"All power is within you, you can do anything and everything" - Swami Vivekananda
Major aim of every individual’s is to bring peace, happiness and satisfaction in one’s life. To bring this satisfaction and happiness in our life, we have to be quite adjustable and should also be open to the world around us. To have better understanding and awareness about oneself; to be self-aware is important for every individual through the course of life. And adolescence being a time of dramatic transitions that often declines the positive self-worth (self-esteem) has to dealt with utmost care and importance.
Arts therapy is a fusion of self-expression and creative process as well as a mirror image that makes it distinct for its therapeutic role in enabling individuals to solve stress-related issues, physical illness, and interventions in addition to many other things. Now a day; using art as an expressive therapy is gaining popularity in the medical fields. The use of expressive arts to guide emotional healing, support individual creativity, self-exploration, and solve inner conflict is spreading across the world at a rapid pace. It is now extensively used in therapy with children, adolescents, and even adults in medical settings led by art therapists, social workers, psychologists, counsellors, nurses, and other professionals. Expressive therapies are interventions that bring together action to psychotherapy and that “action within therapy and life is rarely limited to a specific mode of expression”. In contrast to customary art expression; in expressive arts techniques intervention course of creation is stressed as opposed to final product. Expressive therapy is grounded on the conjecture that people can heal themselves by using imagination and the different methods of creative expression. The expressive interventions are defined but not limited to the use of dance/movement, play, sand-tray, art, music, drama, and poetry/creative writing within the ambit of counselling/ psychotherapy, and rehabilitation/ health care.
Role expressive therapies play - in improving work with clients in ways that verbal therapies alone cannot do - is being accepted by a substantial number of professionals dealing with mental health. In addition, the mental health division is increasingly turning to use "creative methods" in therapy and medicine. Expressive therapies bring with them a distinctive dimension to counselling/psychotherapy as they have a number of specific characteristics that are not found solely in verbal therapies, including but not limited to: (1) self-expression, (2) active participation, (3) imagination, and (4) mental-body connections.
Expressive Arts Therapy acts as a conduit for clients to step in and step out from the muddled problems and revitalize their imagination utilizing art making process for new possibilities, once they revisit the problems, for a growing and optimistic future. By integrating the arts processes and allowing one to flow into another, we gain access to our inner resources for creativity, illumination, clarity and healing.
Four major advantages that art therapy offers in working with distressed or traumatized children include providing an avenue for communicating feelings, the opportunity to be a child rather than an adult, a way to cope with stress, and an invitation to address self-image. When the art is unstructured and enables choice, and the therapist provides a safe space, trusting and supportive environment, art therapy brings about a positive impact on a child's lives. Often children express inner turmoil, experience catharsis, conveying feelings, and work towards empowerment and healing through engaging in the art process.
"Art is all about coming face to face with yourself"