Abstract:
This paper shows a change process within existing structures of a public elementary school. By means of various projects the author makes understandable how free space can be created by restructuring both the classroom and the subjects. Another access to the work is thus made possible.
The explorations with materials and various techniques, together with the tasks that are furthered, stand in the foreground. The student’s self-reliance is the focus of the individual projects. This means that the activities of the teacher have to change and adapt. The thesis gives several examples showing how the author works differently in her classroom and how these new ways of communication and work-processes help the students to develop their self concepts.

Abstract:
In this thesis, I explore numinous experience in Expressive Arts Therapy (EXA). Numinous experience, as the powerful experience of the sensed presence of a non-concrete “other”, is a variant of human experience that has often been seen as deviant, especially in a medical model of illness. Moving away from the idea of illness (hallucination or delusion) and having an appreciation for the numinous, it can be conceived as a bodily-given potential for guiding images. The expressive arts provide an approach to utilize creativity to image through all the modalities of imagination (visual images, movement, words, acts, sounds, rhythms) to encourage the emergence of works of art. The approach is artistic and the inquiry seeks to deepen experience and expand the possibilities of the numinous in the language of the arts, particularly because the experience itself is by its very nature compelling, inexplicable, and difficult to express otherwise. The arts can allow movement from the inexplicable, felt-sense numinous through the imaginative reality of artistic work and effective reality bridging to everyday life that confirms the world. The exploration is phenomenological and heuristic. The starting point is my own experience in viewing the numinous in an arts-based approach, as well as the participation of three co-researchers. The expressive arts were employed to image experience and follow the movement and direction of the images, to contain the mystery and pathos of the image within an imaginative framework, to shape and be shaped by the images, reflect on the images that have a life of their own, and to find new perspectives to contend with worldly realities and situations.

Abstract:
This thesis looks through a kaleidoscope to examine and observe the topic of play from many angles. Utilizing Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland as a metaphor, the author ascertains whether art-making has the power to lead individuals whose spontaneous play has been lost into Wonderland. Through the development of a “Story Show” theater class, a possible connection between the dramatic play of preschoolers and the art making decentering employed in expressive arts therapy is revealed. The specific use of clowning and storytelling facilitates the author’s investigation of her own relationship to play and provides a way to awaken the senses, jumpstart the imagination, and broaden the play range of individuals in crisis.

Abstract:
Having explored the transformational qualities of phenomenological response between life coaches and clients, framed by a photojournalistic perspective, the author presents the personal journey that inspired artistic investigation of the cause and effect relationship of transpersonal response in reaching self-actualization. The author develops a hybrid-expressive arts coaching model for coping with life, loss, and transition by combining the European Graduate School’s “work-oriented, solutions-focused” approach with Glass Lake Studio’s spirituality-influenced, energy work-oriented “creativity mentoring” methodology. The author’s primary qualitative research about response relays in her practicum concludes this model is best practiced on individual and group populations committed to self-awareness and acceptance. Two-way transpersonal response is suggested as a catalyst for accessing infinite resources to manifest extraordinary personal transformation amongst four aspects of the self: mental, physical, spiritual, and emotional.

Abstract:
Alcohol addiction is highly ritualized and can be triggered by trauma in life. This thesis addresses the hypothesis that substitution of this ritual with aesthetic expression has transformative potential. It does so by examining a sixteen-week experiment in ritually focused group therapy led by the author at a rehabilitation center for women addicts in San Diego. The results of this work suggest that sessions combining ritually framed art-making and theater in conjunction with more formally staged aesthetic rituals can be an effective vehicle for authentic self-exploration. A supportive community developed in which group members appeared more willing to take risks thus widening their range of play. The expressive opportunities afforded by liminoid and liminal elements in the group’s rituals helped participants to see themselves in more open, less addiction-bound terms.