Transformational Art Therapy, Counselling and Psychotherapy, Art as Soul Medicine Workshops.
SERVICES
Welcome
Claire is a qualified holistic and creative therapist who has been in private practice for 15 years and offers a variety of therapeutic modalities within a safe, supportive and empathic environment. Having trained in art, counselling, psychotherapy, integrative bodywork, spirituality and art therapy, Claire is passionate about creatively working at the body-mind interface and the integration of mind, body, soul and spirit. Experiential studies in yoga, buddhism, and various forms of spirituality have led to a particular interest in experience that is grounded in the body. As a mother and grandmother, Claire finds that life experience is invaluable to her work as art therapist, counsellor and psychotherapist.
Services:- Art Therapy
- Counselling
- Focusing
- Somatic Psychotherapy
- Art as Soul Medicine Workshops
Helping clients to discover resources, inner strength and wisdom forms the foundation of my work - Claire.
ART THERAPY:
Healing our Hurts
Art therapy is in the forefront of Complementary Medicine and Psychology. It is a well-developed process for exploring in depth the concerns and problems you may be experiencing in your life. For traumatised individuals, in particular, creating artwork can be both relaxing and healing. When an adult, adolescent or child sits quietly before a blank sheet of paper and some crayons or paints, he or she is drawn into an internal world of feelings, worries, wishes, hopes and fears that may not be possible in words. When this activity takes place within a safe, respectful, supportive and encouraging setting, positive development as well as meaningful and coherent self-esteem is promoted ... growth and healing become possible.
"Art heals by accepting the pain and doing something about it..." - Shaun McNiff.
Private sessions are an opportunity to focus on your exploration more exclusively and are tailored to discovering what is most appropriate for you. In an Art Therapy session, Claire offers a wide range of creative tools to access or bridge inner worlds, shapes of life and embodiment.
Person-centred counselling, creativity using a variety of art media, clay sculpture, collage, healing mandalas, mask creation and exploration, meditation and relaxation, creative visualisation, dream exploration, gestalt processes, symbol amplification, life mapping, myth and ritual, Hero's Journey and journalling, body-oriented focusing; movement, breath and sound, are some of the tools that may assist your self exploration.
Claire works with a wide range of needs: Life crisis and transitions, deep sadness/depression, loss and grief, stress and anxiety, abuse, trauma, relationship issues, feelings of isolation, women's issues, body image issues, chronic illness, creative blocks; clarifying strengths and life path/direction, spiritual concerns and dilemmas; body/mind/soul integration; authenticity - and any life situation that invites change and healing.
Benefits of Art Therapy: Art Therapy is able to address a vast range of needs and purposes. Person-centred art therapy, and Creative Arts Therapy, releases and enables shifts in awareness and integration. These self-expressive processes allow us to see and experience more clearly our inner selves, offer insights beyond the scope of the reasoning mind, provide different perspectives, and serve as avenues to blocked feelings and issues that might not readily surface using traditional therapy. Beneficially, integrating the intelligence from both right and left sides of the brain brings about the ability to function more fully and discover meaning in our lives.
"Each of us is an artist of our days; the greater our integrity and awareness, the more original and creative our time will become." - John O'Donohue.
Why is a transpersonal approach important?
A transpersonal perspective offers you as a client a more holistic experience. Within a transpersonal approach to therapy, the longing for spiritual expansion is acknowledged as an essential aspect of human experience and development.
Transpersonal Art Therapy enables access to a deeper level of wisdom and healing than we normally access in our daily lives. The central concept is self-transcendence, or a sense of self-identity which extends beyond the individual personality or ego and is more unified with the whole. The root of the term transpersonal or literally "beyond the mask" refers to this self-transcendence. Transpersonal Art Therapy focuses on self-realisation, dealing less with curing and more with holistic healing.
The approach is about trusting human potential and the creative spirit and believing that we all have the ability to change and re-create ourselves in the present. In aligning personality with soul we come to appreciate the importance of emotional awareness and the journey toward spiritual growth, wholeness, wisdom and compassion. "The longest journey that you will make in your life is from your head to your heart." - Gary Zukav, The Heart of the Soul.
What is Soul?
The deepest part of our consciousness is our soul - the very essence of our being. Soul is a cohesive force that unites our body, heart and mind, and is our peaceful inner core of love and wellbeing. By learning how to connect with and understand the Soul we can alter the path of our life and our relationships.
Claire has a special interest in engaging art as soul medicine and is able to assist you in accessing your soul and life-enhancing symbols and myths.
Myths offer us metaphors for the powerful archetypal forces at play in our ordinary lives. We sometimes forget that our own lives have all the elements of a powerful myth: joy, suffering, triumph, failure, birth/death/rebirth, love and loss. Give yourself the opportunity to look at what has been locked away in your heart since childhood, and look at it again from an adult perspective.
"Image is the language of the soul" - Carl Jung.
"The greatest privilege of a human life is to become a midwife to the birth of the soul." - John O'Donohue.
ART AS SOUL MEDICINE WORKSHOPS:
Various creative methods are offered to access the healing energy that exists within art and participants are supported to explore their soul's capacity for self-healing. Group work enriches this experience. You will find that blocked energy can be released and the healing process begins to take place as you discover your own world of images and symbols, and learn to trust the process of discovery which unfolds as confidence increases. Claire uses multimodal aspects in the workshops - drawing, painting, collage, claywork, dream work, guided visualisation, mask making, sound and movement, healing mandalas are processes which may be utilised. It also becomes possible to create sacred art and craft. As an artist, Claire has found these creative processes invaluable in her own life and art.
"Through art I was able to bring grace into my life. I took things that were most bothersome and made them the subject matter of art. The toxin became the antitoxin, the medicine of art." - Shaun McNiff
"Art and healing are intimately connected because it is through imagination and image making that you can stimulate and witness the process of becoming whole. Even if you already are satisfied with your life, relationships, health, and work, your creative source brings you closer to who you are and reflects your inner being in ways that other forms of healing cannot." - Cathy A. Malchiodi.
There will be on-going Art as Soul Medicine courses during the year in 2011.
Testamonials:
"I am so glad that I took the step forward into this course as it has been such a nurturing, comforting, healing space to enter into each week. I have been amazed at the creations that I have produced - in terms of insights I have gained and the aesthetic pleasure I receive from looking at my pieces. I will treasure the memory of this experience>" - Michelle S, Psychologist.
"The Art as Soul Medicine Course proved to be a wonderful gift to myself. It allowed me a peaceful, creative, safe space to explore the power of art and how it can help me cope with the demands of life." - Lisa - 43, Psychologist.
"Using art for therapy has interested me for sometime, and now I will be able to integrate it into all my own healing work. This course has been such a wonderful process for me. Claire is a great facilitator; she is understanding, has deep knowledge and a steady hand. This course has enabled me to work through the powerful exercises and learn more about myself through the freedom of creating. My subconscious has spoken." - Annie Larkin.
"This is the second time I have done Claire's Art as Soul Medicine course. I really enjoyed having a safe, supportive environment in which to connect with my inner self through different forms of creative process. I feel that I have new-found tools to use in my day-to-day life to help with my personal growth. Claire provided clear guidance, support, and encouragement. I am grateful to have had this experience." - Nikki Moore.
"Thank you Claire for the opportunity to experience your Soul Medicine Workshops and the gentle unfolding of the messages the processes had for me. The Soul Collage and the Tree processes really resonated and I feel that more insights will occur over time. Wishing you ongoing success for the future. Thanks again." - Tina Croker.
"I very much enjoyed taking part in the art therapy course as it gave me the tools to gain more insight into my complex personality. I found it very inspiring to learn different techniques to access different parts of myself and express these through using my dorment creativity. It has been useful to gain new skills and confidence to be able to further explore my creative side. I would recommend this course to anyone who wants to find out more about their own creative potential and who is interested in self exploration." - Margit Batchelor.
Healing Mandalas Workshops:
Create your own personal healing mandalas. Mandalas are a wonderful tool for self discovery, integration and healing. A group workshop enriches this experience. No art experience necessary.
The word Mandala is derived from the root "manda", meaning essence, and "la" meaning container, thus a Mandala is a container of essence.
Of all art, the Mandala is the most sacred. It brings our intuition and logic, our right and left-brain hemispheres, into balance. Become an active Co-Creator!
Dates to be advised. Call today to register your interest in future mandala workshops.
COUNSELLING:
Person-Centred counselling has its roots in humanistic philosophy that empowers the person and helps them to become more self directed. Claire brings unconditional positive regard, empathic understanding and congruence to her client sessions and has faith in the astonishing resources of human beings, however wounded they might be by life's vicissitudes.
"Man is ready and willing to shoulder any suffering as soon and as long as he can see a meaning in it." - Victor Frankl.
How can counselling help?:
Through counselling you are assisted to gain insight into your difficulties, to develop greater resilience in your life, and to live a more meaningful existence with greater awareness. Urgent life events can be major catalysts for an awakening experience.
Therapeutic issues for which people have sought guidance include:
Grief and loss, anxiety and worry, life-threatening illness, the breakup of an intimate relationship, life transitions, parenting, children leaving home (the empty nest), loss of a job or a career change, self esteem, body image issues, difficulties caused by trauma and abuse, and powerful dreams that convey a message and can serve as awakening experiences.
A body-oriented technique called Focusing, where the felt sense is explored, may complement counselling and help to develop greater awareness.
FOCUSING:
Focusing is gentle, creative and often profound technique, and is a safe way of being with any experience, even the most disturbed and disturbing. It is based in an ability that most of us have, or can develop - that of listening to what our subtle inner feelings are telling us. What we find when we do so is usually fresh, new, surprising, and deeply satisfying. In trying to fathom a problem or difficulty, focusing on a bodily felt sense can bring creative steps of new development and resolution. Focusing shows you how to listen more empathically to parts of yourself which were previously inaccessible. Focusing offers a fresh look into how your whole being is experiencing something - mind, body, and spirit - in the present moment. Listening to the felt sense opens the doorway to your body's wisdom - bringing next steps towards growth and healing. Focusing points you in the Life-forward direction.
"Your body knows the direction of healing and life...If you take time to listen to it through Focusing, it will give you the steps in the right direction." - Eugene Gendlin.
Benefits of Focusing:- Facilitates connection among mind, body, heart and spirit
- Opens the doorway to the body's innate wisdom
- Cultivates acceptance, loving kindness, and compassion toward self and others
- Accesses creativity
- Aligns you with your authentic self
- Reduces stress
- Improves decision-making
- Serves as an entry into spiritual dimensions of living
Focusing can also help these issues:
If you feel: blocked; unworthy; reactive; overwhelmed by too many decisions; lacking authenticity; in a spiritual wasteland; facing a health challenge; a desire to follow your inner journey.
Focusing combined with art therapy:
Focusing provides an effective way of listening to the innate wisdom the the body, while art therapy harnesses and activates creative intelligence. This Focusing-based approach to art therapy helps you to befriend your inner experience, access healing energy from the body's felt sense to express in art, and carry forward implicit steps that lead toward change.
SOMATIC PSYCH0THERAPY:
Somatic Psychotherapy assists you to develop closer links between the language of your body and the language you speak - so that what you say and what you do come closer and closer together. This will enable you to move out of misunderstandings that are often painful - and it becomes possible to bring about an integration between your doing and your being so that how you spontaneously express yourself will bring more satisfaction to your life.
How can Somatic Psychotherapy help?
Many approaches are available - body-oriented focusing, mindfulness and body awareness, psychodynamics, transpersonal psychotherapy, among others. Somatic techniques include the recognition of non-verbal signals, observation of breath, posture, energetic patterns of expansion and contraction and unconscious movements of the body which convey information about your emotional state and enables greater awareness of your conscious and unconscious patterns.
Claire facilitates self-exploration, examining emotional blind spots and understanding relationship patterns. The goal is to alleviate the most obvious symptoms and to help clients to lead healthier lives.
Who would benefit from Somatic Psychotherapy?
Therapeutic issues for which people have sought therapy include: depression, anxiety, relationship difficulties, emotional instability, grief and loss, recovery from trauma and/or abuse, meaninglessness, despair, spiritual issues and overcoming addictions, as well as stress-related physical ailments.
Appointments and Fees:
The initial consultation is a two-way assessment to choose which modality is appropriate for you.
Fees: Single session: $80 (1 hour). Longer sessions: $120 (1.1/2 hours); $150 (2 hours). Fees include GST.
The initial Art Therapy session is an extra half hour at no additional cost to allow enough time to gain a detailed understanding of your needs, goals and expectations and to enable an art therapy process.
Cancellation Policy: At least 24 hours notice must be given for cancellation of appointments or a full fee will appy.
Art Therapy Workshops and groups: Bookings are necessary as places are limited.
Parking is readily available. Train and bus routes are also nearby.
All clients and enquiries are treated with absolute confidentiality at all times.
If you would like to make a booking, or if you have any questions, please contact Claire by phone, or email as listed above. Phone: (02) 9453 2484, Mobile: 0414 956 064
QUALIFICATION DETAILS
QUALIFICATION DETAILS
Diploma of Transpersonal Art Therapy, IKON, College of Complementary Medicine, 2005-2007
Grad. Diploma of Somatic Psychotherapy, Somatics Body Oriented Psychotherapy Training, 1997-2000
Cert. Accredit. Lifeline Sydney Telephone Counselling, 1997-1998
Cert. Somatic Integration Therapy, College for Experiential Psychotherapy, 1994-1995
Member of Australian Counselling Association
Professionally insured
Adheres to above Association's Code of Ethics
Involved in ongoing clinical supervision and professional development
ABN: 38940819311
Art Therapists, Counselling, Psychotherapy
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