Environmental Arts Therapy

The Wild Frontiers of the Heart

Ian Siddons Heginworth, Gary Nash, Ian Siddons Heginworth, Gary Nash

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9780429794650
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Psicología
• Subtopic: Psicoterapia

Environmental Arts Therapy: The Wild Frontiers of the Heart describes what happens when we take the creative arts therapies and the people whom we work with out of doors in order to provide safe, structured and accompanied creative therapeutic healing experiences. The theoretical themes are developed along with illustrated examples of clinical practice across a variety of settings and locations.

The work is introduced and co-edited by a pioneer in the field, Ian Siddons Heginworth, who describes the emergence of environmental arts therapy and its growth across the British Isles supported through the training course based in London. The following12 chapters are written by contributing authors and creative arts therapy practitioners working with children, adults and elders in schools, adult mental health and private practice in Britain and Europe. A central focus of the book is the clinical populations and settings in which clinicians work, and it also describes the health benefits as well as the challenges faced when working out of doors.

This is a book about the emergence of a new creative therapy modality in the British Isles. It shows the value of working with the natural cycles and seasons, using an integrative arts approach including dramatic enactment, role-play, poetry, art-making with natural materials, storytelling, and the use of bodywork through movement, sound, rhythm and the voice, all held and reflected by our encounters with and in nature. It is about our relationship with nature, creativity and therapeutic healing and is written for trainers, trainees and practitioners in the creative arts, psychotherapy and ecotherapy.

Part I

Environmental arts therapy in context

1
Turning

The emergence and growth of environmental arts therapy in the British Isles

Ian Siddons Heginworth

Introduction

Given the opportunity every child will play in the mud, the sand and the snow. Leaf mounds, sand castles, dams in the stream, dens in the wood and fairy houses in the trees; these are so often our primary experiences of making and shaping in the world around us, the means by which we first express our inner world outwardly. This will be true in one form or other throughout the world and throughout both the history and prehistory of humanity. Environmental art is our indigenous art form and when we return to it we return to something vital and primal within ourselves. In over twenty years of practice the phrase that I have most often heard repeated by clients rediscovering this art form is ‘it feels like coming home’.

I am an environmental art therapist with a private practice in Devon, England. Environmental arts therapy is an arts-based ecotherapy which has grown from the roots of the ecopsychology movement. The first published use of the term ‘environmental arts therapy’ was in the article Environmental Arts Therapy, Metaphors in the Field, by Jean Davies (1999). In 2008 I published Environmental Arts Therapy and the Tree of Life, a book about my own practice which is aligned wholly to the turning of the year (the cycle of the seasons) and this has led to the emergence and growth of environmental arts therapy as a new therapeutic modality here in the British Isles. This introduction tells that story.

In this chapter I will gently trace the cycle of the turning year here in the British Isles and touch lightly on some of the natural metaphors traditionally associated with each month (metaphors inspired by the unfolding of natural processes as the year turns), naming some of the traditional festivals related to this cycle. On the postgraduate certificate in environmental arts therapy course that takes place in London, we explore many such metaphors drawn from the Celtic and other traditions that once accompanied this turning and so serve still as an indigenous frame of reference for these northern European forests. In my environmental arts therapy practice I only occasionally use my understanding of these metaphors (unless I am teaching them) to direct the therapeutic process, for this must always come from the authentic experience of the client, but there can be great healing in reflecting on them at the end of the session, where people can begin to see that feelings or behaviour that they had deemed to be dysfunctional and problematic are aligned to a greater cycle. Also, I always aim to move towards the release and expression of feeling and, when this is well hidden, the appearance in someone’s work of a metaphor relevant to the time of year is usually a fair indicator of where it might be found.

Interspersed with this will be anecdotes and vignettes from my own experience as an environmental arts therapist, trainer and client to illustrate the unique nature of the practice, with a particular emphasis on relationship with the inner child and the therapeutic release of anger, the latter an area in which, in my opinion, environmental arts therapy excels, for nature is the primary safe container for wildness. The vignettes come with the permission of those involved, but have been heavily disguised to ensure confidentiality. Running alongside all will be a further narrative telling the story of my own practice and the subsequent growth of environmental arts therapy here in the British Isles. Finally, I will reflect upon the role that environmental arts therapy has to play in responding to the environmental crisis. As the ecosystems that sustain us and all life on Earth begin to fail under the strain that we place upon them, can there be a more important time to marry our healing with that of the planet, using the metaphorical and transformative language of the arts to realign our inner nature with our outer? In our increasingly secular and technologically driven world the fusion of art, nature and therapy welcomes ritual, mystery and meaning back into our lives, helping us to reconnect to the natural world, to natural cycles and consequently, to our natural selves.

In environmental arts therapy ‘turning’ is at the heart of all, as it is for each of us throughout our lives from beginning to end. At the moment of human conception, when the sperm fertilizes the ovum, something extraordinary and mysterious happens (Avinoam, 2002). The egg begins to turn upon its axis like the Earth spinning in space. It is as if the first fusion of masculine and feminine, the re-cementing of the duality of life into a single unity once again begins the turning that is inherent in all things, a turning that defines life itself. As if turning and living are synonymous. After all, the universe turns, indeed the word universe means ‘the Turning One’. We turn when we begin and we are turning now, not just within the boundless sweep of the stars, not just upon this spinning Earth, but around the sun as well. In consequence the seasons turn around and within us, compelling our feeling selves to follow and explore, quite independently of our intent, the varied shades and textures of our humanity. And the moon, she circles us all, drawing us into her turning. So it is from the moment of conception to the moment of death we dance like Shiva in his circle of flame.

It is this awareness of the turning cycles of nature and our deep and inherent feeling connection to them that informs and defines environmental arts therapy and makes it so much more than just art therapy outdoors. In the handbook that accompanies the course we write:

We believe that Environmental Arts Therapy is a new and unique arts therapy that does not fit into any of the existing modalities. This is because: Environmental arts therapy is practiced outdoors (or natural materials and an awareness of natural cycles are brought indoors) and it enjoys a profound and intimate relationship with the natural world, inspired and shaped by the locations that it inhabits. The foundation of environmental arts therapy is its unique relationship with the turning year (the cycle of the seasons) and metaphors, myths and traditions relating to each month, so its therapeutic processes are embedded in the natural passage of time. Environmental arts therapy is multimedia combining: visual arts, drama, movement, voice-work and ritual, all practiced outdoors.

(Siddons Heginworth et al., 2013, p. 2)

Composting

Environmental Arts Therapy and the Tree of Life used poetic metaphor to describe the turning year here in these Northern European temperate lands:

As the days grow short the shadows creep in. The blanket of leaves grows dark and lies like a shroud upon the cold body of the earth as she draws back her fluids into herself. Winter sucks the life out of the land with a harsh and oppressive hunger, and all that is soft and warm recoils in the face of her advance. The woodland creatures hibernate, sealing up their dens to salvage and sustain the heat in themselves. They wrap themselves around it and sleep, little pockets of hot life embedded in the cold clay. Secret dreamers among the black roots, spirits of fur and claw and snuffling snout, cave dwellers, fire keepers, as silent as grubs they hide from winter’s fierce and probing tongue.

(Siddons Heginworth, 2008, p. 30)

Now we, another seventeen secret dreamers among the black roots, huddle up together to keep warm in our tepee nestled among the trees of a wintry Highgate Wood in London. It is a weekend workshop on the postgraduate certificate in environmental arts therapy course, hosted by the London Art Therapy Centre. This intake of the course is newly started but everyone is dreaming. One by one each participant outlines his or her plans to move their creative therapy practice outdoors or bring nature and her cycles into the clinic room and studio. In my mind’s eye I see a new forest growing all over Britain, a forest of environmental arts therapy practice. But this is just the beginning, the gathering and planting of the seeds. This is the start of a new cycle, but no cycle stands alone for the seeds of the new are buried in the compost of the old.

The natural cycle of the turning year begins with the Celtic year in November when the autumn leaves lie crisp and golden upon the earth. But the leaves mark the end of the old cycle; it is that which they contain that holds the promise of the new.

Leaf mounds

It is a meeting of the Lionheart men’s group, but one man sits alone, waiting in the dark woods on a damp November night. The leaves upon which he sits are cold and damp and all is silent. He has just turned off his head torch and only the faintest vestige of starlight filtering down through the branches above is allowing him to see anything at all. What he can just make out is that all around him, between the trees, are mysterious mounds of leaves. He is awed and stilled by their presence and feels almost as if he has stumbled across a prehistoric site and rests now among the graves of ancient chieftains. Some moments in our lives feel timeless and archetypal and this is such a moment. But these mounds are not of the past, this ritual is here and now, and they do not contain the dead for if the light allowed he would see them gently breathing.

For resting in the heart of every mound is a man.

Feeling is like a wild animal and may only come to us when we are still. So every ritual becomes a pause in the headlong gambol of our lives in which we allow ourselves to feel. Here we learn how the composting of our past feeds the seeds of our future. The cycle begins in November because now the trees choose wisely to plant their seeds in the compost of the old year. For this brief transition, the elder and the child lie together and are one. Often we make our inner children now sometimes tiny enough to place in match boxes and keep close to our hearts (Figure 1.1).

November is the first doorway of the year, but it leads into its dark half, into descent, for the seed must first lie dormant beneath the ground before it can begin to grow, a time of dreaming. So begins December, the lead up to the midwinter solstice, the deepest, darkest part of the year. Often we work indoors around a fire now; through visualisation we explore our own heart caves and the challenges and treasures to be found there. Or we venture outdoors where often the ice and the snow provide us with unsurpassable building materials for walls, dens, shrines, effigies and play.

In January the slow return of the sun gradually brings us to a point of balance stirring the dead land back into life. We often work with bridges and mobiles at this time, exploring our own balance between feeling and action. There comes a point of conception, usually towards the end of the month, when the balance tips and the seeds begin to awake.

Figure 1.1 Child in matchbox

The seeds of my own environmental arts therapy practice grew from the composting of a much earlier time in my career, when I first moved my dramatherapy practice outdoors. From 1986 to 2001 I led a project called Daytime Community Therapies in Exeter, Devon, funded initially by Exeter Health Authority and then by Devon Partnership Trust. Daytime was a National Health Service (NHS) day service for adults with profound and complex disabilities and it hosted two outdoor projects: a carnival theatre company called Dreamtime Theatre and an outdoor activity programme called Naturesense.

Dreamtime Theatre built large carnival costumes and puppets, many of which were on wheelchairs, enabling adults with special needs to participate in community arts events. By combining disability arts with outdoor performance, it opened the studio door and allowed therapy to step outside. The stories that we performed were often improvised in story-making workshops and guided by nonverbal cues (facial expression, sound, movement and choices made by the participants). Many of these took place in the gardens or elsewhere in Devon, as part of Naturesense, a thrice weekly venture out into the wilds. By introducing our client group to outward bound or animal-based activity, environmental arts, storytelling and nature-based sensory activities, Naturesense furthered the process of moving outdoors. The bridge from one practice to the next came in the form of a secondment to the creative therapy unit on the floor above. This allowed me for the first time to take adult mental health service users out into the gardens for individual environmental arts therapy sessions.

Emerging

February begins with the ancient festival of Imbolc, meaning ‘in the belly’. The ice is melting and feeling is returning to the land, and to ourselves. The soil becomes the soft moist womb and the seed within begins to grow. The life that we are living now is the womb that holds the new growth but there is often much feeling welling here, a need to let go of the old and leap into the new, and we often find ourselves in grief ritual at this time.

The womb

Geoff was a single man in his fifties who had never sustained a long-term relationship and was now concerned that he would never have children. He complained of being unable to find any feeling connection to women.

The therapist asked him about his mother and he said that she had died of a slow illness when he was a baby and he did not remember her. He was invited into the woods to find or make her there.

He stopped at a tree which, he said looked like the inverted body of a woman with her legs apart. He described this image as sexual and he felt ashamed for choosing it.

As he was looking around he noticed that someone else had made a little shrine in the hollow of a very old oak tree behind him. This, he said, was the opposite of the other tree, a sacred place of love, something that he had rarely felt. When the therapist reminded him that he had been mothered briefly, both in her womb and in her arms before she died, he began to cry. It seemed meaningful that this womb had been behind him all the time hidden in a distant and forgotten past.

He climbed back into the womb and spoke to his mother from five different places of feeling to unravel the strands of his grief.

He spoke to her from the place of fear, of being scared of the enduring impact of her leaving him, of not being able to trust to love.

He spoke to her from the place of guilt of his own sense of failure in relationships.

Then he spoke to her from the place of anger. He talked about her failure to set up loving care for him for after she had gone, even though her illness had been a slow one leaving him solely in the care of his inadequate and unemotional father. This, at last, was the true voice of his anger, raised and furious.

“You left me with him!”

Then he moved to the place of sadness and wept again for a long time until finally he could speak to his mother from the place of love. Then, within the hollow of the old oak, he made his own shrine for them both.

By March the new seedlings are emerging, pushing up from the soil like little spears. This masculine principle, this desire to push up and out, is strong in us all at this time and we often find ourselves on hillsides throwing spears of our own making, shouting our affirmations as we do so (see Figure 1.2)....

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of illustrations
• Contributors
• Foreword
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction by the editors
• Part I Environmental arts therapy in context
• Part II Childhood, love and attachment: the heart of the matter
• Part III Feminine and masculine: putting feeling first
• Part IV The cycle of the year: working with the seasons
• Part V Elders and endings: the wild road on
• Index