What is Sensormotor Art Therapy?
From my teacher Cornelia Elbrecht, MA (Art Ed), Art Therapist AThR, SEP
Author of Healing from Trauma at the Clay Field, Healing Trauma with Guided Drawing and Healing Trauma in Children with Clay Field Therapy
In recent years “sensorimotor” has emerged as a term to describe body-focused Psychotherapies that use a bottom-up approach. Instead of a cognitive top-down strategy, sensorimotor art therapy encourages the awareness of innate motor impulses in the muscles and viscera, also as heart rate and breath. The expression of these motor impulses followed by their perception through the senses, allows the development of new neurological pathways that can repair traumatic memories; such an approach is capable of restoring wholeness and wellbeing.
Both Guided Drawing and Work at the Clay Field are sensorimotor, body-focused, trauma-informed art therapy approaches. They are not necessarily concerned with an image-making process but support the awareness of body memories. While these memories are always biographical, the therapy itself is not symptom-oriented. Not the specific problem or crisis becomes the focal point, but the option to new answers and solutions as they are embedded in the body's felt sense. Such sensorimotor achievements are remembered in a similar way to learning how to swim or ride a bike. They are lasting achievements that can transform even early infant developmental set-backs; they assist in finding an active response to traumatic experiences. They allow us to rewrite our biography towards a more authentic, alive sense of self.
What is Guided Drawing?
Guided Drawing is a form of bilateral drawing that uses both hands to create images with pastels, crayons, chalk or paint to release feelings and emotions stored in the body.
The goal isn’t to make a picture, although you may create some interesting images. The focus is a bodily process supported by art materials, which Elbrecht describes as an “internal massage.”
How it works
Tune in to a sensation or tension in your body.
Discharge it with repetitive markings on paper.
Use both hands (bilateral) left to right and right to left to strengthen coordination between the brain hemispheres, supporting movement, thinking and emotion.
Learn and Use shapes as interventions learnings, which support the release of different feeling states, emotions and stored body memories.
I completed my first training with Cornelia on Body Mapping with Guided Drawing at Ghost Ranch in 2019 and then completed the ‘Healing Trauma with Guided Drawing’ with the Institute for Sensorimotor Art Therapy in 2021 and regularly use this process in art therapy sessions.
Bilateral movements in sessions can include large shapes drawn in the air, expressive body movements, and body tapping for emotional regulation that you can practice at home.
Sources:
Elbrecht, C. (2018). Healing Trauma with Guided Drawing. North Atlantic Books.
Elbrecht, C. (2021). Healing Trauma in Children with Clay Field Therapy. North Atlantic Books.
Malchiodi, C. (2020). Trauma and Expressive Arts. Guilford Press.