A Primal Look at Art Therapy

Wednesday, February 26, 2014 SPORK! 0 Comments

A few years ago as I was beginning to get a vision for what would become The Primal Connection, I was exploring the idea of vitality from new angles. I was interested in what lay beyond the basics for human survival: nutrition, movement and fitness, sleep, stress and sun. I wanted to examine the connections between our hunter-gatherer ancestors’ lifestyles (what we can reasonably determine and presume) and the existing (if somewhat marginal) activities and therapies that appeared to show therapeutic benefit in scientific studies. I talked about bibliotherapy, writing therapy, music therapy as well as other more enigmatic but relevant topics like silence, solitude, ritual and retreat. What could be gleaned from the research (and a bit of Primal philosophizing) for further refining the good life – the deeper sense of well-being that accesses and actualizes the many facets of our evolutionarily fashioned humanity? In the midst of my recent blogging forays into vegetable recommendations, gentle cooking, pollution mitigation and resistant starch, I’ve been thinking lately about those past explorations. Truth be told, looking into those areas influenced my life at the time. I’m one to write about what I live – or at very least try what I write about….

Recently, another one of those intriguing intersections between evolutionary activity and modern creative therapy has been on my mind. It’s one of those situations where you encounter something and suddenly you keep running into it. A friend’s mother is in hospice care and has her best days during the art therapist’s visits. A work associate talked about doing art therapy before the birth of her second child to release lingering tension from a traumatic first childbirth. Another friend’s child does art therapy in counseling sessions around family transition. I run into articles about art therapy for recent combat veterans and for women with breast cancer. It makes me stop and wonder. What is it about art that gets to the depths of our experience – often when other “normal” approaches fail? And what does (or should) this mean for everyday Primal life?