Healing with Art and Soul: Engaging One’s Self through Art Modalities
Editor: Kathy Luethje
Date Of Publication: Mar 2009
Isbn13: 978-1-4438-0209-3
Isbn: 1-4438-0209-3
This fascinating collection of essays contains a variety of perspectives about the use of expressive arts for facilitating physical and emotional healing. Each author within brings a fresh approach and unique experiences to their writing.

Within these pages, you will find many ideas for the use of the arts and can learn how to engage the inner layers of the self that allow natural healing processes of the body and soul to flourish. When we fully engage an art modality, we find ourselves in a place in our consciousness that could be called 'healingspace,' where we feel ourselves whole and re-member ourselves as well.

From psychic trauma to physical illness, dis-ease of many kinds may be addressed through the various techniques discussed here. The tools offered by some authors are population specific and age appropriate, while several authors have given us the philosophical underpinnings for it all. While the authors within represent the grassroots voices of this new and rapidly expanding field, several of them have developed their own methods for using the arts, and have thriving practices.

Our approach is wholistic. Music, visual arts, movement, dance, and poetry are discussed as separate modalities and in combination with one another in a process or flow. The reader will engage in our experiences with these modalities as they have been lived. The complementary CD that accompanies this book will allows the listener to have a full sound experience of toning.

If a rationale is needed for establishing arts programs in medical centers or other health facilities, it can be found here. The book offers tools for self development and for group facilitation. Those wanting to expand their healing practice through the use of the arts will find the book to be a faithful guide. Anyone wishing for a fuller understanding of how the arts may work to facilitate healing will find much food for thought within these pages.

Rev. Kathy Luethje has been on a lifelong quest for understanding the human condition and how it can be improved. This journey has taken her from teaching Education and Psychology at Indiana University through licensure as a mental health counselor in Florida. She spent the past two decades as a pastor and hospital chaplain, where she has practiced the use of creativity and expressive arts as healing tools. She has trained many bedside artists in spiritual caregiving, and facilitates an ongoing support group for expressive arts practitioners.

"This collection offers a true contribution to the field of expressive arts. It represents an ambitious effort to showcase a wide array of practitioners who use creativity, imagination and the arts for healing, well-being and spiritual growth. Through essays, clinical vignettes and personal stories, many inspiring transformative experiecnes are shared. This book is an example of how the expressive arts are flowing into many diverse arenas of human care."

-Sally Atkins, Ed.D., REAT, REACE, is Professor of Human Development and Psychological Counseling and Coordinator of Expressive Arts Therapy at Appalachian State University

"The book Healing with Art and Soul is a sumptuous collection of cutting edge thoughts on the idea that art participation in general is ‘healing,’ in and of itself, and that the process of ‘just doing it’ can bring us close to our ‘soul’ ..or as we might ..make us more soulful......Bravo and Brava!!

The editor, Rev. Luethje, is very passionate about what she has discovered in her own search and she has collected a large group of scholars, artist, and body centered artists who present their own very personal stories about this ancient idea which has seen a wonderful and needed rebirth since the 70’s.

I am very enthusiastic about what she is presenting in this engaging collection of essays, in that I also have personally experienced this ‘quality of healing,’ through our non-profit company Music For People, which offers all humans a chance to rediscover and accept our natural abilities to participate in the joy and celebration of music making without the modern calamity of negativity and exclusivity.

Music does heal! We all know this of course as ‘Listeners’ and by the fact that we all take part in daily rituals that are always accompanied by music. What our opportunity can be in this modern time is to accept that those of us who participate in creating ‘sound’ or ‘music’ increase the chance of a much deeper experience of what is infinite about our consciousness; these feelings and processes seem to lift us from our daily chore of life, and seem to create a certain kind of ‘Spirit’ if not ‘Spirituality’ that inspires our daily moment for ourselves and those who are in touch with our lives."

-David Darling is the creator and founder of Music for People, and is known for his innovative performance style and his unconventional teaching methods. He is a prolific recording artist who has also collaborated with some of the most renowned musicians, dancers, and filmmakers of our time.

Price Uk Gbp: 49.99
Price Us Usd: 74.99

Sample pdf (including Table of Contents)