Category: Therapy

There’s a wonderful technique used by Somatic Experiencing therapists, called Voo Sound. Not only is the name fun, the technique itself is fun to do. 

The essence of the technique is to vocally emulate the deep, thick, low sound of a foghorn. You might also think of a tuba, bass clarinet or a cello playing the very lowest notes it can, long and slow. 

When I first tried Voo Sound out myself – I learned of it when I was working as a therapist at Villa Kali Ma and another practitioner showed it to me – I thought it sounded a little bit like Tibetan throat singing. I also loved it right away, as it seemed uncommonly fun for a trauma technique.

Down the Rabbit Hole of Voo

Little did I know, my first Voo Sound was the beginning of me going down the rabbit hole of  learning all I could about how the vagus nerve can be called upon to help us heal, and why singing, chanting, toning, and music in particular are so powerful for people with trauma, mental health struggles, and addiction. 

Turns out, how and why Voo Sound works to heal trauma explains exactly why listening to Tibetan throat singing and Gregorian chants has such powerful effects to calm a person down too. Voo Sound, Tibetan throat singing, Gregorian chants all access the vagus nerve. 

As detailed extensively in Steven Porges’ work on polyvagal theory, and emphasized in Somatic Experiencing founder Peter Levine’s work as well, the role of the vagus nerve is central to the body’s mechanisms for restoring us to safety, balance, and health after disruption. 

The Vagus Nerve

The vagus nerve is a thick, evolutionarily ancient bundle of neuronal pathways that runs all the way from the base of our brain to the top of our gastrointestinal system, playing a bridging role between the operations of these two command centers. 

Because the vagus nerve’s job is to induce a return to the emotionally regulated state, one way to assist the body to regulate is to find ways to encourage the vagus nerve to operate, through gentle stimulation.  

The Voo Sound stimulates the vagus nerve just so. The vagus nerve, responding to this stimulation, communicates with (or triggers – these are both simplifications for the sake of grasping the idea) the parasympathetic branch of the nervous system, the part that is tasked with guiding the body to create states of peace, safety, calm, and ease. 

Finishing Unfinished Business

The purpose of Voo Sound is to swiftly regulate the body. Interestingly, Voo Sound isn’t about changing your experience though, so much as surrounding your experience with support. Rather than trying to “disappear” your discomfort, the intention is more to give that discomfort a space to be in. Like putting your distress in a soothing sound bath so it can unwind. 

This distinction is important, because Voo Sound isn’t intended to suppress your trauma responses, but actually allow them to complete what they’re trying to do. 

This is because of another insight from the world of trauma research: the reason your trauma symptoms won’t just “go away” is because your trauma response has a job it is trying to finish! 

Voo Sound helps a trauma response finish its job. When a symptom, such as anxiety, finally has a chance to finish the job it’s here to do, it will at last be freed to move on and leave you alone forever.

If that sounds amazing, it is. Wanna try it? 

Get Vooing

To try Voo Sound out, go somewhere where it’s ok to make some noise without feeling worried someone is listening in on you. 

Wherever you take yourself, whether sitting, standing or lying down, take a moment to adjust your body to be as comfortable as is available to you right now. Take a couple of conscious breaths in the most comfortable version of this body position. And begin. 

1. Take one very big deep belly breath, and on the outbreath, tone the syllable “voo” in the lowest pitch you can generate, while still feeling comfortable and relaxed in your throat and vocal chords. 
2. As the Voo Sound comes out of you, notice the v-sound buzzing in your lips. Change the shape of the -oo sound as desired, playing around to find the richest strongest and most sustainable tone, relaxing any unneeded extra effort or tension. Allow yourself to notice and enjoy any vibrations you witness in your chest and abdomen.
3. At the end of your first Voo Sound, let your intake of breath be natural and easy. Let the body do what it wants to do.
4. At the top of your next in-breath, wait for a beat, then let another long, deep, round Voo Sound out. Enjoy the the good vibrations of the deepest sound you are able to make.
5. Repeat this cycle as long as you want to if it is feeling good and calming, centering and grounding. If you’re not liking the effect, stop it and don’t worry about it, there are other techniques for accessing your vagal nerve if this one isn’t for you. 

To learn more about Voo Sound, take it from the horse’s mouth by reading Peter Levine’s Healing Trauma: A pioneering program for restoring the wisdom of your body.

Thanks for reading!

Internal Family Systems Therapy, also known as Parts Work, is a heartwarming and efficient modality for helping to create a better relationship among the different Parts of ourselves internally.

The reason to do that is to create better coherence, balance, and stability within oneself, so that all the many sides of us live in peace internally. 

The Inner Village

We can think of the many Parts of us within as different inhabitants of a small town. There may be fights and feuds, boundary disputes or especially close relationships. 

The Self is the benign mayor, one who can unify and lead all the Parts who live in this community towards something that meets the needs of all members. Good Self-leadership internally leads to greater harmony, wholeness, and feelings of connectedness.  

Two Troublesome Characters: Critic and Taskmaster

Today I want to write about how to work with the Taskmaster and the Critic, two Parts who often make us feel miserable. 

Critic is the Part whose job it is to criticize us, to remind us of social expectations to which we are supposed to conform. 

Critic generally schools us in unkind, if not abusive, ways, through belittling, insulting, denigrating or shaming us, to get us to feel bad and therefore be motivated to change. If you have low self-esteem, or struggle to take a compliment, that’s a sign the Critic may be over-empowered. 

Taskmaster is the Part whose job it is to watch the clock, get us to work hard, tell us to hurry on up and to stop being so “lazy”. If you tend to fight your own inner timing and rhythm, perhaps struggling with overdoing it or obsessively driving yourself to the limit, your Taskmaster is probably over-empowered. 

Taskmaster and Critic are similar Parts in the sense that they are both oriented towards getting us to fit in “out there in the real world.” One stands off to the side telling us to hurry up: “More, more, faster, faster, get to work you lazy fill-in-the-blank.” (Inefficiency, rest, pause are not to be permitted). The other shouts unhelpful comments, such as “You think you can present this sloppy work in a meeting? What’s wrong with you? You’re such a fill-in-the-blank.” 

You can see that they both love to use labels to inspire us to conform to society. They’re both pretty mean – until we change our relationship with them.

Sound Familiar?

Is this one-two punch familiar to you? If so I would say it is because these are two of the most over-empowered and favored Parts in our society. 

When I say they’re over-empowered and favored, I mean that if we allow these two to rule our lives, we initially get social rewards, such as assistance surviving childhood and early adulthood. 

However, they come with a heavy cost in the self-esteem department: both insist that we are never good enough, that we have not earned, we are not proven, our worth has not yet been accomplished or demonstrated. 

Critic’s special toxicity is to judge us very harshly. Taskmaster’s toxicity lies in never letting us pause long enough to feel our human experience.

What’s the Solution?

The good news is there is a cure! The cure is to find a way to talk to these Parts, get their perspective, and befriend them. Through befriending our inner troublesome characters, we gradually turn them into allies working on the same team as our Self. 

When we dialogue, we try to be genuinely open, compassionate and curious, so that these Parts feel truly valued and may therefore speak directly to us of the burdens they have carried for so long. Once we deeply understand why these Parts are how they are, they’ll be relieved of their “job”.

Journal Time: Parts Dialogue with Critic and Taskmaster

Here is a suggested dialogue starter for getting to know your Critic, your Taskmaster, or both!

You: Hi there [Name of Part], thank you so much for being here. I would like to understand you better, as I realize that you are quite important, you have done a lot for me and that you are coming from a very good place of wanting to help me make it in this world. I want to understand better what it is that you do for me, and how I can support you to get your job done, so that you’re not so alone with the burdens you carry. What do you think? Are you willing to dialogue a little bit?

Journal out the rest and see what happens!

A Path to Inner Unity

Internal Family Systems, also known as Parts Work, is a notably effective approach for dealing with addiction and trauma, that’s why Villa Kali Ma has embraced it to help women recover.

The overall effect of Parts Work is to unify our insides, so that all the various sides of us feel welcomed and loved. This state of inner self-reunion causes the need for addiction as a pain-modulator to go away. 

Collective Psyche

Psyche is our aliveness, what inside of us feels, wants and imagines. Our psyche gives life flavor, depth, intensity, and is what makes life worth living. 

To psychologists, psyche is transcendent – it infuses absolutely everything in this world, not only our insides but also what we experience “out there”. Everything within us is mirrored outside of us, and everything outside of us also reflects and corresponds to something inside.  

The Broken Teapot

If you imagine that in our original nature we were once whole, all unified and aware of that, then we can see that psyche has been shattered or fragmented, much like a teapot that fell to the ground. We want to gather up all the pieces, and not throw any of them away, because we need everything for putting psyche back together again.   

In Parts Work all sides of psyche, inside or outside of us, are recognized and included as family members. Loved for who they are, embraced, listened to, valued and honored as important. 

Dignity is granted to Parts who have lived long in the shadows, those aspects of our nature that have been devalued by ourselves and others. There is, therefore, a huge work of redeeming, reclaiming, recognizing, retrieving, and repairing. 

Understanding Shadow Pieces

Parts Work assumes that each Part has good intentions, and that even the worst of our bad behavior makes sense when seen with compassion and understanding for what that lonely fragment of psyche is trying to do. 

If a Part is doing something that we find strange or extreme, then we must look to what it is that  piece of psyche is trying to accomplish, as well as what exactly it has to work around.

If we look with compassion and a readiness to validate the legitimacy of the barriers, that there must be a restriction or a blockage or an entanglement or entrapment going on, if psyche is not healthy or balanced, and we intend to help unblock psyche’s path, much can be accomplished as we assist psyche to succeed. 

Broken and Whole at the Same Time

One thing that people sometimes wonder, is whether the brokenness of psyche is good or bad. It is certainly painful, especially when Parts are severely disconnected inside and outside of us. 

But our individuation is also what gives rise to the diversity of our perspectives, so it is very enriching for psyche, too. Even though the eventual goal is reunification, we should not think of the brokenness as only bad. 

Just as when you close your eyes to listen to music, restrictions can be enriching. They often lead to greater creativity in our responses. 

Psyche will grow and develop based on these many different points of view, and undergo many transformations. She will synthesize her experiences, and then forge new points of view based on that synthesis. For all of these curiosities, being separated is temporarily helpful. 

We are both broken and whole at the same time. Rather than trying to sidestep the existential fact of psyche’s brokenness, we can learn to be both the differentiated droplet and the ocean water too. 

Journal Prompt: Give Parts A Voice

One thing we know for sure is that each Part has a story to tell. Each Part longs, like any other human, to be recognized, loved, known, and acknowledged for their hard work. They will welcome any attention and time we can give them. 

Next time you’re aware of a Part, of yourself, another person, or your world, ask it to tell you its story. If you’re willing to listen curiously and compassionately, it will have a lot to say!

Hi dear Part, I see you and I am curious about you. I wonder if you would like to tell me about yourself? 

Suggestions for Parts to dialogue with: 

-A Part of nature, such as Rain

-A Part of your personal psyche, such as Your Creativity

-A little object in your world that you like, such as Half-Eroded Seashell I Found

May your explorations be satisfying!

Parts Work Works!

Women recovering from addiction, and especially women who recognize that trauma is at play in their lives, benefit from a modality called Parts Work. Parts Work is also known as Internal Family Systems Therapy, or IFS. 

Parts Work is an approach to psychotherapy built on the understanding that we have many sides to us, which the method refers to as Parts. 

For example, we may have a Part of us who wants to be a good girl and please everyone. We may also have a quite different Part of us, who wants to rebel. We might not be conscious of it, but when we pay attention, we will notice that all human beings have many Parts within them.

Parts Work is effective in working with trauma and addiction. In short – Parts Work Works! That’s why Villa Kali Ma offers it in our programs.

The Road to Recovery is Paved With Good Intentions

One tenet of Parts Work is the idea that all Parts of us have good intentions, no matter how destructive they seem on the surface. Because of this essential goodness, all Parts can be redeemed and transformed into higher octaves of their original nature. Nothing inside of us or anyone else ever has to be thrown away, marginalized, or rejected.  

With time, Parts Work teaches us to recognize the positive intentions behind all human behavior. When we see how our Parts have positive, life-affirming intentions, we are freed from the trap of fighting them. When we stop all the fighting of Parts, internally and externally, we naturally have inner peace. 

The Part that Turns to Substances

The Addict within is also a Part. The Addict intends to help us modulate overwhelming experiences and get a break from inner pain. 

Although the Addict’s behavior is extremely problematic, the original intention is positive. When we can understand the (often not immediately visible) higher positive intention of this difficult Part, we can work together with it to find a better way to get the same job done. 

Once we realize and validate to our own Selves that there is a perfectly legitimate need for help managing our emotional pain, for finding a way to have pleasure and joy and life, to have a break from feeling bad all the time, we can look for other ways that don’t extract such a high cost of us. 

The Higher Octave of Addiction

If we have the intention of helping a Part become its best nature, it can. With this attitude, the Addict Part is gradually transformed into a Part that looks more like a Self-Soother, a Part who works well to help us tolerate the pressures and potential pains of living our human lives.  

In short, we can make allies out of any aspect of our own nature, and as we do, we move from a state of inner conflict and into harmony. 

The key to the shift from conflict to peace is to first recognize, then befriend, the many facets of our nature, the characters inside of us. This way, we reach the higher octave of the same aspect of us.

The following exercise may be a nice introduction to try Parts Work at home.

DIY Parts Work Exploration

1. Identify any sensation in you that you are curious to get to know (such as a feeling of pressure above your heart, or a pain in your ankle). It doesn’t need to be something big and dramatic, maybe it’s just the first thing you notice when you check in with your body.
2. Whichever sensation you choose, stay with that sensation, and place your focus there. Pay attention to what that Part feels like in your body. Stop and write down anything you notice about how the Part feels when you pay closer attention to it. 
3. See if you can make the sensation even bigger, give it a little more space. You may want to place your hands on the place where you are feeling this sensation, and imagine sending it your love and friendliness.
4. In this way and also in your intentions, befriend your Part. Invite it to speak about its job in your life. What is it doing for you and why is that necessary?
5. Frame that job as a positive intention. Recognize your own Protector energies already inside you – your allies! Through recognition, you help free your Part to take on its higher, nobler form. 

Write for as long as you like about what this exploration brings up for you. 

May it be helpful!

The Multidimensional Nature of Art Therapy

Art Therapy knows symbols are multidimensional, just as we human beings are. 

Art accesses the vertical dimension of any given image, figure, gesture, or notion. Through Art Therapy we are taken beyond the surface our lives and into the guts, roots and heavens of any symbol that shows up to be worked with.

The Circle: A Potent Symbol for Coming Home

The symbol of the circle, and the related idea of center, is enormously healing to play with through the arts. 

When we center ourselves we are choosing a point from which we would like our energies to radiate. Everything comes back to its point of origin, and all that we send out into the world does so, too. To know our center, to visit our center, is restoration pure.

The following very simple, zen-like Art Therapy exercise is dedicated to the idea of centering, and it is designed to take you into the mysteries of your own core. Enjoy! 

Art Therapy for Centering: Twenty-Four Circles

Materials you will need: 

• 24 large pieces of sketch paper, best taken from a large pad of newsprint. It is also fine to use brown butcher paper, found paper, or pages from an actual newspaper. Important is to have 24 large, separate pieces of paper.  
• A large brush, the biggest one you have.
• Drippy poster paint or ink. Most paint can be made extra drippy by adding a little bit of water, just enough to make it very fluid but not enough that you break apart the paint’s cohesiveness. Acrylics work well for this, watercolors a little less, but I’m a fan of using what you have on hand so feel free to experiment with whatever’s around. 

The Process: 

If possible set yourself up to paint vertically, by propping your newsprint pad on an easel or by fixing your papers to a wall. This is nice for taking advantage of the drippiness. If you need to work on a flat surface, like a desk or the floor, just make sure you stand and keep your arm as straight as possible while you do this.

Step One: Practice the Circular Movement

With the brush still dry, hold it in your hand and practice making large circular movements with your arm, intending to rotate from the shoulder joint rather than from the elbow or wrist. It can help to imagine that you do not have an elbow or wrist, and the only place you can bend or rotate is at the shoulder. 

Practice the movement that will be required for painting a big circle with your brush on your big pieces of paper. Notice how your arm is made for circular motion, as though your shoulder is the center of a compass, made for drawing circles. 

Step Two: Twenty-Four Circles

Now get ready to move through your twenty-four sheets of paper one by one. Each sheet of paper will receive only one large circle, delivered in a single fluid stroke. 

Dip your paintbrush in your drippy paint, take a deep breath in, and on the out-breath, attempt to create a “perfect” (it won’t be perfect!) circle with a single circular motion, one brushstroke. Whatever it looks like, move on to the next page to do the next one. 

Do not stop until you have done the twenty-four circles, one after the other. Work fluently and without pause, completing the cycle and trusting all will be just what it’s supposed to be.

There is no goal other than to do it. The circles themselves are only side effects, ripples in the pond, residue of your breath, movement, and presence in this world.

Step Three: Reflect on Your Center

When the twenty-four circles have been completed, lay them out in whatever way allows you to see the most of them at once. Without analyzing, take in these perfectly imperfect circles. 

You may sense how these circles are only the outermost ring of something palpable within the invisible center, something which precedes and lives on after the start and end of these circles. You may be struck with a sense of your own impermanence or fragility. 

But there’s no right or wrong here – whatever does occur to you as you look at your circles, is exactly the right thing to reflect on for this moment.

Thanks for engaging! May you feel your center as the power that it is.   

There are many benefits of writing in general and when it comes to supporting your mental health. If you experience anxiety or depression, writing can be an empowering way to connect with those emotions in a neutral space where you feel empowered to move in ways you otherwise couldn’t. 

How does writing help with mental health?

One way you’ll benefit and heal when you write for mental health is the chance to ask yourself questions you otherwise may struggle to explore. Writing is a chance to figure out who you are in the most vulnerable sense. Whether you’re using your writing practice as a coping mechanism or a creative outlet in a stagnant world, there are many ways to benefit from writing. 

Many types of writing can be therapeutic

The most excellent benefit of writing is that you can’t go about it the wrong way. There are so many ways to use words and writing to help you figure out who you really are at the heart of you. While there are many more types of writing, let’s explore a few of the most popular types of writing for mental health. 

Reflective writing 

Hindsight is 20/20, and reflective writing offers it to us in spades. You’ll use words and perspective to help you move through your experiences and feelings to process them in new ways. 

Writing reflectively may take the form of a daily journal practice or using a diary. Often, the distance from the event and a chance to revisit them without judgment is key in identifying the lessons we want to carry and what we can set down so that it doesn’t linger. 

“We write to taste life twice, in the moment and in retrospect.” 

— Anais Nin

Habit tracking

More like court reporting than journeying through your emotions, writing down the habits and goals you keep can be an empowering tool. This form of writing is a regular practice in which you annotate the things you’re regularly doing to support your mental health. 

Instead of a checklist, you’ll use brief notes to keep track of what you’ve done, how you went about it, and (if you’re feeling it) what the experience was like for you. Habit tracking is particularly useful for accessing the healing of writing if other methods haven’t worked well for you. 

Fiction storytelling

Taking space from the reality of your life to explore the wonder of imagination and possibility is an excellent way to access healing. When processing trauma, creating a story in which you retain complete control over the events and outcomes can be a powerfully positive experience. 

Using storytelling formulas, you can craft the story you want for any purpose you need. Whether you’d like to explore an alternate life experience or process something painful, creative writing is accessible and imaginative. Bonus: you can’t get it wrong when you’re the architect of the entire experience! 

“There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.” 

― Maya Angelou

Poetry and songwriting 

Some of the most memorable poems are byproducts of the writer’s healing. The formulaic but versatile formats available in prose are particularly alluring to some writers. Writing for poetic or instrumental value can double the impact of your writing as you begin to play with the lyrical shape of sound alongside it. 

Poetry and songwriting hold unique healing value in the ways they invite a challenge for you to make a big impact through the shape of your thoughts and the use of words. Whether you put them to music or not, song lyrics can be similarly powerful in how they engage you with meaning as you intentionally fit words and thoughts together. 

Following prompts 

When you dip your toes into a sea of experiences, it’s easy to feel caught up in their current as they pull you in more deeply. Prompt writing can be an excellent way to engage with your own thoughts without getting caught in a riptide. 

You can use prompts that start a sentence like “I was walking along the beach when…” or you can use experiential prompts that ask you to recall something through the prompt (ie- “When I last felt excitement,…”). Prompt or exercise-based writing releases the pressure of finding direction without inhibiting the flow of your thoughts once you get moving. 

Let your words lead you

Writing is a journey unlike any other. Regardless of the form you choose or the practice you establish, writing will be a steadfast friend to you. It is a versatile and patient space to which you can return any time you need to take a breath from the world and ground yourself in words. 

Be here; write now. 

“Words are a lens to focus one’s mind.”

— Ayn Rand

For writers in recovery or seeking support for substance abuse, Villa Kali Ma is here to support you. 

Higher Powers are meant to keep us sober, to give us direction, to hold us and help us cast our burdens off. Higher Powers are for finding solace and peace when faced with the more arduous sides of life.

Turning your understanding of your Higher Power into a visual art piece is a powerfully anchoring activity, that will make your relationship with the divine more real, practical, and embodied. The following Art Therapy Exercise is intended for that purpose. 

May the following Art Therapy Exercise for Connecting with a Higher Power be helpful for you on your path to a loving relationship with a truly helpful Higher Power! 

Make a Higher Power Niche

A niche is sort of like an altar. It’s a place where you can display an image of your Higher Power, and place offerings such as flowers, messages on scraps of paper, or little presents. In this exercise you make your own niche (small altar in a box) to honor your personal understanding of your own Higher Power. 

Materials you will need: 

1. An open-faced box. The containers that blueberries & other fruit come in, tofu containers, and pasta boxes all make good niche boxes, as do small wooden crates if you can find one. The box will eventually be affixed to a wall, with the open side facing outwards so that the viewer looks in at it.
2. Acrylic Paint (Poster Paint), markers, paint pens, sharpies – whatever you have on hand
3. Scissors for cutting collage images from magazines
4. Modge podge or glue
5. Paintbrushes for using the paint and glue
6. Magazines you will cut up, filled with images of things that seem beautiful to you. Gardening, science, nature, art and travel magazines are good for this.
7. Thumbtacks for pinning your niche to the wall

Step One: The Box

Choose an open-faced box that feels like it is a size you can relate to comfortably.

Step Two: Base Coat

Give your box a base coat of paint in a color that makes you feel relaxed and safe.

Step Three: Select Images

While the base coat is drying, cut out images you will use in your collage portrait of your Higher Power. Give yourself a time box of at least 20 minutes for collecting images, going through and just choosing anything, intuitively, that feels soothing, powerful, or pretty. Pictures of animals, plants and flowers, landscapes, gems, or skies are typically helpful for summoning the feeling of a Higher Power, but anything goes.

Step Four: Make a Silhouette of Your Higher Power

On the side of the box you will see when you look in at your niche, draw an outline that will be the outer containing line of your collage images. This is the main image of the box as you will look into the niche once it’s hung on a wall. In this area, draw the outline of a shape that makes you feel safe and contained. Circles are good for this, as are ovals, geometric and symmetrical forms, and faces, but do whatever feels right. 

Step Five: Collage

Using glue and a paintbrush, begin collaging and filling in the silhouette of your Higher Power with the magazine images you collected. In the end it will appear that your Higher Power is filled up with these things. For example, my Higher Power Niche shows a Higher Power that’s part lioness, part ocean, part pine forest. Follow your own intuitive sense to create an image that summons up the inner feeling of your Higher Power. Glue the images down flat and put an extra layer of glue or modge podge over the images to help affix. If desired, you can also paint or draw on top of these images now, adding painterly aspects. 

Step Six: Use Your Niche

Once your niche is dry, use the tacks to pin it on the wall. You can now start surrendering and dedicating topics to your Higher Power. Write your topics down on small pieces of paper and place the small papers inside the niche at the base of the image of your Higher Power. You may share something you’re worried about or some other burden you’re ready to cast off. Alternatively, you can write what you’re grateful for or name aspects of yourself you’re ready to consecrate to your spiritual path. By placing these little communications in the niche, you are symbolically letting yourself (and your Higher Power) know that you are willing to build relationship, to let go of the bindings of your life and to be supported at a greater and more powerful level by that which is truly on your side. 

In other posts on Writing, Music, Art, and Dance Therapy activities, I write about how each of these art channels can be helpful in recovery. 

While each of these creative healing disciplines exists all on their own, there is also a special modality called Expressive Arts Therapy which is based on weaving all the arts together. 

Using all the arts together, we move from modality to modality, starting out in one art discipline, then shifting into another and then another and another. 

For example you might start out doing a drama therapy activity (such as improvising a monologue), then decide to switch channels and do a drawing about that same topic, then switch again to dance movement. And so on!

The purpose and benefit of changing between disciplines as you follow the unfolding process live is that our soul’s information can be understood differently through different channels. By translating a soul signal back and forth between different modalities, there is a way to glean more information, depth, meaning and context than if we simply use one art practice alone. 

If you want to try Expressive Arts Therapy right now, here is an exercise for exploring what it’s like to switch between arts disciplines as a way of deepening your soul work. I do recommend it to anyone on the journey of recovery!

Expressive Arts Therapy: the Intermodal Weave

1. Decide What You’re Working On

Identify a specific thing you want to work on, what you would call “a problem” you’re curious about. For example, if you are struggling with feeling low self-esteem, you would set the intention to explore the problem of your low self-esteem.

2. Express The Problem Visually as Art

Start in the visual arts channel with some free form scribbling or intuitive mark making (so, not drawing anything specific per se, more like letting the movement of your hand around the page make an abstract piece). Although you are working with a specific theme, the suggestion is to not overly think about it, nor to try to make symbolic representations, rather just let yourself loosely muse on the topic while your hand moves around capturing the feeling tones, the qualities, and the general vibe of the topic. It’s very important that you don’t judge, and you remind yourself you are capturing the qualities of the issue’s feeling, how it feels to you, and not “making art”. 

3. Reflect on What You Drew

When you feel that you are complete with making a visual expression of how you feel, set the drawing you made a little bit away from yourself, at some distance, perhaps half way across the room, and look at it for a while. From a distance, see if there is a portion of the drawing that you are especially interested in. A specific wavelet in a specific color, such as a spiral of pink at the bottom right of your drawing, might capture your attention. 

4. Move What You See in Your Drawing

Now allow yourself to ease into the movement channel, and see if you can catch the dynamics of the pink spiral in a dance, allowing your body to explore the motion and direction captured in your drawing. You may find your body also making a kind of spiral motion, like a leaf falling in the wind, and an image such as that may come into your mind as you do.

5. Capture Your Dance In Words

After a few minutes of exploring in movement, allow your body to come to completion and rest, and shift into the writing channel to describe what you just experienced in your dance. For example, you might start writing, with a poetic feeling to it: I saw a leaf falling, dancing the spiral of falling from the tree. I felt how lonely, how dried out and sad I am. Allow yourself to write for a good while about anything that felt meaningful, being as poetic and colorful in your language as feels right for you today.

6. Synthesize 

Through working with your topic from many different angles, you end up with a lot of information you can synthesize together. For example, you may realize that your feeling of low self-esteem is something like the feeling of a dead leaf falling from a tree, feeling lonely and sad and a bit disconnected from life. Through this you may realize that you are also the tree, looking at the leaf and allowing it to fall, letting it go, and you may identify more with the tree than the leaf. Whatever happens, if this process works for you, you’ll come to a new place through it, and may find yourself standing at a vista that’s helpful, healing and integrating.

Happy exploring!

Did you know there are music therapy activities you can try at home? 

You probably already know that music is a powerful medium. You can deliberately harness that power to help yourself live a more meaningful, connected life. For people in addiction recovery, music is a special gift that inspires a sober life. 

Music Therapy has many different approaches and activities, ranging from listening to making music yourself. Whether you’re just listening or whether you’re also making some sounds yourself, music therapy does the following things: 

1. Music Therapy regulates the nervous system creating deep feelings of wellbeing, health, and relaxation 
2. Music Therapy accesses the part of you that feels unconditional peace, harmony, and connection to something bigger
3. Music Therapy allows you to express your inner experiences and to find your inner world mirrored in the expressions of others

Here are 6 easy Music Therapy Activities that you can try right away. Have fun!

1. Playlists

You’ve probably made a playlist of songs before. What if you did it with the extra intention of creating a specific therapeutic effect for you? Making playlists for yourself can be a deeply caring activity. 

Some playlists you might like to make for yourself include the following: Soothing Songs, Songs for Falling Asleep at Night, Songs with an Uplifting Positive Outlook, Songs that Make Me Feel Understood. 

If you have a therapist, a fellow in recovery, or a friend to share your playlist with, that often makes the experience more complete. 

Whatever you do, I think every person should make themselves a playlist of songs that make them want to sing along at the top of their lungs. (I call mine “Belters”). Singing your heart out is one of the healthiest things you can do, for your heart, your body, and of course, your soul.

2. Song Journal

Choose a song that you love and relate to very much. Copy the lyrics out into your journal. Now write for a few pages about why you love it so much. What do you connect with, why do you think this song speaks to you? If you keep digging, you may find that a lot of your life pattern can be understood through the songs that you love. What you value, what you need and long for, can be discerned in the songs you love. The loving universe can speak to us through musicians.

3. Affirmation Songs

Singing is a powerful anchor for making things real. When we sing, we experience the meaning of the words we’re saying at a deep and cellular level far longer than just speaking them out loud. So consider making yourself some Personal Affirmation Songs (could also be called Mantras or Chants). 

Start with writing an affirmation that feels good to you. One of mine is “I am always Worthy, I am always Protected, I am always Loved”. 

Now put that phrase to a melody (it can be one you create or one borrowed from a song you like) and sing the phrase over and over again (try for 15 minutes). Repetitive singing, aside from raising mood, purifying the body, and making you generally feel better about life, helps these words sink into your soul.

4. Drum Along

When we are out of balance emotionally, this is reflected in our biology as disturbed biorhythms and irregular brainwaves. We can balance our bodily systems (and hence our emotions) via music. 

Music with a strong beat is especially good for this. If you drum along (even just tapping your own body with your fingers) to very rhythmic music, it strengthens and stabilizes your nerves, leading gradually to feelings of liveliness and harmony. This happens by way of bilateral movement and rhythmic stimulation, entraining your body to a balanced state.

5. Make Your Own Power Song

Using a song that makes you feel wonderful, capable, and strong, replace some of the lyrics to make the song even more your own. 

Start by removing a few words from every line, and then replacing them to make them slightly more your own, to hear the words you need to hear. This works especially well in songs that have an easy, repetitive structure, like Amazing Grace. 

I once was lost but now I’m found
was bound but now I’m free

can be altered to give you a chance to express your own experiences like so:
I once was ______ but now I’m ______
was ______ but now I’m _______

If you want to sing it to yourself, try finding the karaoke backing track version of your song and sing your new song over it, or you can just sing your new version over the original. There is a special power to songs that we sing to and for ourselves. Just as babies are soothed by mother’s voice, we are soothed by our own loving tones. 

6. Record Something

Allow yourself to make an expressive sound piece of just 3-4 minutes in length, recording it on your phone and then listening back. During the 3-4 minutes, anything goes: you can record the sound of the wind, pour water back and forth into a glass, or sing and play and instrument, it doesn’t matter at all. What matters is giving yourself a container to express yourself into using sound. Just using your ears and your inborn musicality will brighten your soul and give you an infusion of natural happiness.