Not everyone is ready to step into themselves.
So, I mould my body into your posture. So that you can see you when you’re not ready to step into being you.

I mirror you back.
I imitate that gesture you did without realising.
I lower my back as far as you tell me when you speak of carrying that load.

‘It’s difficult to see… I didn’t know I do this to myself’ he said.

But it’s how I can show you: I’m off balance when I’m in this position. I’m in pain. I can’t breathe well. I need to slow down. And chances are, your experience is causing you the same - mentally, spiritually, emotionally or physically.

Using my body as a modality to communicate what was living within me was something I avoided when I first started out in art therapy. The words I used, the terminology, the stories, the imagery, the proofs I used were well rehearsed and already sustained me in my experience.
But once I invited my body into the conversation, pretending it didn’t have a voice felt insincere to my knowing and healing. It rebutted what I thought was obvious. Shaped what I couldn’t speak. And revealed what no longer served me at that point in my life.

Using the body can be a simple hand gesture, a bending of the body, or simply positioning yourself in the room. It is an entire apparatus of feedback and information that could lead you to what needs to be seen and unlearned.

Your whole body is voice.

‘It hurts to be present.’ - Marie Howe

Here's the thing..

The self-inquiry process is not always a pretty one.
Questioning our stories is a weighty task. It is no 'happy pill' and nor should we always burden the process, and ourselves, with that expectation.

Not everything we create and communicate will be beautiful, because not everything we experience is beautiful. If anything, I find the art therapy process to be expansive in how it acknowledges our complexities, our nuances, our gaps, our multitudes, and how it holds space for those parts of us to breathe.

With expansiveness and growth, however, comes a grinding of edges and an unsettling of our ideas of who we think we are.
It can happen in the gentle whispers of willow charcoal against the paper, it can happen in the kneading of clay, it can happen in the wide shoulder swings of splashing ink, it can happen in your breathing to endure, it can happen after you've left the room.

The therapeutic process won't dissolve your struggles and challenges. But my hope is that it helps bring language to the mess, the tough, the hurt and the falling apart.

At times, to simply utter our truth can be the start to healing.