Waldorf Pedagogy | District 7| art therapy

Methods I use and their effects:
 

Plastic-therapeutic design brings imagination, experience and action into a lively interplay. When applied in a targeted manner, it has a strengthening and regulating effect on the vital forces and ego forces. In particular, the clay is shaped by the hands. Objects are created by touching, attaching, removing, pushing and pressing as well as using simple tools.

 

In the process, spaces, surfaces and rhythms are created, which, in interaction, lead to a living form. The work with spaces and surfaces as well as with the weight of materials is always an examination of oneself. When working with clay, the patients themselves get involved in the healing process. This therapy method is suitable for mental abnormalities such as hyperactivity, depression, fears, concentration problems and problems from the autistic spectrum disorder. For each individual disease situation, therapists develop special exercises and sets of exercises.

 

Drawing and painting therapy promotes the experience and creation of color qualities and their relationships with each other. Awareness-building and psychological processes are stimulated by various painting methods and color combinations. Colors speak directly to us with their qualities of warmth and cold, light and darkness, transparency and density, closeness and distance. In therapeutic painting, brushes, liquid paints, chalk, charcoal and pencils are used for painting and drawing.

 

Painting on the surface expands psychic experience, lines help to resonate and delimit, shapes create order and balance. Perception is trained, fantasy is stimulated by the creation of inner and outer motifs. Both strengthen the sensation and feeling, with effect on all rhythmic functions. Painting exercises warm up and relax the organism and deepen the qualities of the soul. 

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Thereby they stimulate releasing, structuring or stabilising processes. One-sided psyche behaviour patterns or pathological processes, whether in an acute or chronic state, are purposefully counteracted. Through targeted exercises, stiff tendencies are resolved, excess strength is structured, excitement is calmed, stagnation is stimulated and self-confidence is developed. The non-verbal, pictorial examination of biographical themes supports the process of finding oneself.

 

Creative textile art and collages: from fragments new units are created. “Dry" materials such as papers, fabrics and yarns with different structures, textures, colors and qualities are used (any other necessary materials are available). Knowledge about biographical connections is acquired, which helps to feel (again) and find the "golden thread" and thus to experience one's own experience in a new light and from a new perspective.

Therapy forms:

• Private lessons

• Small Groups