Insights From the Summit: The Power of Metaphor
At the end of last calendar week, I attended a wonderful conference in New York City, The Expressive Therapies Summit. My weekend was full of learning and discovery. Surprisingly though, one of the best teachers I met wasn't at the summit, but sitting beyond from me on the railroad train. He'd never heard of art or expressive therapy before.
Expressive What?
As I began my usual explanation about art and expressive therapy, he shot questions at me left and correct, cutting me off before I could finish my sentences. This might have been unnerving, being grilled this way, but information technology was strangely invigorating.
Behind every question was a assumption, some other question, and a challenge. How does this work? Why this and not that? He was trying to construct a model of understanding. He pushed me to meliorate empathize and explicate what I do. There's a lot of value in that.
Ane of the anecdotes I told him in order to help explain the work was a visualization and drawing technique I often do with clients. I used my own experience with the practice as my case.
Visualizing a Solution
The exercise entails asking the client to choose a concrete problem on which to focus. In one case this is clear, you lead them through a short visualization. Beginning with their attention on their breath, you lot guide them to a state of at-home and inwards focus. Next yous invite them to imagine that they have their ain "mental screen" upon which images can appear.
You advise to the client that they imagine that any they need to help them with their problem is going to announced on their mental screen. You encourage the client to accept whatever first appears, no matter how odd or unconnected it might seem.
They should spend time with the epitome, noting its colour, texture, weight, olfactory property, taste, and any emotional response they experience while looking at it.
Next, the client creates a drawing of the visualization, and so writes descriptively nigh the epitome through the five senses, their emotional response, and whatsoever other commentary most the experience.
When I personally did the exercise the first time, what popped upwards on my mental screen was a peach. Given that I was thinking about a piece of work problem, I wasn't immediately sure what it meant, merely decided to trust it every bit instructed.
I began telling my seat mate how a juicy peach helped me to see that I wasn't fully appreciating how rich, or "juicy" the work was already. Before I could go along nigh my peach metaphor, he cut me off, noting that had an apple popped upwards, either juicy fruit would have helped me as, and therefore the image may be less relevant than your ability to extract metaphoric significant.
That'southward Merely Bang-up
I stopped to consider this. It was an excellent question, really. Our ability to open the imagination, experience something new, and consider how any metaphor could utilize is a very of import element of this exercise. Indeed, had a dump truck come on my screen, I certainly could have extracted useful metaphors and lessons.
Yet, information technology seems to me that the peach popped up because of the particular lessons I needed in that moment, that an apple, or a tree, or a dump truck could not accept pointed out to me. I also saw that the peach was a very personal metaphor for me and therefore carried more ability than an apple tree might have.
Peaches, when perfectly ripe, are an evocative sensory experience. Your fingers are greeted by a soft, delicate skin that is covered with a nearly transparent fuzz. A ripe peach demands care and attention in a way that you lot handle it. Grasp it too hard and you lot puncture the skin. Apples bruise likewise, merely are rough and tumble.
A peach'due south odor rises to meet yous, telling of its sweetness.
Apples go along their sweetness undercover until you bite them or bake them.
When a peach is truly ripe, you bite information technology, and the gummy juice runs down your chin, over your fingers, and down your arm.
Apples don't.
I love me a good crisp, sweetness apple. But it ain't no peach.
The peach taught me to be delicate with my expectations on myself and to handle the work with care. Information technology taught me to pause long enough to appreciate it'southward textures and dash, it's sweet, and to potable the juice in each moment earlier drawing my conclusions.
The peach taught me that trying likewise hard would mean missing the delicate dazzler and perfection right in front end of me. I needed to irksome downwardly, take stock, and encounter that things were really quite skillful. The only trouble was that I was moving too fast, and my expectations were off.
An apple probable could have taught me some very valuable lessons, but for a different trouble.
Metaphor
Metaphor is i of the most powerful tools in expressive therapy, and the i that ties all of the expressive arts together.
Whether like my engineer seat mate, you reply to scientific explanations of how metaphor helps to engage more centers in the encephalon than talking alone, or you lot respond to a more creative caption of how metaphor has helped man kind sympathize and make meaning of our experiences for all of recorded history, you cannot but recognize the power of metaphor.
It'southward a short mitt for understanding our experience. Metaphor is image, sound, touch, gustation, and smell. It'southward archetypal, universal, and personal all at once. We are excellent at hiding from our feelings and ourselves in language, simply nosotros are non and then adept at doing so when express ourselves through the arts, and the arts, like dreams, naturally engage metaphor.
Letting Get
It turns out my seat mate is function of a squad of researchers at MIT creating an emulsion that, when applied to surfaces, will allow things to release and slide easily off the surface. He used the instance of a ketchup bottle. Can you imagine non waiting for your ketchup? No whipping the bottle dorsum and along to coax the ketchup into descent? Good things volition come up to those who wait,and those who don't.
Are you coming out of there?
Equally therapists, we are oftentimes looking for emulsions. To assist our clients release hurting, trauma, old habits, and negative thought patterns. And sometimes nosotros are looking for adhesives. To help someone put their themselves, or their life, back together.
There'southward no emulsion that can make the pain of sexual abuse slide off a 7 year-quondam's body, or magically make a forty year-old woman who has ever been told she is worthless believe that she is worth being loved. There'southward no chemical that will put someone's relationships dorsum together for them after years of distance due to mental health and substance corruption issues.
While scientific discipline has washed a lot to illuminate the parts of us that are chemical, electric, and mechanical, it doesn't empathize the soul.
And so every bit expressive therapists, we assistance you speak to pain through metaphor. And which metaphor matters. It is your particular metaphor, informed by your life experiences, feelings, and worldview. Your soul prescribes information technology especially for you.
The Ability of Metaphor
As I attended various sessions on drama therapy, phototherapy, fine art therapy, and dance therapy at the meridian, I was struck by how cardinal metaphor is in every single approach. I knew this, merely looking at information technology through the lens of my conversation with this man crystalized information technology for me.
Josie Abbernate talked about the importance of clients and therapists seeing the metaphors in their clients' stories, and how she sees them throughout her own life. She told how her clunky car is often her greatest teacher.
Every time her auto breaks down, she asks the mechanic to tell her very specifically what is wrong with it. She listens very carefully and asks questions until she really understands information technology, so extracts the metaphors so that she can apply them to her life.
This is a style of making meaning.
It can't all be boiled downwards to analytics, and neurons, and science. Part of what feels expert virtually being homo is feeling a sense of wonder.
Remainder and Connectedness
This may exist slightly hard to imagine, but my Dance Therapy instructor at the briefing, Kathleen Rea, gave u.s.a. a powerful practise. She asked us to get together with a partner and balance a pen on our index finger, with the partner touching the contrary end of the pen with their index finger. In this way, the two partners cooperate to go on the pen balanced. We were then instructed to "permit the pen to movement where information technology wish[ed]."
Once my partner and I positioned the pen betwixt our 2 index fingers, I quietly focused, listening for the shift in mood that would tell me what to do side by side. Before I had a chance to sense anything, I was working frantically to keep upwards, moving quickly effectually the room, here and there, up high, over the teacher's head, to the left, the right, and in circles again and once more.
Despite my exact and non-verbal cues to wearisome downwardly, it seemed my partner needed to motion fast while I needed to move slowly. While I'chiliad sure information technology wasn't her intent, I felt dizzy and unheard. It was a familiar feeling.
All this came up simply through "following a pen" around the room.
Finding Connectedness
Sensing our misattunement, I turned to another group for the adjacent practice. This time, in groups of three, we were to keep two pens aloft, with the person in the middle holding 1 pen on each index finger, and collaborating with her two partners. In order to help her focus on the senses, she kept her eyes closed.
I invited my two partners to go in the centre first. For each, I and the third partner were advisedly attuned to our "blind" partner – responding to every twitch, rise and fall, a pure trip the light fantastic toe forming between us, born of the energy between those four fingers.
Watching the wonder on their face, a smile half spread, eyes closed, and so attuned, and so enlightened – information technology was full of beauty. I wished that I could take hold of the heart of the other partner, to share fifty-fifty more in this amazing experience.
When it was my turn, I airtight my eyes without hesitation, and noted how advisedly my partners responded to my every move, following me upward, downward, a little forward, back. I likewise wanted to wing a flake, like my start partner, and now I could. I felt heard. Connected.
I did not know these women's names, but afterwards we looked at each other in the eye. We shared a bond because of this feel.
Cute. Meaningful. Trip the light fantastic.
Yous can imagine how a therapist could use this exercise to assist a client look at her dynamics in relationships with others. In the first example, if the client felt "empty-headed and unheard," does she detect this reflects how she feels in her relationships?
The client's feeling response to the exercise is part of the therapeutic work. Instead of talking virtually feeling pushed effectually, unheard, and used, she and the therapist accept a physical experience of playing out this dynamic, and they can experiment with irresolute it.
Metaphor can create distance, which makes working on our bug so much less scary and overwhelming, and more fun.
Metaphor is a container.
It creates distance, condom, and pregnant.
Doesn't expressive therapy sound like an astonishing way to explore yourself, grow, change onetime habits, and find more pregnant in your life?
It is!
If you are looking to learn more about yourself, grow past trauma, transcend anxiety and depression, or you are just sick of traditional therapy, expressive therapy might be for yous.
You lot can observe a local fine art or expressive therapist through this directory, or you tin can telephone call me to explore how I might help you.
What are the powerful metaphors in your earth?
Dancer Photo: Copyright: <a href='http://www.123rf.com/profile_karpenyuk'>karpenyuk / 123RF Stock Photo</a>Source: https://mindfulartstudio.com/insights-from-the-summit-the-power-of-metaphor/
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