Art Therapy Exercises

ART THERAPY EXERCISES 

For this weeks open blog post, I found a website with many helpful art projects that serve as a fun project for kids as well as a therapeutic project. These art projects help children and adults suffering from stress, trauma, unhappiness and other mental conditions to cope and rid their lives of the negative aspects. The article that I found provides 100 different exercises to try at home to help yourself, your child, or anyone else suffering from these conditions. The different art projects are separated into categories according what trait the projects help to obtain to get rid of. The categories are as follows (I have also included an example of one project under each category to better explain their purpose): 

Emotions 

•  Design a post card you will never send: Write a post card expressing your unresolved anger towards someone that is not meant to be sent

Relaxation 

• Paint to music: Paint a picture while listening to your favorite music in order to calm yourself and relax

Happiness

• Take photos of things you think are beautiful: Take a picture of things that you think are beautiful, even if nobody else likes them. Frame them for a constant reminder of the beautiful things in life. 

Portraits

• Create a body image sketch: If you have body image issues, create a sketch of how you feel about your body and allow yourself to see how it matches up to the reality of how your body actually is

Trauma and Unhappiness

• Draw a place where you feel safe: Draw a place where you feel you are always safe and do not have to worry about anything else in life

Collaging

• Create a motivational collage: Create a collage full of things you find motivational and hang it somewhere that you can see it daily to motivate yourself 

Self

•  Build your own website: Create your own website where you can express all your own personal views, ideas, and concerns

Gratitude

• Create a family tree of strength: Create a family tree showing all the people that you are connected to and that support you in life

Inside the Mind

• Draw your dreams: Since you can learn a lot from what goes on in your dreams, keep a journal and write down what you dream and use it as inspiration for a painting or drawing

Miscellaneous

• Make art out of recycled materials: Use materials that have meaning to you to create a new project to show how you can remodel and reevaluate your life. 

 To me, these art projects are all very interesting and sound like great ideas, but I'm not sure how effectively they would help cure someone's mental conditions in reality. I find there would be issues like... what if the person is not artistic at all? Then art therapy probably won't have the biggest effect on them. Or, maybe some people will not be able to see the underlying meanings of why they are creating these art projects and what they are trying to learn about themselves through the process, which would again make these projects somewhat pointless. However, everyone is different and maybe this type of therapy can greatly help someone to cope. It can't hurt to try! And, even if they don't help, then at least you just made a fun art project for the day!

If you would like to see the complete list of art projects, go here >> 100 Excellent Art Therapy Exercises

WORKS CITED

"100 Excellent Art Therapy Exercises For Your Mind, Body, and Soul." Nursing Schools. 9 January 2011. Web. 15 April 2013.