Creating a safe environment for Creative Therapies Group Work

People interested in creative therapies tell me they seek creative work to experience connection with themselves and with others who are also drawn to self-expression through therapeutic arts. Even so, some may feel uncertain about the presence and connection with others, who may evoke unforeseen memories and emotions.  Being present in a group involves risk. Thus, the essential foundation for group work is a structure that contains, and prioritises safety, trust-building and choice for every member. We seek to create an inclusive and non-judgemental environment. Mutually agreed ground rules and boundaries are established, and this group agreement is negotiated and revisited when necessary.

Structure of Creative Therapies Sessions

• Welcome: gather in circle, invitations to embark on a journey
• Warm up/ice breakers – breathe – stretch – move
  Relaxation, Movement meditation, visualization, shake out
• Transition into ‘as if…’
  We cross metaphorical bridges-symbolic connections
• Creative invitations: Theme–Focus: art forms/creative media processes
  (Dance, Storytelling, Poetry, Art, Drama, Music, Voice, Film)
• Express – share – empathic witness – reflect
• Return - grounding closure - departure

This shape provides a secure enough base. My aim is always to create a safe, transitional space, within a potentially healing circle (Smail 2013). I encourage you to use  a sketch book/journal  week by week.
The creative therapeutic space is separate from habitual everyday activities; a shared, imaginary space where healing work may take place.

Around  the edges of this healing circle, we might safely enter into a liminal realm, where in surprising ways, we can discover beneficial possibilities to meet ourselves and each other with compassion and acceptance. Once gathered together, centred in breath, pulse and the rhythms of life, we begin with an ‘ice breaker’. From the circle, we venture outwards into creative territory, and return together for shared reflections and closure at the end of every session. The circle creates a sense of familiarity, a resting place, from which we venture forth.

In beginning I invite  ‘Metaphors be with you.’ Making eye contact, I might open with a short, ambiguous poem

just imagine now…
imagine… it’s as if…
in between our words and thoughts
pictures dancing poems…
what if ?
as if before…
between our breath in words
being always started here
what was sleeping now awakens…
our bodies - alive
breathe silent music
move through symbol
dance between words
to welcome the unsaid

I pause and might then repeat the words, shifting the order of lines, the emphases, shifting pauses between the words and phrases.
I then invite a creative response; a brief expression of how you are in the moment - symbolically, through sound, spoken or otherwise with gesture or movement.
We are entering a healing, embodied yet metaphorical realm, which offers an opportunity for authentic expression, but without explicit revelation. Much can be revealed safely in this way – or not.

Carefully selected expressive arts activities are focused towards what is going on for you in the present, and can help creative participants to stabilise. All aspects of each person are welcome within the limits of the therapeutic agreement and ground rules.

We connect with our selves and with each other through metaphor, rhythm, gesture, movement, sound, pictures, poems, and stories. I invite expression of the multiple-relational, physical, imaginative, and emotional, remembering that below the surface, behind each person’s mask, may dwell great pain:  

‘breathe … might you allow yourself now to just stay with what you are experiencing, just notice … What are you aware of now?  What is alive for you … in you  … right now… breathe into it … move if you need to … what do you need to feel safe now?