Week 10- Expressive Media

Fun!

Today we had the opportunity to engage in some arts and crafts to practice creative expression. The three stations were:

Lab Activity

1) Clay Molding

My Clay Moulding

For this activity, we were instructed to create our external selves, that is, mold ourselves as other perceive us. We spent 10 minutes working on the clay, and 10 minutes discussing what we formed, why we made it like it was, and how we felt doing it. Some people made abstract representations of themselves, but I chose to do a literal representation. I made a flat mold of my face, with holes for eyes and a slight smile. I tried to make my nose stand out, because that's what I think is most noticeable on my face.

2) Music Making
We walked into the room to find drums, cymbals, triangles, maracas, and other various instruments. For this task, we had different people take turns leading the group in a beat or rhythm. To make it interesting, the 'leader' would announce an emotion (happy, sad, angry, excited, etc) and we would try to reflect that in the music we were making. The activity was fun and nonjudgmental, and it was interesting to see that when we were organized, we could make music that was pleasant to the ears, and when we were disorganized the music almost hurt my ears!

My Finger Painting!

3) Finger Painting

 The last activity was finger painting! It had been a while since the last time I had done finger painting so I especially looked forward to this activity. For this, we were instructed to draw our 'inner selves' ie. how we saw ourselves. In my painting, I felt compelled to fill up all the white space with bold colours and hard lines. I think this painting represents how I feel on the inside. I'm constantly doing something, I'm organized, and I've always got a lot going on! I chose to use strong, dark colours because I feel strong-willed.

Application to OT Setting

I think that these were very useful activities to use in my future OT practice. These were activities that allowed someone to express themselves and communicate their feelings without using words. It is a powerful set of activites that I think would help to facilitate group connection. We also discussed populations that activities like these would be good for. This basic list is just some of the suggestions that were made:

• Eating disorders
• Substance use disorders
• Intellectual Disabilities
• Pediatric
• Communication Disorders
• Mood disorders
• Anyone!

I found that I left the class feeling energized, relaxed, and in a better mood. The activities helped me to socially engage with my classmates, participate creatively, and work without having to speak too much. These are the kinds of activities that people might not often think to do, but certainly do have therapeutic value.


Additional Resource

TeBeest, R., Kornstedt, K., Feldmann, C., & Harmasch, L. (2002). The use of expressive arts in various occupational therapy settings. Occupational Therapy Programme, 493-498.

This article found that 78% of occupational therapy practitioners use expressive arts in their practice. In particular, I agree with the statement, "Meaning and occupational are inherently involved in expressive art therapy because the patient conveys thoughts and feelings through selection of activities, materials, and completion of projects."

Homewood Health Centre: Creative Arts Therapy
http://homewood.org/programs-and-services/therapies

I was interested to read about Homewood's creative arts therapy program. There goals are as follows:

• to encourage communication through the use of art media and to increase awareness of self in relation to others
• to facilitate exploration and communication with the unconscious
• to allow individuals to discover their unconscious and learn from it in some constructive ways
• to provide opportunities to discover and utilize positive-adaptive creativity