Healing through art Healing through art (December 24, 2004)

Living Arts Center offers new spiritual answers

By Roseanne G. Pereira

Determined to help others experience expressive art therapy, psychologists Jan Fisher and Christine Evans opened the Living Arts Center in Mountain View in September 2002.

The center, located at 2680 Bayshore Parkway, combines psychology, spirituality and expressive arts. It offers individual counseling and free monthly community workshops, as well as ongoing groups of four to eight people that explore different themes.

"Silicon Valley is not an environment that invites reflection," said Marnie Fehrer, one of the Living Arts Center's clients. "But the center is -- it's a gigantic play studio for discovering yourself."

One of the center's most recent community workshops was a celebration of the winter solstice. According to Fisher, who facilitated last Saturday's workshop, the winter solstice can signify a painful part of the year; because days are darker, people may get depressed.

Participants at the event used art supplies to create a visual representation of something positive they had decided to welcome into their lives.

As in the winter solstice event, activities at the center focus on expressive arts therapy. It differs from more common talk therapy where clients talk to therapists who may then offer comments and suggestions.

Instead of solely using verbal communication, clients at the Living Arts Center are able to use expressive arts such as music, movement, visual arts and drama for self-discovery.

"Expressive arts therapy heals in a deeper way than just talking does," said Fehrer, who does not otherwise consider herself an artistic person. "It brings out my creativity and lets me see more of who I am."

Rather than plan out an art project ahead of time, expressive arts therapy can be successful precisely because it is able to bypass the mind, said Fisher. "Using the expressive arts, we are able to get out of thinking and instead feel things through our body, our hands. We let our hands do what they want to do."

Examples of the types of activities at the center include making collages, visually plotting out a timeline of one's life, listening to songs that recall important moments in life, using clay to create sculptures of significant people in one's life and even acting out scenarios.

"A woman might talk about how mad she was at her husband the night before. Here, we get her to draw how mad she felt the night before; different aspects of her emotions are revealed," said Fisher.

"What is important is not technical skill, but the powerful energy we put into whatever emerges and how that is a reflection of ourselves," she added.

When clients can see and touch their creations, their perceptions change and they begin to recognize feelings the artwork depicts and gauge the intensity of those feelings, she added.

While some clients come to the center with a specific goal in mind -- to work out an issue with a boss, to be a better artist, to get a boyfriend -- Fisher concluded that inevitably, "It is the inner process that becomes the more interesting story."

E-mail Roseanne G. Pereira at rpereira@mv-voice.com

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