Healing with the Arts (embedded videos)
A 12-Week Program to Heal Yourself and Your Community
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- $13.99
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- $13.99
Publisher Description
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.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
"In our art and healing method, you are the artist-healer; you learn how to do the process yourself," assert authors Samuels (The Well Body Book) and Lane (Creative Healing). Their program requires no theory or therapist "Art truly becomes your medicine" though their statement, "Just as everyone is a healer, everyone has an Inner Artist," is both hopeful and daunting. With a week-by-week breakdown, the authors encourage "guided imagery" exercises; profile pioneers in the field of arts-in-medicine like dancer Inna Dagman; and share inspiring stories of people who've gone through their programs including Samuels's own "sculpting the cancer away" story, and a heartbreaking tale of a mother who learned to dance with her dying daughter. They also suggest weekly projects. Though the authors illustrate how their program can be uplifting, the "science" remains subjective and New Age-y they claim that making "art with the intent to heal" shifts the practitioner from a physiology of stress and anxiety to one of healing. Still, their call to use the arts and an open heart to relieve suffering may be a useful adjunct for healthcare workers and anyone else who wants to explore alternative approaches to treating illness.