Art + Therapy = ??

Apologies for the lack of postings of late, I sucketh greatly at the 'once a week' target I set for myself. Life got in the way and I wrote the posts in my head, instead of on here. The people that have read this blog for a long time, have begrudgingly got use to my erm erratic blogging schedule, but the new readers haven't. So I would just like to say thank you to the people that have always read this blog and thank you to the new folk that thought I had fell into chasm of doom and was unable to escape and blog.

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Last weekend I went to an Art Therapy Workshop, got a certificate and everything! I love certificates, especially my endeavour swimming ones .....

At the start of the session we were asked to write on post-it notes our Hopes and Fears about the session, you can see my answers in that first image.

What is on my mind?

After we talked briefly about Art Therapy, we where then set a task to draw what was on our mind at that very moment. In front of us there was a box full of material, different paper, colours, pen, pencils, chalks, paints, glue sticky things etc etc. After we chose our materials we were given twenty minutes or so to come up with a image.

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I challenge you:
My Challenge to you, is to tell me as much about the above drawing as possible, what do you think was on my mind? It is not a proper test, just an idea of how talking about a picture may work in a counselling/therapy session. I would love to know what you think! (really).
In the workshop we were split into groups of three and each had ten minutes to discuss and interpret each of our drawings. Then we went back to the group and discussed the experience as a whole.

Art means this to me:
I know that arty type things is not for everyone. It can evoke flashbacks to an evil teacher, disapproving parent or other lame adult figure, voicing their opinions that you just can't draw, so why bother? Why do people bother to sing in the shower? You know what type of singing I mean, that god awful killed a cat screeching hell noise. Why do people do it? Because they bloody love it! They know it sounds awful, but who gives a shit! Sure there is that small percentage of people that sound like a angel or one of the three tenors, but the rest of us plebs, just do it for the fun. The same applies to art, well it does for me.
Picking up a pencil and doodling can just be like that, FUN! It can also tap into that little person that lives inside, that little person wants to talk sometimes, they may want to tell their older self something that is buried away and they might think it is time to talk about that.The simplest stick figure in the world with a frown is telling you something, something that might be hard to talk about.

Obviously a one day workshop does not make me an Art Therapy Shaman, but I have witnessed the very powerful way in which it can work and I would love to learn more about it. For now I am going to use art in the way that I know and love, which is doodles.

Doodling enables me to tap into the little person that makes me doodle things like this....

Happy Clients  - The Therapist/Client relationship never really ends

Now was that worth waiting for or what? Maybe I should have took some more time off from blogging.....

I will do an Art Therapy Part Two if people seem interested and play along with the challenge.
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The feet are always watching or something

Foot Therapy

Greetings Earthlings and those just visiting, welcome to a weekly round up post of sorts.

Garden stuff

Carrots, beetroot, courgettes, potatoes, onions, radishes, lemon basil, raspberries and four types of lettuce are growing! I have also planted several containers with alpines in some and flowers of another sort in the rest (my brain just farted and have totally drew a blank on their names). Also have two huge bags of manure that has to decompose a bit more, before I can fling it around the garden. Then it is back off to the garden centre to purchase more plants! I might get round to taking some photographs next week, if the weather stays lovely and if I can be arsed.

Doodle and Thinking Stuff

The doodle at the start of this post was inspired by a new cartooning blog 'Therapy Tales'. Well it was this doodle in particular that set it in motion 'Eye Contact'. If you have ever been in therapy or actually in any situation where eye contact is awkward at best, then you can definitely get this cartoon. Pictures, well doodles, do say a million words.

As Therapy Tales is told from the perspective of the client in the therapist/client relationship, this got me thinking about my own 'Augghhhh' moments when it comes to myself donning the cap of 'therapist/counsellor'. It will mean the end of a lot of things, maybe even this blog, but also the start of a whole new adventure.

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BUT before any of that happens, I am still fighting the good fight against this dude and by fight, I mean flapping a wet flannel in his general direction.

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He is the......Procrastinating Poltergeist, my arch nemesis! One of the many beasts in my Mental Health Monsters Menagerie, along with the  Boggart..The lovely Mr James Clayton reawakened these beasts with his Haiku Beasts. These Mental Health Monsters are an ongoing project, mainly in my head at the moment, but something that I definitely want to develop further. It seems that people have really identify with them, whenever I have mentioned them previously, so I want to unleash more.

I rather enjoyed writing the Paradigm post and the comments that you left really added something to it. It was awesometriffic that you could follow what I meant, as I worry that what makes sense in my head, is never going to translate that well to the written (typed) word. I have already decided on what the next word will be and this doodle and blog is a clue of sorts.

Tumbling:

As you know I am a big twitter user (If you didn't, you do now), I have also added tumbling to my ever increasing web presence. My particular tumblr blog is called Other bits and pieces and I am using it as an bookmarker/idea dump. Instead of just gathering information for endless blogposts and never doing anything with it, the tumblr blog is there to keep up the momentum for when I have a mind bubble moment. Then I get to put all that mindbubbly stuff in a huge wiffly waffly post like this, hooray.

/end waffle