Play Therapy, Art and Sandplay for Children, Adolescents and Adults Too

Play Therapy, Expressive Arts Therapies, and Sandplay Therapy for Healing, Clarity, Deeper Self-Knowledge and Emotional Growth!

Open for Children, Adolescents and also Adults.

Individual or Group Sessions can be arranged.

Sessions take place at:

• In Touch Community Services, #48 McKinley Road, Forbes Park, Makati City.   
• The Rainbow Playroom, 1 Mezzanine, OLS Building, Gorordo Ave. cor. C. Rosal Street, Cebu City.

For inquiries and appointments, please send an email to therainbowplayroom@yahoo.com, or a text to 0917-8553305.

Or, for Cebu, call The Rainbow Playroom at (032) 5128012.

* Priscilla (Peachy) Gonzalez Fernando is a certified Clinical Psychologist with the Psychological Association of the Philippines (PAP) and a Board Member of the Philippine Association for Child and Play Therapy (Philplay).

ART Therapy Video

Here's a wonderful video that very simply and clearly explains the nature, benefits and great potential of art therapy, sandplay, and symbol work. The moving images tell all. :)



See the original video at: Google Videos- Art Therapy

How is art therapeutic?

(by art therapist Beverly A'Court, on her website Art Therapy.)

"Art-making involves a series of processes, from an inner image, impulse or subtle sensation to manipulation of materials and the completion of an entirely unique object. In this way art mimics life in many ways (physical, messy, unpredictable) and art-making is a form of play.

Art Therapists have tried many ways to describe how art therapy works.

Here are some components typically observed:

Art-making can provide the experience of resonance between an inner feeling and one’s depiction of it, of recognising oneself. The sense of ‘having made something’ of a bad experience, can itself be the beginning of a growing sense of agency and participation in both one’s illness, recovery from it and the creative and healing processes of life and the beginning of a growing self-esteem.

A sense of physical aliveness and re-connection as feelings are embodied in art-play, allowing a natural, childlike creativity to be brought to bear on painful experiences, experimentation to explore alternatives in art and everyday life.

The bringing together of pre- or un-conscious aspects of the self with the conscious, reasoning self, involving mind and body, matter and spirit, past and present, ‘inner adult and inner child’.

This has been likened to an alchemical process where a new state emerges from mingling aspects of the self, the art materials and the therapist’s witnessing presence.

Art making encourages a state of ‘reverie’ - relaxed absorption - where feelings, thoughts and perceptions outside our everyday thinking become accessible and can emerge as insight.

Despite the gravity of many conditions the art process itself, even when representing a negative experience, can be experienced as deeply relaxing, satisfying and positive.

Sharing with a therapist (who is also an artist), in a ‘public’ space, can be liberating from the strain of keeping painful experiences ‘private’ and hidden.

The rhythms and cycles involved in creative processes and the feelings associated with them can help us to develop appreciation of, and ways to work with, cycles and rhythms in our own lives and the rest of creation.

Exercising the imagination allows re-connection to deep dreams and life-aspirations as well as insight into deeply held fears, fantasies and negative self-images.

It is my view that Art Therapy often, if not always, involves transpersonal experience. Participation in creative processes in art therapy promotes an awareness of one’s profound interconnectedness with all of life and a deeper, broader sense of one’ self and one’s life.

It provides a context for the development of both mindfulness and meaningfulness."

If you have had this same experience with art in your own life, do send us your story by posting a comment!

Video: Art therapy for stress management

In this Mayo Clinic video, art therapist Hain Crown demonstrates three simple, but good-looking, art techniques that are perfect for stress management.

Her instructions are very simple and she demonstrates them step-by-step, making you want to do them right now!

As she demonstrates, she also gives many pointers for creating art in a way that is healing, relaxing, and freeing.

To watch the video, click here:
Art Therapy for Stress Management

The Creative Journal by Lucia Capacchione

When i was in graduate school, one of our schoolmates luckily shared this wonderful book with us. A classic in Creative Journaling, it was born out of the author's own painful, beautiful, and magical process of healing and growth.

I have treasured it always, and was truly so sad! when, after leaving grad school, i couldn't find it in any other library. One fine day, a friend of ours walked into our house, said, "I thought you might like this," and handed me this book! He had found it at a second hand bookshop and had no idea how long i'd been looking for it!

The exercises in here are classic and always highly useful. I recommend it for use with children, teens, adults, and for yourself.

It's now on a reprint, and can be found at Amazon.com (see the Amazon widget, "Great Books to Check Out!" on my sidebar). Dr. Capacchione also now has "The Creative Journal for Teens", "The Creative Journal for Children", and "The Creative Journal for Parents."

Some of the exercises from the book are on an online version of the Journal! Check it out at http://www.healthy.net/CreativeJournal/ .

You can also catch Dr. Capacchione at her own website: http://www.luciac.com/index.html

Here is a very helpful website on Creative Journaling, by artist and creativity coach Amanda Joy, who was a student of Dr. Capacchione: http://www.joycreativejournal.com/

Enjoy!

A Window Between Worlds: Providing a Window of Hope

“Did you know that my dad hit me and it hurt? I don’t like my dad and I don’t want him to hurt me anymore. I learned in Windows that it was okay for me to tell you that.” Three-year-old RJ recently spoke these words to Karen Martz, one of our newest Children's Windows leaders at Angel Step Too. Karen describes that right after this conversation, which happened at naptime, RJ rolled over and slept well for the first time since he had arrived at the shelter.

This is an excerpt from a news article about A Window Between Worlds (AWBW), a non-profit organization dedicated to using art to help end domestic violence. At AWBW, creative expression is used extensively to help survivors of abuse to develop a renewed sense of hope and possibility.

Read the rest of the article at:
http://www.awbw.org/awbw/news_detail.php?id=19

Listen to Survivors Speak in this video:
http://www.awbw.org/awbw/video_popup.php?clip=survivors_hi

Smallest Witnesses: The Crisis in Darfur Through Children's Eyes

During a 2005 mission to Darfurian refugee camps in Chad, two Human Rights Watch researchers gave children paper and crayons while their families were being interviewed. Unprompted, the children drew scenes of devastation: pictures of their villages being attacked by "Janjaweed," bombings by Sudanese government forces, the shootings, the rapes, the burning of entire villages, and the flight to Chad. The children, from seven refugee camps, insisted the drawings be shared with the rest of the world.In Smallest Witnesses: The Crisis in Darfur Through Children's Eyes, participants discussed the images created by the children, and the impact the crisis has had on its youngest victims. The program featured Jemera Rone, Sudan Researcher, Human Rights Watch; Olivier Bercault, Emergencies Researcher, Human Rights Watch; Dr. Annie Sparrow, Third Millennium Fellow, Harvard University Researcher, Human Rights Watch; and moderator Jerry Fowler, Staff Director, Committee on Conscience, U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum.To learn more about Darfur's smallest witnesses, visit the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum at http://www.ushmm.org/conscience/analysis/details.php?content=2005-06-03&menupage=Sudan

Hello!

My blogger nickname is abbie-at-play and i am a psychologist in the philippines. i work with children, adolescents, and adults also.

in my work, i use play and creative expression to help my clients enhance their self-awareness, healing and growth. i use play and creative expression for my own growth too.

in 2006, with some fellow psychologists, i had the great luck to learn sandplay therapy from two very generous sandplay therapists from australia-- Karen Daniel and Anna Russo. (You can read more about their work at http://www.emotional-transformation.com.au/index.html)

since then, sandplay therapy and creative journaling have been my main tools in my work.

It works great for adults!

"Abbie" is the name i gave to the little "girl" in the picture here, in the very first sandtray that i made in my new playroom at home. i identify with her a lot. she likes to play and she has a lot of precious stories to tell, just like all of us.

Let's walk this journey together :)