what is expressive arts therapy?

“Something valuable will emerge when we step into the unknown.”

Shaun McNiff

Expressive arts therapy (EXA) is resource-based and solution-focused approach to restore our innate capability to respond and act upon a variety of challenges in daily life. Instead of focusing on difficulties and dwelling on problems, we actively engage in play, imagination and a creative process to gain a bodily and emotional sense of what we are going through. By meeting the creative restrictions within the arts in art-play, we can access our abilities that we did not know we had, and find resources and possible solutions that were previously hidden from us. What we experience in the arts can then be applied to meet the challenges in daily realities.

EXA sees art as “poiesis” – the human aesthetic response to what has been given to us by making something new. We do not need to be good at or have training in the arts to participate in EXA. Rather it is a sensitive, sensible and sense-making process. We all have the capacity to shape our worlds while being shaped by them.

An EXA session begins with the questions or challenges you intended to explore. Then we leave the questions temporarily to enter into a multi-sensory arts-play. The therapist helps setting challenges within the arts that you can meet.
We ends with connecting the new discovery, unexplored potential and emerging insights to the original questions or challenges.