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.

This book occurs at the intersection of philosophy, critical theory, psychoanalysis and the visual arts. Each chapter looks at art produced in various traumatogenic cultures: detention centres, post-Holocaust film, autobiography and many more.Other chapters look at the Juarez femicides, the production of collective memory, of makeshift memorials, acts of forgiveness and contemporary forms of trauma. The book proposes new ways of 'thinking trauma', foregrounding the possibility of healing and the task that the critical humanities has to play in this healing. Where is its place in an increasingly terror-haunted world, where personal and collective trauma is as much of an everyday occurrence as it is incomprehensible? What has become known as the 'classical model of trauma' has foregrounded the unrepresentability of the traumatic event. New, revisionist approaches seek to move beyond an aporetic understanding of trauma, investigating both intersubjective and intrasubjective psychic processes of healing. Traumatic memory is not always verbal and 'iconic' forms of communication are part of the arts of healing.

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.

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.

"Highly recommended to anyone that has an interest in aromatherapy and the energetic and vibrational aspects of essential oils."—Kelly Holland Azzaro, Past President of the National Association for Holistic Aromatherapy "An excellent resource...Kac's work is thorough, easy to understand, and gives you the depth to want to delve into using oils on a regular basis."—Ann Boroch, CNC, award-winning author of The Candida Cure Includes more than 100 recipes for everyday use Explore a new world of aromatic awakening, physical healing, and natural delight. The Healing Art of Essential Oils is a comprehensive guide to fifty carefully selected oils, providing a master class in uses, blending, history, and spiritual benefits. Learn how to use oils for physical and emotional healing. Prepare oils for relaxation, stress relief, and treating ailments. You'll find all kinds of uses, such as what oils work best in love spells and how to create rituals with oils. Enjoyed for their spiritual and beneficial properties by cultures around the world for thousands of years, the essential oils presented here will help you achieve holistic wellness and personal enrichment. Praise: "In this well-researched book, Kac Young leads the reader through the history of essential oils and their use in daily life, beautifully bringing together ancient wisdom with modern thought."—Kavitha Chinnaiyan, MD, director of Advanced Cardiac Imaging Education at Beaumont Hospital

Heal yourself and your community with this proven 12-week program that uses the arts to awaken your innate healing abilities. Acclaimed by hospitals and caretakers from around the world, Healing with the Arts brings a tried and true program out of the medical field and into your home and neighborhood. Improve your physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual health in just 12 weeks. Whether you are ill, suffering from emotional trauma, or looking to unite your community, the arts become the conduit to restore your wellness and thrive in life. Dr. Michael Samuels and Dr. Mary Rockwood Lane created and developed this unique and powerful process to help anyone heal. Through innovative art projects—from the visual arts, movement and dance, writing, and music—along with spiritual practices and guided imagery, readers learn to get in touch with their inner muse and inner healer. Based on years of research and experience in the medical community, Healing with the Arts sets the stage for a more meaningful and healthier existence.

Time and time again the arts have been called on to provide respite and relief from fear, anxiety, and pain in clinical medicinal practices. As such, it is vital to explore how the use of the arts for emotional and mental healing can take place outside of the clinical realm. Healing Through the Arts for Non-Clinical Practitioners is an essential reference source that examines and describes arts-based interventions and experiences that support the healing process outside of the medical field. Featuring research on topics such as arts-based interventions and the use of writing, theatre, and embroidery as methods of healing, this book is ideally designed for academicians, non-clinical practitioners, educators, artists, and rehabilitation professionals.