10 NATURE-BASED EXPRESSIVE ARTS THERAPY
workshops, but friend and colleague Kelly Clark/Keefe introduced
us and I felt drawn to Sally, wanted to learn from her, and wished
I too could enroll in the expressive arts program she created and
directed at Appalachian State. Over time, I have been fortunate to get
to know Sally and am continually inspired through these connections,
including the opportunity to read this book.
Nature-Based Expressive Arts Therapy: Integrating the Expressive Arts
and Ecotherapy is about nature and art. It is about integration and
interconnections within disciplines, within the cycles of time
and among all life forms. And, it is about the transformation of
self and society into something grounded, creative and whole. Using
poetry, art and text, the authors attend to the essence of what is most
alive in their own thinking and ways of being. Through doing so,
they show how nature-based expressive arts can offer pathways for
healing the individual and the planet. They awaken our senses and
leave the reader mindful, hopeful and inspired.
I made my academic living teaching and writing about qualitative
inquiry. In the midst of my career, desperate for a greater sense of
artistic creativity, I began taking workshops and classes in writing
poetry. At one point, I became so immersed in poetic thinking that
I wrote up a research project in poetic forms and then wrote an
article about the process called That Rare Feeling: Re-presenting Research
through Poetic Transcription. Connecting qualitative inquiry to poetry
embarked me on a journey into representing research through other
artistic forms as well, and then, into writing a chapter on arts-based
research for my text Becoming Qualitative Researchers. I did not know
about expressive arts programs then, but I think now about how
valuable Nature-Based Expressive Arts Therapy would be for use in
qualitative research classes, particularly as a resource for students
drawn to arts-based research. In addition to contributing to the fields
of expressive arts and counseling, this book provides a foundation
for understanding theories and philosophical underpinnings for
arts-based inquiry.