Web Site
Navigation
SYNOPSIS:
Go Green
Be The
Change.
Alternative
holistic programs.
Benefit
from natural,
hands-on, funded, courses and career education professional
training jobs
and degrees online.
Increase your personal and
environmental well-being. |
Contacts
Email
360-378-6313
Return to Homepage
|
|
.............................................
|
|
|
The Greening of
Art Therapy Programs: Nature-Connected, Sustainable,
Holistic, Counseling, Therapist Degree Training, Life Courses and
Coaching Online: Alternative
Natural Career Education Psychology; Personal and Professional
Environmental Health and Wellness Healing; Employment, Scholarships,
Grants and Jobs.
Project
NatureConnect
Institute of
Global Education Organic Psychology
Special NGO Consultant, United
Nations Economic and Social Council
Green distance learning programs, professions, careers and job
opportunities.
|
|
ART
THERAPY HELP
WANTED
Educating,
Counseling and Healing With Nature
Green Professional
Art
and Therapy
Opportunities,
Degrees
and Distant
Learning
Work
Enjoy
online, natural, "eco"
degrees, creative arts therapy green jobs, careers and accredited
environmental training
courses.
Integrate
a green advantage into your art therapist profession and
personal life.
Help others gain art and therapy green benefits and
well-being.
.
Master
and teach the essential art association,
science and
psychology of Educating,
Counseling and
Healing with Nature.
Discover how green thinking in
art therapy schools
can improve body, mind and spirit.
Our
holistic art therapist sensory education
courses empower you to tap your critical thinking
into the grace, balance and self-correcting power
of natural systems
and their ways,
backyard or backcountry.
We invite you to use our
alternative
program to connect
with the
restorative and
purifying powers
of nature's flow and spirit, in and around us.
Improve your
skill to
develop organic,
whole-life, learning, art therapist and health programs.
Take advantage of our green
education, art
therapy degree and career
opportunity
"Reflecting
on written research and personal experience in the fields of Art
Therapy and Applied/Integrated Ecopsychology, I have come to this
proposal: that both disciplines could be further enhanced by combining
their techniques in therapeutic practice."
- Theresa Sweeney, in Gatherings, Journal of the International Community for Ecopsychology (ICE), Issue 6, Winter, 2001
Obtain an Information
and Application Form
or visit our Homepage
,
|
|
NOTE:
The quoted information, below, contains parts of research and field study samples from
anonymous participants in our sensory green art therapy program.
Other examples and findings are available through links on
our survey
page.
|
|
Applied
Ecopsychology and
Art Therapy are two experiential modalities concerned with
self-discovery and wellness. Both therapies are in use today as
individual avenues for promoting change and healing in people with
emotional and in some cases, physical disturbances in behavior.
The purpose her is to provide justification for a unique handbook
this author has written that merges these two modalities. The
handbook
contains experiential art and nature activities designed for
self-growth and restoring and/or maintaining a sense of overall
well-being.
This paper begins by defining and discussing the
history of art therapy and Applied Ecopsychology as separate
therapeutic disciplines. Evidence from the literature is cited
concerning their individual effectiveness. An argument is then made
for merging these approaches into an integrated modality. To
illustrate how such a modality might be made practical, the author
discusses the conception, creation, content and intended audience of
her original handbook. Qualitative results from 4 case studies of
people using the author's approach are presented in the appendix. The
paper concludes with suggestions for the handbook's use and a
recommendation for further exploration into the author's ideas.
Dallas
art therapist Ms. Linda L. McCarley, founder and director of the Art
Therapy Institute and currently serving on the Educational Program
Approval Board of the American Art Therapy Association, says that
society usually expects us to deal with its reality even when we are
not internally convinced of what that is. She says that often when we
describe our dreams and emotions we use verbal expression to conform to
what we think we should be saying and feeling. Society wrangles a
person into feeling conflicted between wanting and needing to express
his natural, authentic self and donning the false mask he must wear to
conform to cultural pressures. His true being gets buried under
nature-disconnected words and labels to the point where he is no longer
consciously functioning with natural integrity. To argue her point,
McCarley paraphrases "Picasso [who] said every child is an artist, the
problem is how to remain one after growing up."
In the same
vein, Ecopsychologists argue that every child is born sensually whole
and bonded to the Earth. The problem as they see it, is how to remain
nature-connected in cultures which thwart and break inherent sensory
bonds before the child has any idea he ever had them. In both art
therapy and ecopsychology, the underlying question is the same--How to
help one recover an integrated sense of themselves in an indoor verbal
playground--in an artificial cultural reality lacking natural integrity
and threatening self-esteem because it doesn’t match one’s own internal
authentic knowingness.
Applied
Ecopsychology and Art Therapy are two experiential modalities concerned
with self-discovery and wellness. Both therapies are in use today
as individual avenues for promoting change and healing in people with
emotional and in some cases, physical disturbances in behavior.
The purpose of this paper is to provide justification for a unique
handbook this author has written that merges these two
modalities. The handbook contains experiential art and nature
activities designed for self-growth and restoring and/or maintaining a
sense of overall well-being.
This paper
definese and discusses the history of art therapy and Applied
Ecopsychology as separate therapeutic disciplines. Evidence from
the literature is cited concerning their individual
effectiveness. An argument is then made for merging these
approaches into an integrated modality. To illustrate how such a
modality might be made practical, the author discusses the conception,
creation, content and intended audience of her original handbook.
Qualitative results from 4 case studies of people using the author's
approach are presented in the appendix. The paper concludes with
suggestions for the handbook's use and a recommendation for further
exploration into the author's ideas.
Art has
played a role in healing, self-expression and inter-personal
communication since ancient times. Throughout the ages there has
been art that has been practical and also art that has sustained and
nurtured humanity on a psychic level. This is evidenced by
discoveries of cave paintings, masks, primitive pottery, the Egyptian
hieroglyphics, and religious art and symbols created by past
generations. Ancient Hebrews and other historical societies
depended upon music and the arts to restore and maintain emotional
well-being (Fleshman & Fryrear 1981). The mandalas of Eastern
religions and Native American sand paintings depict how art has also
been used to unleash spiritual power (Fleshman & Fryrear).
Humans have long recognized our creative imagination and ability to
interpret reality through the arts. Art however, was not formally
studied as a tool for emotional healing until the early 1900's (Junge,
1994) when French psychiatrists Ambrose Tardieu and Paul-Max Simon both
published studies on the artwork of the mentally ill (Ford-Martin,
2001). They believed that similar symbols and elements found in the
artwork of these patients suggested that art could be used to help
identify mental illness. Since then, interest in the use of the arts in
therapy increased steadily (Gladding, 1992).
As milieu therapies began to be used at psychiatric hospitals, so did
creative activities that encouraged self-discovery and personal
empowerment like making art (Ford-Martin, 2001). From the early
1900's until the 1950's, Margaret Naumberg, today recognized as the
official founder of art therapy as a profession (Ford-Martin),
experimented with blending art into psychotherapy in her practice with
patients. She based her theories upon the ideas of Freud and Jung
about the subconscious and the unconscious, which assumed that visual
images are the most accessible and natural form of communication to the
human experience (Ford-Martin). Naumberg taught how through art
therapy, patients could be encouraged to create and then self-interpret
the thoughts and emotions they could not talk about
(Ford-Martin). The theories of Susan Langer also greatly
influenced the development of art therapy and should not be overlooked.
Langer was considered by some (Julliard & Van Den Heuvel, 1999) to
be “the patron saint of art therapy”, even though she was not an art
therapist herself. Langer (1957) wrote that the arts are a
language of emotion and as such, human feelings and emotions are much
more “congruent” with forms of art than they are with verbal
language. Langer believed that art-making allows a person to
represent his/her internal feelings and subjective cognitive reality,
externally, in perceptible forms (Julliard & Van Den Heuvel).
It is this relationship between the client's art and mind-the artwork's
meaning and it's significance to the client's thought processing that
underlies the basics of art therapy (Julliard & Van Den Heuvel,
1999).
The field continues to evolve as evidenced by the
following recently updated definition of art therapy given by the
American Art Therapy Association. In 1995, the definition was
broadened to include the word “transpersonal” indicating that
spirituality is now recognized as a key aspect in human growth and
development: Art therapy practice is based on knowledge of human
developmental and psychological theories which are implemented in the
full spectrum of models of assessment and treatment including
educational, psychodynamic, cognitive, transpersonal and other
therapeutic means of reconciling emotional conflicts…” (American
Art Therapy Association, 1995).
PROJECT NATURECONNECT
Post Office Box 1605
Friday Harbor, WA 98250
360-378-6313
nature@interisland.net
The Greening Opportunity has
been helpful in increasing value and income
in the areas of interest, below:
Yoga
Reiki
Self-Improvement
Self-Confidence
Self-Esteem
Weight Loss
Ecotherapy
Intimacy
Holistic Leadership
Organic Psychology
Friendship
Happiness
Unitarian Universalist
Pantheism
Mental Health
Peace
Climate Change
Shamanism
Earth
Day Activities
Retreat Centers
Energy Medicine
Natural Systems
Parenting
Child Development
Alternatives
Dog Cat Pet Care
Return
to the top of
this page
................................................. |
Art
Therapy
Massage Therapy
Ecopsychology
Therapist Training
Hypnotherapy
Wilderness Therapy
Human Services
Social Work
Counseling
Teaching
Life
Coaching
Integral Therapy
Hospice Caregiving
Home Schooling
Creative Writing
Life Experience
Naturopathy
Consciousness
Jesus &
Wilderness
Biophilia
Herbal Remedy
Life
Science
Violence Prevention
Outdoor Education
Continuing Education
Anger Management |
Hope
& Life Relationships
Stress Relief Management
Natural Health and Wellness
Parenting & Child
Development
Spirit & Spiritual Development
Administrative Services
Continuing Education
Complimentary Medicine
Native American Indian Ways
War On Terrorism
Multiple Intelligences
Environmental Education
Recovery from:
Addiction disorders
Eating Disorders
Sleeping Disorders
Attention
Deficit Disorders
Anxiety Disorders
Food Disorders
Nature Deficit Disorders
Depression
Abuse,
Addiction, Loneliness
Midlife Crisis
Burnout
Global Warming
|
|
|