Art therapy: Beyond our rational mind

Have you ever found it difficult to explain how you feel?

Put yourself in your high school shoes. You’ve spent the day feeling ignored by your friends. They’re fighting amongst themselves, but you’re out of the loop. Though you’re not on the receiving end of blatant hostility, you feel worse off. Like you’re not even worth bothering with. You’re an abandoned lunch wrapper rotting on the faded foot path. At the end of the school day, you find yourself in the school counsellor’s office. You can barely muster the energy to speak. The counsellor knows it. She hands you an art book and crayons. Within seconds, your hands are dancing. Nothing feels better than breathing through the colours and markings that materialise on the page before you.

This was my introduction to knowingly using art as a therapeutic vehicle. When emotions consume me, I turn to art. It allows me to explore the many sensations racing through my body in an unfettered way. Art therapy enables a visceral release. It’s made me more conscious of the reality that there are other ways of experiencing beyond the entrapments of our rational mind.

What are these other ways of being? How do we embody them through art therapy?

Here are the three main benefits of art therapy:

Massages consciousness

Art therapy acts as a visual stream of consciousness in that it gives us space to express what is needing to be released. I love doing art therapy before I sleep. It massages my consciousness in readiness for my dreaming ventures. Niggly sensations we try to suppress can travel to the forefront of our awareness when we do art therapy. The processing we do through art therapy can reverberate in our dreams.

Doing art therapy before bed one night, I thought about my long-term goals and the lingering insecurities which hold me back.

I then plunged into this dream:

I’m inside a shopping mall with my high school year group. We’re looking for formal attire in readiness for a ball which is take place tonight. While I’m trying on dresses, I hear whispers that someone has organised for a gang to harass me. This terrifies me. I flee through the stores of the shopping complex, searching for an exit. But I don’t find one. Instead, I find myself at a reception desk. I intuitively know that this is supposed to be the front desk of the shopping complex. I’m shocked to see that no one is sitting at the front desk. I’m the only one in the room. A soft voice whispers in my ear, telling me I need to fill the position of manning the front desk. Spiders dance along my spine, elevating my heart rate.

‘I’m not ready to take the front desk!’ I shout. My throat is now parched.

In the corner of my eye, I see a girl from my year moving across the room towards a lift. I chase after her, desperate to escape the front desk. The girl is unfazed when I get into the lift and follow her through the shopping complex. She leads the way to an auditorium. This is where our ball rehearsal is taking place. A beautiful, older woman is coordinating the ball rehearsal. I’m captivated by her confidence and loving energy.

She tells us, ‘We are all beautiful no matter what size or shape we are’.

I woke up feeling like I’d been embraced by a loving force. As I recounted the dream in my journal, the symbolism of the shopping mall stood out. “Out with the old and in the with the new” is an underlying message behind consumerist culture. In my dream, I infer the shopping mall represents the need to acquire new things. Not necessarily material items, but experiences that push me to grow more into myself. A part of me was scared by this, thus seeing the emergence of newness as a threat. I didn’t feel ready to take on the “front desk”. Following the girl from my year was a way of clinging onto what I knew, while avoiding the responsibility of stepping into my power.

When we arrived at the ball rehearsal, the female coordinator gifted us a loving message. I interpret “we are all beautiful no matter what size or shape we are” as a message of self-compassion in addition to the literal imperative of embracing physical diversity. No matter what place or stage we’re in, we must cherish ourselves. We’re not going to know everything all at once, and we’re not all cast on the same path. We each have our own unique gifts and callings - which are beautiful.

Working with our dreams, art therapy can unlock unconscious beliefs that motivate our actions. Be it the belief that we’re not good enough or the belief that we’re not ready, art therapy enacts an environment for us to visually see how we’re feeling. Pay attention to the colours you’re attracted to, the way you’re hands naturally move across the page and how you feel as you draw. This unveils the make-up of our psyche.

Invigorates artistic practice

Artists can use art therapy to penetrate creative blockages. Whether we struggle to execute what we think we should be producing or feel uninspired, art therapy unshackles our internal barriers in reigniting creative flow.

My artmaking became contrived when I finished my higher school certificate major work. I was fixated on striving to be technically perfect over honouring my instinctive expression. Nothing I did was ever good enough. I hated my art and I hated myself. I was stuck in my head, struggling to meet the expectations I set. Artmaking just wasn’t fun anymore.

A year later, I experienced a creative resurgence. Doing art therapy reawakened my love for creating visual art. Drawing without the oppressive influence of my rational mind brightened me up. I loved letting go. I loved seeing the fragments of my being unify on the page before me. I drew things I never imagined I’d produce.

How many times have we heard someone say, ‘I can’t draw?’ We can’t draw what we think we should or what we think is “good”. But who decides what “good art” is? Creating art shouldn’t be about ticking boxes or pleasing others. Art is here for the spirt. Forget the subjective attractiveness of the drawing and other people’s judgments. Honouring our truth through creativity is an elixir for the soul.

Unlocks the doors of our perception

With the way our culture has evolved, we unconsciously shut ourselves off to ways of being that live outside what we believe to be “normal”. Experiences that challenge our ideas on what’s “normal” can be confronting. It forces us to re-evaluate our understanding of ourselves and the world we live in.

I regularly experience epiphanies when I do art therapy. The more I do it, the more I feel into other ways of perceiving. I often wonder why our head (or rational mind) is emphasised as the governing centre of intelligence. If every cell in our body is alive, how can our head be the only source of guidance? This pondering led me to the chakra system. Chakras are the energy centres in the body. It’s important to keep our chakras in balance as they have a strong bearing on our health.

Art therapy helps us connect in with the energy of each chakra. Relinquishing the desire to control the way our drawing looks unlocks our ability to harness other ways of seeing. What other means of perception is possible when we explore chakras?

Here are seven main chakras in the human body:

• The root chakra lives at the base of the spine. This energy centre is believed to be the source of our grounding, equipping us with the tools we need to remain resilient during turbulent times.

• The sacral chakra is situated below the belly button. As the domain of creativity and sexual energy, this energy centre underpins our sense of emotional connection to ourselves and others.

• The solar plexus lies in the stomach area. This is our power source. Our solar plexus helps us feel confident in ourselves.

• The location of the heart chakra is inherent in the name. This energy centre is connected to our love and compassion.

• The throat chakra is another chakra whose location is encapsulated in the name. Unsurprisingly, this energy centre relates to our ability to communicate.

• The third eye chakra lives in between our eyes. This is connected to our intuition and imagination.

• The crown chakra is at the top of our head. This is the source of our spiritual connection to ourselves, others, and the universe.

When a chakra is underactive, we struggle to express the attributes of the chakra. Imbalances in the chakras enact a ripple effect of further physical and emotional instability. This can manifest through heightened fear, indecisiveness, disease and/or infirmity. Art therapy calls upon the repressed aspects of the self. The more we do art therapy, the more we’re able to tap into other ways of perceiving.

Is art therapy something you engage in? How do you feel when you do art therapy? What has art therapy allowed you to learn?