Expressive Arts Classes & Private Sessions

Are you in a transition? Searching for what’s next? Perhaps you want to write a book, begin a new venture, or even start a business. The expressive arts process can open you to your intuition, help you discover and overcome your creative blocks, provide clarity, and give you the confidence you need to move forward with your dreams!

I offer classes, workshops, and individual sessions that are validating, life enhancing journeys into the self. Using my training in expressive arts, I provide safe spaces where my students and clients can explore themselves, discover creativity they never thought they had and grow personally. As well as individual workshops, I facilitate eight-week programs based on The Artist’s Way several times a year.

My background in Expressive Arts: I hold a masters in counseling and psychology from Hofstra University. I did post-graduate work in expressive arts at Saybrook Graduate School with Natalie Rogers, Ph.D., a pioneer in the field who incorporates the person-centered philosophy of her father, Dr. Carl Rogers, into her training. I am proud to be a contributor to Dr. Rogers’ book, The Creative Connection for Groups: Person-Centered Expressive Arts for Healing and Social Change.

What is Expressive Arts?

Expressive arts uses drawing, movement, painting, sculpting, music, writing and improvisation in addition to spoken interaction to facilitate self-knowledge and insight.
No artistic talent is needed.

 Listen to an interview Barbara Eldridge did with me about the expressive arts process on Connected Women of Influence Radio. 

Most artists, psychologists and scholars say that creativity originates in your unconscious mind. The use of expressive arts is a powerful means of rediscovering your own natural creativity while gaining insight and self-knowledge.

“It is difficult to convey in words the depth and power of the expressive arts process. Really, you must taste it to understand it.”
Natalie Rogers, Ph.D.  The Creative Connection

Expressive arts is not about creating a beautiful picture, choreographing a dance for the stage or writing the next great novel. It is simply a way of expressing yourself using different media which can lead you to greater awareness and connection, often very quickly. It is never about the product you are creating or perfection. Neither is expressive arts about interpretation of your art, writing, or any other form of self-expression by anyone other than yourself. You will not be “diagnosed” nor will your work ever be judged.

Expressive Arts and the Two Sides of the Brain

The expressive arts approach allows you to access knowledge from the right side of your brain as well as the left.  The scientific basis for the expressive arts approach is explained by a discovery in the 1960s by the Nobel prize-winning psycho-biologist, Roger W. Sperry who found that the two hemispheres of the human brain have two very different ways of thinking.

The left hemisphere of the brain processes information logically and sequentially. It looks at details rather than the whole. Highly verbal and intellectual, it likes to measure, compare, plan, analyze and make decisions. It’s also competitive and can be judgmental. Your inner critic lives in your left brain.

In contrast, the right brain is visual and cooperative, processing information in an intuitive and simultaneous way by looking first at the whole picture then the details. It sees connections between things whether they are physical, emotional or intuitive. It likes to imagine and create.

Highly functioning, creative individuals effectively use both sides of their brains to solve problems. The use of expressive arts promotes this whole brain approach to personal growth and creativity development.

Is Expressive Arts for You?

While most traditional forms of coaching, counseling and therapy tend to rely solely on verbal exchange, expressive arts uses a wide range of self-expression methods to help you gain insight and awareness.

In an Excoveries class or private session you might move physically to express an emotion that is difficult to articulate verbally. You might use art to clarify a situation that is confusing. Appropriate guided visualization might be followed by journaling or drawing. You might be invited to act out a situation or to focus on sensations in your body as a guide to your emotions.  Each session is tailored to your personal situation and goals, and different modalities are used as appropriate for you.

Give yourself the gift of an expressive arts class or session and rediscover just how creative you are!   Contact me to schedule a private expressive arts self-discovery session.