Connect with your whole self
- mind, body and heart -
through the Expressive, Healing, and Creative Arts.
UPCOMING WORKSHOP: In the works!!
Please reach out if interested in a group/individual workshop that we can plan together!
Example of a Healing and Expressive Arts Experience:
The Emotional Landscape Workshop
Participants will be invited to visually and metaphorically use imagery found in our natural world and physical environments to represent their current internal Emotional Landscape.
Through making and creating we tap into our deep reservoirs of wisdom and lived experiences. We give a voice to our inner psyche, authetic self and personal narratives.
It is a chance to make our unconscious, conscious.
Our images may not “look like an landscape” but when we allow ourselves to trust the process and honestly examine our thoughts, feelings and emotions we gain a window into our inner-territory.
It is a journey of self-discovery and self-reflection.
In this place of revelation we can witness and embrace our unique intricacies, patterns, rhythms, relationships, features, peaks and valleys, etc., that represent who we are as individuals.
What we create often mirrors and illuminates our inner world in ways that words alone cannot.
It has been said that we often need to,“Feel it, to Heal it” and “Name it, to Tame it” and there is no better place to do that than observing and diving into your own Emotional Landscape.
ABOUT
Our Facilitator
Elise grew up in the Big Sky Country of Montana and is a PNW girl through and through. She has been a creator and maker, in one way or another, her entire life and has been mothering, teaching, loving on fur babies, and growing flowers for the bees in the Central Oregon area for the last 19 years.
Elise is currently a full-time artist-in-residence at a local elementary school in Bend, Oregon and the founder of Moon Honey Healing and Expressive Arts.
Elise believes creating is our birthright as humans and art is a powerful change agent. Art is a safe place to be curious and play, and provides a vehicle into ourselves for greater self-awareness, compassion, understanding, self-discovery, acceptance and growth.
We can use art to transform and heal, as well as restore and celebrate the mind-body connection with true authenticity and without judgment.
The very act of making is a positive and metamorphic process.
Art really does save lives.
Qualifications
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Bachelor of Arts Degree from Pacific University: History and Art
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Master of Education (MEd) from Montana State University-Billings: Curriculum and Instruction
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Certification from Rutgers: School of Arts and Sciences: Instruction in Social-Emotional Learning and Character Development
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C.E.A.C.E. (Certified Expressive Arts Coach and Educator)
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Holds current Oregon Teaching License
Elise is currently in the process of working towards the requirements for the R.E.A.C.E. (Registered Expressive Arts Consultant/Educator) certification through IEATA (International Expressive Arts Therapy Association)
Why Healing and Expressive Arts?
Participating in the Healing and Expressive Arts can facilitate new understandings, clarity, connection, and deeper insight into yourself. You can create something lasting that records meaning, experiences and your current feelings and emotions.
What we cognitively think and biologically feel don’t always align. Often we have emotions ‘stuck’ in us, that we are not consciously aware of. Having an ‘aesthetic experience’ can help facilitate how these emotions and energy move through us and get 'un-stuck'. This can lend itself to emotional transformation and an evolution of self.
When creating art intuitively in a safe, non-judgmental space it is not as much about the final product, as it is about the process; a process into yourself that does not depend on logic or rational thought and has no rules.
You simply get to feel your way instinctively and express yourself spontaneously, imaginatively, and authentically.
Did you know....
Current brain research in neuroaesthetics offers scientific proof on how our brains and bodies transform when we participate in the arts. Research shows that doing just 45 minutes of any kind of art lowered participants’ stress hormone cortisol by as much as 25%. New data highlights that art experiences can affect our brains with the release of neurochemicals, hormones and endorphins. Current research also documents that observing and creating art can radically improve physical and mental health, making it an essential part of a healthy lifestyle.
Susan Magsamen and Ivy Ross state in their New York Times bestseller, Your Brain on Art: How the Arts Transform Us, that engaging with art is as beneficial as exercise, nutrition and sleep. This perspective is increasingly supported by healthcare practitioners who now prescribe arts engagement to treat conditions such as obesity, heart disease, chronic pain, dementia, Parkinson’s disease, loneliness and depression. Other research suggests just one art experience per month can extend your life by 10 years because when creating art we build cognitive skills as well as skills in executive function, decision-making and, if you’re working with others, collaboration. This, in turn, can enhance learning, understanding and transformations in other areas of our lives.
Schedule a Workshop
Elise is available to facilitate workshops and personal sessions throughout Deschutes County, Central Oregon, and online. She works with . . .
During a session or workshop a variety of mediums will be available for you to create and explore with, i.e., acrylic paints, colored pencils, watercolors, oil pastels, chalk pastels, markers, collage materials, fabric, hand sewing materials, yarn, beads and wire, printmaking supplies, etc.
"Imagery is the body-mind's inner language. Art is the voice or expression of that language. Using art to express what your body-mind is saying will enable you to connect....with your deepest feelings and emotions...To start creating your own healing art, you must first learn how to bypass your verbal thoughts so that you can become fully present to how your body is experiencing your feelings, rather than what your mind is telling you about these feelings."
-Barbara Ganim, Art and Healing (1998), Three Rivers Press