134 NATURE-BASED EXPRESSIVE ARTS THERAPY
It matters what you did this morning
and last Saturday night
And last year,
Not because you are important
But because you are in it
And it is still moving.
We are all in this story together.
Listen:
In the silence between there is music
In the spaces between there is story.
Pay attention.
We are listening each other into being.
Sally Atkins (2005)
An elder once asked a young person he was working with, “Are
you a medicine woman?” She hesitated, afraid of making too much
of herself. He challenged her saying, “This is not about you. The
ancestors and the future beings are waiting for you to show up and
tend your inheritance.” This is our call and our response/ability as
nature-based expressive artists—to claim and use the medicine of the
arts and the Earth in the service of all life.Summary
The stories of ecotherapy, the arts, ecological sciences and
philosophies and the wisdom of indigenous cultures create the warp
and weft of nature-based expressive arts. These stories are our teoria ,
or theory, teaching us that we are held in and belong to the larger
fabric of the universe. Daily we are engaged in an ongoing co-creative
conversation that shapes and impacts the world around us. Awareness
and presence are required to build a relationship with the Earth and
its beings that is in the service of all life. As therapists and caring
professionals, the practice of nature-based expressive arts takes us
further into the world, calling us to engage with the fundamental