s like a meditation. It’s totally absorbing and you uncover anger, grief and fear and strong feelings that we are socialised into not walking around expressing all day, and this is a place where people can feel free to express those feelings and it’s a relief. Once those things have been released, then they find that there’s love and joy and positive feelings underneath but it’s very hard to feel those positive feelings until you have released the negative."
A trained social worker and counsellor, Rena became an art therapist in 1998. She has found that art therapy can be a dynamic tool for working with people of all ages.
"It’s great for children because they are not very good at sitting with a psychiatrist and just talking seriously like an adult, but they have fun and they play and be creative and that’s what kids are supposed to do. You discover something on a much deeper level, then we can work with the material that comes out.
"At the moment, I’m working with a 15-year-old girl who has leukaemia and she, like many teenagers, didn’t want to talk. She found talking very difficult. The therapy is just making art, but when I went back to her and said can we talk a little bit about them, all of a sudden it all poured forth and she became very insightful about what all the paintings meant to her.
"'The moon is the power behind the sun,’ she said, ‘and sun is very fierce and extravagant and the moon is a subtle strength and they are both equally powerful. But I need people supporting me from behind, so I guess that’s me and that’s the people, especially my mother, who support me.’
"This is a woman admiring a sunset, enjoying the simple things in life that you need to be happy. She’s taking the time to heal.
"The two fish keep each other company and they are very tranquil - two parts of her coming together."
In Rena's sessions clients use drawing, painting, moulding clay, and sand-play and symbol work to reveal their feelings and explore their issues.
"Children love the sandpit but I find that the sand-play is one of the favourites for most people because, if you are not an artist, the symbols are all there for you and it’s very accessible to people."
Sand-play and symbol work offer an easy, enjoyable way for people to express themselves. Moving and shaping the sand in a tray is very soothing. Instead of drawing, small figures are chosen to create pictures and stories in the sand. The figures develop deeply personal meaning; for example, the horse may represent power, the monkey, playfulness, and the snake, wisdom. Letting the figures express our feelings is a safe way to work through and resolve problems.
"This was an early stage and this little boy who was 7-years-old, and his mother had died of cancer, and his father brought him in because he wasn’t coping well at school, or in life generally. This tank and this … I don’t know what it is! … something very fierce was repeatedly mowing over these dinosaurs – they’d get up again and they’d be mowed down again and this went on and on and on repeatedly. And in here there was always this little lizard always watching – just watching. The battle between the monsters and the tanks seemed to be a re-enactment to me of his mother being mowed down by the cancer. It was some way of coming to terms with, and handling, his mother’s death."
If you are looking for a therapy that gets you out of your head and allows you to explore colour, texture and your creativity, art therapy may be your ticket on a very special journey.
"It’s very healing just doing it – but we like to move from the feeling to the thinking, in kind of rounds of the process for us. So having insight and creating meaning is like the icing on the cake."
Visit Rena's site Art for the Heart
