by David Gerbstadt

When I tell my best friend the state of affairs, he tells me, “You have gotten this far -- over 1,800 days -- and everyday you have enough to get through the day. Enough: food, shelter, money, and love...

 

Editor's Note from Karen Stabley: Post traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) is an anxiety disorder that has many of the same symptoms as depression, but  occurs after a person has seen or experienced a traumatic event that involved the threat of injury or death. This is an article by artist, David Gerbstadt. He wrote this as a blog entry to describe his daily life and how he is coping with PTSD.

 

Arts & Art Therapy

 

Editor´s Note from Karen Stabley: Scribble drawings are used in art therapy as both a diagnostic and on-going therapy tool to help clients get in touch with unconscious thoughts and feelings. In this video, I take the viewer through the steps of creating a scribble drawing and through a simplified analysis. This is a very fun and usually highly illuminating exercise.

 

Arts & Art Therapy

 

Editor's Note: Artistically powerful and poignant, this is an amazing and graceful dance that I hope has a healing message to us all: that even in darkness there is light; even in the shadow of the veiled/death, there is beauty and hope anew. Perhaps this is a healing for the loss in Japan as Tamasaburo is a professional Japanese actor and he dances as if in a candlelight vigil.

 

Arts & Art Therapy

 

Editor´s Note from Karen Stabley: Dot-to-Dot projective drawings are used in art therapy as both a diagnostic and on-going therapy tool to help clients get in touch with unconscious thoughts and feelings. In this video, I take the viewer through the steps of creating a dot-to-dot drawing and through a simplified analysis. This is a great exercise for people with writer's block.

 

Arts & Art Therapy 

Interviewed by Karen Adler, Dip Transpersonal Art Therapy
ATH Asst. Editor of Arts & Art Therapy

Phil Kent is my new landlord here in beautiful Killcare, on the Central Coast of NSW in Australia. Phil was a builder before he retired and leaving the building trade has enabled him to spend more time on his painting. Like most people I know who are involved in art, Phil doesn’t fit the stereotype of the mad artist. He’s someone who knows that, as with most things in life, it’s a matter of practicing your craft, working at it until, little by little, you start to see progress...

 

Arts & Art Therapy

 

Arts & Art Therapy

by Lucie Rivard

“Heal the World” is a piece about all races of the world coming together in love and unity to heal the planet.  “An ancient Hopi prophecy, shared by many tribes, tells us of the beginning of the world, when the Creator created four races of four colours, each assigned a task that together would ensure a world where all the life was held in one sacred circle...

 

Editor’s Note: Ideas of healing art through illustrations, reiki and good energy - Lucie Rivard uses her artwork to heal the world through vivid and vibrant colors.

 

Arts & Art Therapy

by Jean Pollack, PhD

Has life become just another thing to check off your to-do list? In my practice, many young people in their 20’s and 30’s have similar unconscious or conscious life goals that they want in a specified order — particular achievements to cross off “their list...”

 

Editor's Note from Karen Stabley: In this article, Jean Pollack helps you step back from your fast-paced, social media-driven life so that you can develop a rhythm that flows rather than resists your natural urge to rest or create. When you live a creative life, you are able to enjoy yourself, understand your purpose, know yourself and create so that you move toward more happiness.

 

Arts & Art Therapy

by Susan Filson

I am not a writer, but I do a lot of writing...

 

Editor's Note from Karen Adler: I asked a friend to write a piece on how she had used the arts to help her through difficult moments in her life. Susan is an extremely brave and resilient woman who has, in the last five years, weathered the death of a  much-loved son through cancer as well as a diagnosis of cancer herself.  Susan has travelled extensively with her botanist husband, Rex, and describes herself as more of a reader than a writer. A stalwart of the local Writers’ Group, even though she does not consider herself to be a writer, this is what she wrote anyway.

 

Arts & Art Therapy 

 

Editor´s Note from Karen Adler: An art therapy patient speaks about her art as being 'a window into her inner world' which gradually opened up her ability to speak about her experience of psychosis. An art therapist speaks about his work as maximising the use of the arts in the health realm and as assisting with destigmatisating mental health problems.

 

Arts & Art Therapy

by David Gerbstadt

Drawing is moving a pen, pencil, crayon—or really anything that can make a mark—on paper. In college, it took one teacher to tell me I was swimming in the deep end—in other words, that I was good at art! It took just one person to make me aware I was worthy of something. Up to that point, I had no idea I was ‘good‘ at anything....

 

Editor's Note from Karen Stabley: David is a working artist who lives near Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He was in a terrible bicycle accident and used art to heal. This is an excerpt from his book, One Breath at a Time.

 

Arts & Art Therapy

 

Editor´s Note from Karen Adler: Children at Peyton Manning Children's Hospital, St.Vincent, receive art therapy to help them deal with anxiety, an adverse diagnosis, pain and the possibility of a lifelong illness. Doing art helps them gain a sense of control, of comfort, of being able to play in sometimes traumatic circumstances. The art therapy program can also leave the parents with much-loved mementos created by their children.

 

Arts & Art Therapy

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Editor-in-Chief

Jean-Pierre Ruiz	Lexi Yoga
Visit Conscious Consumerism	Visit Yoga
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