Heal yourself and your community with this proven 12-week program that uses the arts to awaken your innate healing abilities. From musicians in hospitals to quilts on the National Mall—art is already healing people all over the world. It is helping veterans recover, improving the quality of life for cancer patients, and bringing communities together to improve their neighborhoods. Now it’s your turn. Through art projects, including visual arts, dance, writing, and music, along with spiritual practices and guided imagery, Healing with the Arts gives you the tools to address what you need to heal in your life—physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual. An acclaimed twelve-week program lauded by hospitals and caretakers from around the world, Healing with the Arts gives you the ability to heal your family and your friends, as well as communities where you’ve always wanted to make a difference. Internationally known leaders in the arts in medicine movement, Michael Samuels, MD, and Mary Rockwood Lane, RN, PhD, show you how to use creativity and self-expression to pave the artist’s path to healing.

What is art therapy? How do art therapists use art to understand and to help people? What does the future of art therapy look like? This book provides a "map of the territory" of this rapidly-growing discipline. Surveying the field from both a historical and a current perspective, the book covers a wide variety of practitioners and approaches. The reader will learn how art therapy is used to assess and to treat people of all ages and conditions - in many kinds of settings, including clinics, hospitals, schools, prisons, community centers, and nursing homes. Art Therapy: An Introduction brings art therapy to life with over 40 clinical vignettes and almost 200 illustrations of artwork and of art therapy in action. Offering a rich array of sources and resources, the book will be of interest to clinicians and teachers in many fields, such as psychiatry, psychology, social work, counseling, art, and education.

All across the country, a groundbreaking movement is forming in the field of health care: art and medicine are becoming one, with remarkable results. In major medical centers such as the University of Florida, Duke, University of California, and Harvard Medical School, patients confronting life-threatening illness and depression are using art, writing, music, and Dance to heal body and soul. -A woman with breast cancer who has never made art before finds healing and empowerment by creating sculpture. -A man with AIDS uses journaling to overcome feelings of despair and helplessness. -A woman suffering from depression following her divorce learns to dance for the first time in her life--and in he body's movement she rediscovers a sense of play and joy. -A musician gives meaning to his art by helping people with illness transform their life through music. -Physicians and nurses are beginning to use creativity to complement and enhance their medical practice. Creative Healing presents readers with the inspiring ways in which the arts (painting, writing, music, and dance) can free the spirit to heal. In one volume, the authors detail the transformative power of a diverse range of artistic activity. Michael Samuels, MD, has over twenty-five years of experience working with cancer patients and is the best-selling author of Seeing with the Mind's Eye and The Well Baby Book. He teams up with fellow pioneer Mary Rockwood Lane, RN, PhD, to share their extraordinary findings on the healing powers of the arts. Through guided imagery, personal stories, and practical exercises, they teach you how to find your "inner artist-healer," enabling you to improve your health, attitude, and sense of well being by immersing yourself in creative activity. Both Samuels and Lane offer invaluable insight through their personal journeys and extensive groundbreaking research, noting that "prayer, art, and healing come from the same source--the human soul." Because there lies an artist and healer within each of us, Creative Healing is an invaluable resource for anyone wishing to discover the beauty of music, dance, writing or art and connect with a deeper part of oneself. Filled with inspiration and guidance, it will help you make changes in your life and the lives of others and gain access to the sacred place where inner peace exists.

This fascinating collection of essays contains a variety of perspectives about the use of expressive arts for facilitating physical and emotional healing. Each author within brings a fresh approach and unique experiences to their writing. Within these pages, you will find many ideas for the use of the arts and can learn how to engage the inner layers of the self that allow natural healing processes of the body and soul to flourish. When we fully engage an art modality, we find ourselves in a place in our consciousness that could be called 'healingspace,' where we feel ourselves whole and re-member ourselves as well. From psychic trauma to physical illness, dis-ease of many kinds may be addressed through the various techniques discussed here. The tools offered by some authors are population specific and age appropriate, while several authors have given us the philosophical underpinnings for it all. While the authors within represent the grassroots voices of this new and rapidly expanding field, several of them have developed their own methods for using the arts, and have thriving practices. Our approach is wholistic. Music, visual arts, movement, dance, and poetry are discussed as separate modalities and in combination with one another in a process or flow. The reader will engage in our experiences with these modalities as they have been lived. The complementary CD that accompanies this book will allows the listener to have a full sound experience of toning. If a rationale is needed for establishing arts programs in medical centers or other health facilities, it can be found here. The book offers tools for self development and for group facilitation. Those wanting to expand their healing practice through the use of the arts will find the book to be a faithful guide. Anyone wishing for a fuller understanding of how the arts may work to facilitate healing will find much food for thought within these pages.

There is growing interest internationally in the contributions which the creative arts can make to wellbeing and health in both healthcare and community settings. A timely addition to the field, the Oxford Textbook of Creative Arts, Health, and Wellbeing is the first work of its kind to discuss the role the creative arts have in addressing some of the most pressing public health challenges faced today. Providing an evidence-base and recommendations for a wide audience, this is an essential resource for anyone involved with this increasingly important component of public health practice. The textbook offers key insights for developing new creative arts-based approaches to health and wellbeing, and shows how these can augment established practices within a variety of social settings. Theoretically grounded and with a strong evidence base, this book brings together contributions from both practitioners and researches to provide a comprehensive account of the field. Using international examples, the textbook elucidates the various approaches that have successfully led to improvements in public health, whilst case studies in healthcare practices evaluate the impact of arts-based initiatives in a multitude of international settings, life-course stages, and social milieus. The Oxford Textbook of Creative Arts, Health, and Wellbeing is a comprehensive resource that will be essential to anyone with an interest in this increasingly important component of public health practice.

A practical and insightful guide, Holistic Healing investigates the practices, theories, research, and history of holistic approaches as it relates to a wide range of health care and human service professionals. This text offers a uniquely comparative and integrated understanding of both ancient and modern Indigenous, Eastern, and Western traditional practices, including bodywork, expressive arts, energy medicine, eco-psychology, transpersonal psychology, naturopathy, homeopathy, Ayurveda, traditional Chinese medicine, and Indigenous healing practices. Practitioners and scholars in health, nutrition, psychology, and social work contribute to research that focuses on individual, organizational, national, and global holistic intervention applications. Chapters in this collection address critical issues such as colonization, human rights, the environment, peace and conflict, and equity and inclusion. This collection is a timely and practical resource for students of undergraduate health, social work, sociology, holistic healing, and psychology programs and is also a great resource for professional practitioners.

Examining the complex relationship between art and therapy, Pulse takes as its starting point the seminal work of Joseph Beuys and Lygia Clark, whose respective artistic practices promoted curative effects. From these pioneers spawns a generation of contemporary artists who consider art as sites for restorative activity: Gretchen Bender and Bill T. Jones, Tania Bruguera, Cai Guo-Qiang, Felix Gonzelez-Torres, Irene and Christine Hohenbuchler, Leonilson, Wolfgang Laib, David Medalla, Ernesto Neto, Hannah Wilke and Richard Yarde. In addition to documentation of these artists' works, Pulse provides theoretical, historical and critical insight into this subject via essays by Sander Gilman, author of many volumes on the relationship between art, science and medicine; Sandra Alvarez de Toledo, a Paris-based author and curator; Thierry Davila, Curator of Capc, Bordeaux and author of L'Art Medicine; Jessica Morgan, curator of the related exhibition and newly appointed curator at the Tate Modern; and Gwendolyn DuBois Shaw, professor of African American studies at Harvard University.