Nature-Based Expressive Arts Therapy

60 NATURE-BASED EXPRESSIVE ARTS THERAPY

Nature-based expressive arts as a story of belonging

Rejecting the dominant narrative of separation, a nature-based

orientation to expressive arts returns us to our imagination, our

intuition, our physical bodies and the body of the Earth. We recall

the story of belonging attributed to Chief Seattle, patriarch of the

Duwamish and Squamish tribes of Puget Sound, in his 1855 letter

to US president Franklin Pierce:

This we know: the earth does not belong to man: man belongs

to the earth... Whatever befalls the earth, befalls the sons of the

earth. Man did not weave the web of life: he is merely a strand in

it. Whatever he does to the web, he does to himself.^1

Embedded in nature-based expressive arts is a respect for our

membership in the “family of things” (Oliver 1986). We recall a time

when singing and dancing were done not in the consulting room but

in concert with the rhythms of planting and harvest. When we work

with clay and paint, we remember our connection to the Earth and its

gifts. We bring ceremony and ritual into our work, recalling ancient

practices of honoring the cardinal directions and the elements and

giving thanks to the ancestors, to the future beings and to the Earth

and its many teachers. When we hold a flute, we know that it is a

gift from the tree. We know that the skin of our drums is a gift from

the animal kingdom. From this perspective we see our connection

and remember our belonging. This awareness of interdependence

informs our art. We are touched by, and moved to respond to, this

web of interconnection.

Summary

In this chapter, we have reviewed the basic tenets of expressive

arts and ecotherapy and resonances between the two fields. We

have introduced nature-based expressive arts work, compared this

approach to traditional therapy and offered a clinical story as an

1 The full letter can be read at http://www.barefootsworld.net/seattle.html.