Hello I’m Marie, principal therapist from Drawing Within Art Therapy and Counselling Services. I love supporting and companioning others through art making, to express their inner world of emotions and experiences, by bringing these forward to the outer world.

Being a reflective practitioner, I too use these processes for self care. When I’m stuck, I reach for the pastels or plunge my hands into the sand tray and choose figurines, turn on my quiet music, turn off my phone and get into the zone.

Questions come: How am I feeling? What’s happening in my body and where? What is this issue I feel I need to release from deep within me and bring to my external world? How can I explore it and try to make sense of it?

I listen. Slowly and surely I tune into my intuition and find myself being led.I get out of my analytical thinking brain and tune into my creative, nurturing, intuitive side.

It feels good, the release happens as my hands and heart engage and connect with colour, movement and symbols, I surrender. I explore the images I’ve created or chosen. What does my art making want to say to me? I listen to the whispers or is it a shout today, coaxing me to look into new directions? Affirming what I already know but didn’t want to look at.

I journal and breathe, rest and am present to this moment. The time has passed and I feel whole again.

Lost and now found, tense and now calm, tight and now free, closed and now open, contracted and now expansive.

I do this often for myself and experience these “aha” moments, but my work as a therapist is facilitating, collaborating and witnessing these moments and processes with groups and individuals, from the adults to young children.

My life experiences of mothering, grief and loss, being a phoenix who has risen from the ashes, studies in Education, Transpersonal Art Therapy, experiential creative Art Practice and Sandplay Therapy are just some of what I bring to my companioning, during a therapeutic Creative Arts session. Come and journey with me.