Bottom-up, body-focused art psychotherapy
Hello and welcome...
The Institute for Sensorimotor Art Therapy offers professional development online and in person.
Our accredited training focuses on an embodied art therapy approach to trauma healing.
If we allow ourselves to trust the body, it will always guide us towards healing and wholeness.
Training
The expression of inner movements onto paper or through clay enables clients to become their own potent healers.
Cornelia Elbrecht
Founder and Director
ACCREDITATION & COURSE RECOGNITION
The Institute for Sensorimotor Art Therapy offers professional development training for creative arts therapists, mental health professionals, educators, medical professionals and community services practitioners.
Value and benefits of training in Sensorimotor Art Therapy
Our training is designed to enable mental health professionals and educators to integrate Sensorimotor Art Therapy® into their existing framework.
The online courses allow self-paced learning from pre-recorded tutorials, which are richly illustrated with case examples. The in-person training adds co-counselling practice sessions to support learning by direct, hands-on experience.
All participants will gain valuable tools to stabilise and resource clients and learn how to work in a trauma-informed, embodied way.
Initiatic Art Therapy
The Certificate in Initiatic Art Therapy is a foundation course for those looking for applicable art-based tools to work with their clients.
Multiple art therapy exercises are taught in a hands-on approach to suit a range of different settings, work places and client groups.
The art-making process is informed by Somatic Experiencing, Jungian Depth Psychology, Humanistic and Transpersonal Psychology, Gestalt Therapy and mindfulness practice.
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Guided Drawing
Guided Drawing® teaches rhythmic bilateral repetition to explore emotions and felt sensations in the body as flowing or blocked internal movements.
Here the focus is not on the story of what happened, but on the implicit responses needed in that present moment.
The process is self-guided, which is profoundly empowering for the client, while the therapist has the option to introduce archetypal shapes as interventions to structure and support this bottom-up approach.
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Clay Field Therapy
A box filled with clay, water and a sponge provide the simple setting for discovering safe relationships, loving attachment, and the fulfillment of vital needs.
Built on five decades of empirical evidence, this work fosters the development of new neurological pathways that can bypass traumatic memories to restore wholeness and wellbeing.
Clay Field Therapy® is touch therapy, a breakthrough modality, endorsed by leading somatic experts.
Learn moreTrusting the body’s wisdom
Neurosciences have proven that trauma is held in the body and needs to be treated through embodying therapies.
Evidence-based research has confirmed the effectiveness of Sensorimotor Art Therapy® for children and adults suffering from a wide range of medical and psychological traumas.
We combine neurobiology, Polyvagal Theory, Somatic Experiencing® with a bottom-up art therapy approach that is unique and powerfully effective.
When there are no words for what happened
For therapists and body-workers of all kinds
Peter A. Levine PhD, developer of Somatic Experiencing®, USA
Cornelia [...] has immersed her many years of expertise in somatic-based trauma healing and teaching of Clay Field Therapy into her new book [... which] I recommend not only to child practitioners but to therapists and body-workers of all kinds.
Transform our understanding and treatment of trauma-related disorders
Ruth Lanius, MD, PhD, professor of psychiatry, and director of the traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) research unit at the University of Western Ontario
Through this unique bottom-up approach, we are reminded how sensory input can have a transformative effect on how we interact with ourselves and the world. Working with the clay field, among other therapies focusing on sensorimotor input, has the potential to transform our understanding and treatment of trauma-related disorders.
Engaging sensorial impressions
Michael A. Franklin, PhD, ATR-BC, professor at Naropa University, Boulder, Colorado
Too often art therapy focuses on emotions and emotional expression rather than engaging sensorial impressions. The discovery of interoceptive wisdom, especially for traumatised children, is the purpose of the Clay Field…..With clay, we can create our way through our suffering.
Help clients find their body’s innate wisdom towards healing
Laury Rappaport, PhD, MFT, REAT, ATR-BC, author of Focussing-Oriented Art Therapy
Elbrecht’s approach powerfully demonstrates how to help clients find their body’s innate wisdom towards healing - that unfolds within a safe therapeutic relationship and creative process.
Provides a body-focused framework
Ronald P.M.H. Lay, MA, AThR, ATR-BC, Supervisor and program leader of masters in art therapy program at the LASALLE College of the Arts, Singapore
[Guided Drawing] provides a body-focused framework for therapists to navigate difficult terrain in ways that are meaningful, straightforward, life-changing, and applicable in context from which an arts-informed perspective is maximised.
