Healing from Trauma
Symbol Work , Guided Drawing & Archetypes for Healing Trauma
Make sense of your story through symbols and archetypes:
It is not uncommon for someone to feel ‘stuck’, or stagnated, in healing work. You may feel that you are going around in circles, are not able to gain new insight, or even feel increasingly hopeless about moving forward.
In the past decade, thanks to advancement in neuroscience, psychologists, counsellors and other therapists have learned much about the ability for the brain to change, the right-left brain communication, and the mind-body linkage. Since then, there has been an upsurge of evidence that therapies involving multiple level of perception – visual, kinaesthetic, sensory – can be extremely powerful, and can move therapy along by tapping into places where talking therapy cannot. Amongst which, Jungian Sandplay has gained much popularity; it is a great facilitator .
Body Maps
Body maps art therapy
Body Mapping is a creative therapeutic tool that brings together bodily experience and visual artistic expression. In its basic form it involves drawing (or having drawn) one's body outline onto a large surface and using colours, pictures, symbols and words to represent experiences lived through the body.
Guided Drawing (Copyright Cornelia M Elbrecht)
Sensorimotor Art therapy approach - Guided Drawing (Copyright Cornelia M. Elbrecht)
Guided Drawing is a bilateral drawing approach that supports body mapping in a trauma-informed way. Clients draw rhythmically repeated scribbles to express inner tension, patterns of bracing and pain held in the body. In a second step they will apply massage movements according to their inner needs, often with finger paints. In this way physiological symptoms can be eased, and the embedded emotions released. Universal shapes such as a line, circle or square can be introduced in order to safely structure the experience. This embodied art therapy approach is informed by neurobiological insights into human stress responses.
