56 NATURE-BASED EXPRESSIVE ARTS THERAPY
expression and responding as participatory processes embedded
in the ongoing creative processes of the world. We acknowledge that
the world is alive and that, in the words of author and artist Paulus
Berensohn (2001), “Whatever we touch is touching us” (p.1).
In nature-based expressive arts we combine the intermodal use of
the arts together with the natural world, honoring our art materials
as gifts from the Earth and recognizing that we are inherently
connected with, influenced by and impacting the larger ecological
web of life in which we exist. By reclaiming the arts as a birthright of
being human and reincorporating them into daily life, we naturally
turn toward the patterns and rhythms of nature and the reciprocity
between the human and more-than-human world. In doing so, we
animate and vitalize our existence and our humanity. As we remember
and sink into who we are and what we love, we are more able to live
in harmony with the world and bear our gifts to meet the challenges
of our time. “It is the role of artists,” says Paulus Berensohn, to “sing
up the Earth” (Lawrence 2013).Traditional psychotherapy and nature-
based expressive arts therapy
As nature-based expressive arts therapists, we challenge the status quo.
On this path we can learn from others who have challenged tradition
and opened the way for new perspectives. One such model can be
found in We’ve Had a Hundred Years of Psychotherapy and the World’s
Getting Worse (Hillman and Ventura 1993). The authors challenge
fundamental values, premises, goals and tools of psychotherapy in
the hopes of breaking with convention and instigating change. Our
hope is that by bringing together the fields of expressive arts and
ecotherapy, we will begin to shape a nature-based way of professional
work that honors our humanity and our membership in the web of
life. Table 1.1 is offered as a beginning point in this dialogue.