50 NATURE-BASED EXPRESSIVE ARTS THERAPY
assist the client in accessing both inner and outer resources. Many
problems in living are related to an inability to imagine different and
more satisfying ways of being. The imagination can be an especially
important resource for envisioning new ways of being, so activation
and nurturing of imaginative capacities are important priorities
(Eberhart and Atkins 2014).RELATIONAL PRESENCE IS BASIC TO
WORKING WITH EXPRESSIVE ARTS
The concept of presence involves both a quality of invitational
personal presence within the caring relationship and a way of being
in the world. Presence requires attention, appreciative curiosity,
multileveled awareness, trust and openness to the senses and to the
imagination (Atkins 2014). Presence is also an interactive process
having to do with our innate capacity as human beings to respond to
the world as it presents itself to us. It is our aesthetic responsibility
to be open to the world, to let ourselves be touched by both the
beauty and the ugliness of the world around us.EXPRESSIVE ARTS WORK IS BASED ON A
PROCESS ORIENTATION TO WORK AND LIFE
A process orientation in expressive arts work is a basic attitude
toward the creative process and toward life itself (Eberhart 2014).
This is a systems orientation to life, a way of seeing the world as
based ultimately on processes rather that fixed substances. From this
perspective, everything, even the things we name as things, such
as a tree or our body, is actually a system of layers within layers
of interrelating processes. This view, now widely discussed in
postmodern science and philosophy, echoes some of the lessons of
indigenous cultures. This systems view of life also carries with it both
attitudes and methodological considerations for professional work.
Shaun McNiff’s (1998) admonition to trust the process is both an
instruction about an expressive arts way to work with the arts and a
way of approaching life.