A charismatic holistic physician offers those with chronic illness the healing tools of creative self-expression using exercises from the visual arts, as well as music, writing, dance and performance.

Inspiration and guidance for creating journals or scrapbooks for self-healing and inner strength while managing life’s difficult moments. In follow up to Faith Books & Spiritual Journaling, author Sharon Soneff shows that there is a richer, deeper reward to creative journals beyond the beauty they supply. In this new volume, Art Journals & Creative Healing, she demonstrates with real excerpts from artistic journals that the process of journaling can be a tool in navigating through some of life’s more challenging seasons, as well as a tool to support personal growth and achievement. Complex human experiences are treated with dignity and sensitivity, and will inspire readers dealing with their own issues. Hope, growth, and healing are at the center of each work. Additionally, the ideas, artistic approaches, and resources provided by the author and numerous contributing artists will help the reader with creative ideas for working through various situations through their reflective and artistic journal keeping. Through a marriage of beautiful imagery, uplifting quotations, and other rich sources, Art Journals & Creative Healing offers its audience a full-bodied artistic experience, along with journaling worksheets and journal prompts to help readers get started with their own journals. Specific topics addressed include using mediums as metaphors, journaling for cathartic expression, gaining wisdom through introspection, finding strength in the midst of suffering, and finding beauty in pain. Art Journals & Creative Healing is a supportive and encouraging text offered as a creative companion for overcoming the challenges of life.

In this extensively updated second edition, clinician, teacher, medical scientist and artist John Graham-Pole offers countless fun and artful exercises, together with many stories drawn from his forty years of practicing the art and science of medicine. John is the co-founder of Shands Arts in Medicine (artsinmedicine.ufhealth.org) and the University of Florida's Center for Arts in Medicine (arts.ufl.edu/academics/center-for-arts-in-medicine/). He currently co-owns with his wife Dorothy Lander HARP The People's Press (www.harppublishing.ca).The cover art for the book was created by internationally recognized artist, educator and activist Maureen St. Clair. In his Foreword to John's book, Dr Patch Adams writes: "Creativity is great medicine for all, both the creator and the one who experiences it. It prevents disease and promotes wellness. It is not an indulgence; it is fundamental to medical practice." Christopher Bailey, WHO's Arts and Health Lead, says: "Dr Graham-Pole's approach is in sync with the WHO definition of health... the attainment of the highest state of physical, mental, and social wellbeing." And Jenny Baxley Lee, Director of UF Health Shands Arts in Medicine, calls this new edition "A timely invitation to re-inhabit our creative selves at every stage of our lives."

Over the past two decades, there has been a major increase in research into the effects of the arts on health and well-being, alongside developments in practice and policy activities in different countries across the WHO European Region and further afield. This report synthesizes the global evidence on the role of the arts in improving health and well-being, with a specific focus on the WHO European Region. Results from over 3000 studies identified a major role for the arts in the prevention of ill health, promotion of health, and management and treatment of illness across the lifespan. The reviewed evidence included study designs such as uncontrolled pilot studies, case studies, small-scale cross-sectional surveys, nationally representative longitudinal cohort studies, community-wide ethnographies and randomized controlled trials from diverse disciplines. The beneficial impact of the arts could be furthered through acknowledging and acting on the growing evidence base; promoting arts engagement at the individual, local and national levels; and supporting cross-sectoral collaboration.

This book is about redefining the value to health of creativity. Creativity derives from biological changes during human evolution as a tool that is needed for survival. The successful use of creativity generates feelings of pleasure and self-esteem that are beneficial to health. In particular, it can help depression. Current values do not give adequate importance to creativity, and the author challenges these values in this book. The book contains contributed chapters on a theory of creativity as an innate capacity, the therapeutic benefits of creativity, factors that encourage or inhibit creativity and current research on these, and accounts of creativity both as individual projects and as groupwork.

This book can be described as a clear, keeping it real and succint portrayal of the personal growth journey of an African American man seen through his eyes beginning with a recounting of real life experiences obtained while growing up in his ancestral home in Guyana. Readers then get to travel along on this interesting journey through his young adult and middle age years while sharing in his adventures and travels as an immigrant in Canada.

This is a creative workbook for individuals who want to explore their relationship with food and their bodies in a new way. It is based on the idea that art is one of the most powerful inroads to psychological healing through the fostering self-expression, insight, and empowerment. Creativity connects us to our inner voice; healing occurs when we listen.Written by board-certified art psychotherapists, the pages of this workbook literally serve as a canvas for thoughts and feelings ¿spoken¿ primarily through art and elaborated upon through writing. Readers are encouraged to draw, write, and create directly in the book. These images, symbols, and journal entries then become a ¿personal signature¿ that can be accessed and explored to resolve any obstacles to emotional well-being. Fifty-eight expressive art projects and corresponding written exercises lead readers through specific stages of self-discovery related to disordered eating patterns, body image issues, relationships, life skills, emotions, self love, and personal transformation. These various tasks can be completed independently, in conjunction with individual therapy, in a treatment facility or self-help group, or in an educational setting. A list of basic, inexpensive materials is provided.This workbook is appropriate not only for individuals who are seeking answers to a variety of issues with food and weight, but also for the professionals who want innovative materials to use with clients in the recovery process.

Using the lives of artists as inspiration, "When Walls Become Doorways" explores the transformative power of illness and the ability of productivity and creativity to heal the soul.