 All right, as everything looked there, good. Okay, cool. So I am going to start by reading the land acknowledgement for MSU Denver, and then we'll go into introductions and a couple of questions and then hopefully some time for questions from you all. All right, as an organization, can everybody hear me? As an organization within MSU Denver and the Department of Art, CBA acknowledges the Indigenous people of the land of Auraria and the broader Denver area. We honor and acknowledge that we are on the traditional territories and ancestral hometown homelands of the Cheyenne and Arapaho nations. We acknowledge that the land and history of this space we are fortunate to gather in today. This area was also used as a site of trade, hunting, gathering, and healing for many other Native nations, the Lakota, Utes, Kaua, Comanche, Apache, Shoshone, and others. 48 tribes have called this land home. We recognize the Indigenous peoples as the original stewards of the land, water, plants, and animals who call this place home. But it's also acknowledged the painful history of genocide and forced removal from this territory. We recognize that U.S. public policy has been used to displace Indigenous communities, erode tribal nation sovereignty, enforceably assimilate Native individuals into U.S. society. We respect the many diverse Indigenous peoples still connected to this land on which we gather. We pay our respect to them and give them thanks to all the tribal nations and the ancestors of this place. We also acknowledge the labor of enslaved Africans and their descendants who worked this stolen land for the colonists who continue to disproportionately face economic oppression, racism, violence, and exploitation. Lastly, we want to recognize the communities and families of Auraria, displaced by the creation of this campus for MSU Denver to have a place that we now call home. We share this acknowledgement to encourage all of us here on the Auraria campus to consider how our work in this space and our daily lives can address these historic and contemporary atrocities perpetuated against Native people and other marginalized communities. Right, so thanks everybody for coming here. So this is the first section of art and work, and today we're talking to four fantastic art therapists. And we're just going to start by letting them introduce themselves. And then we've got a couple of questions from there, and then some questions from you. I think we'll have time. All right, so Nancy, can we start with you? Sure. Just to introduce myself? Yeah. Okay. I'm so Nancy Wolfe, and I work in private practice now. I was at the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment for 28 years, and I just retired this year from that and transitioned to private practice. That's a big transition for me, but I'm used to working in lots of different environments, and now it's just on screen, so it's pretty big. Hi, I'm Chelsea Sager. I just graduated and entered the field. I started my career this July. I work at Denver Children's Home, which is a residential treatment facility for kiddos who are struggling with trauma and other mental health issues, and for whatever reason can't be living at home at the moment. And I do group work and individual work in case management. I got into art therapy as I went. My undergrad was in art education, and I started working for a museum and was doing outreach stuff with people with Alzheimer's and people in jail and realized how influential art is to express ourselves and then follow the psychology path into art therapy. And Chelsea, I'm going to just say, you just mentioned to me that you discovered art therapy at a talk. I did. I attended a talk as an undergraduate and an art therapist was speaking. And there you are. I'm Katherine Reed. I'm also an art therapist. I went to school at the Art Institute of Chicago for my graduate school, and I went to undergrad in Boulder at University of Colorado. Got a Bachelor of Fine Arts there and now work at Children's Hospital, and I am the manager of our creative arts therapy program there, which I am proud to say I think is the largest, most integrated creative arts therapy program in the country at a Children's Hospital. So not because of me, but because of just some really fantastic support in the community and just being able to find the best of the best. So it's a pretty great job. My name is Hillary Sin, and I am a dance therapist. So my art is movement and the therapeutic form that I work with is movement in the body with children and teenagers at Children's Hospital, specifically struggling with a host of psychiatric diagnoses. And then I'm also part of a research team that Katherine is also a part of. Katherine is my boss at Children's Hospital. It's called the Colorado Resiliency Arts Lab, and we've been studying how the creative arts therapies can help support healthcare workers and their mental distress and burnout that they've been experiencing way before the pandemic and then of course even more so since the pandemic. So that's another aspect to my job currently. Great. All right. So the two big areas that I think we want to know about are sort of what the job really entails, you know, what you do on a daily basis, and then also how you got there or how one would or why one would do what you do. So let's just start with what you actually do. I think you all actually do kind of weight varied things. It's really wonderful. Yeah. So I'm going to start with you because on our recording, you're easy to start with. Okay. So what I'm doing day to day right now is like I'm meeting people like doing telehealth, right, and which is a huge challenge given to try to do art therapy into those circumstances because I'm not sitting in a studio line like, oh, we're going to do this or you're talking about this. Let's do this exercise. So it takes a little more planning to get those materials either to them or make sure that they have access to them before we do that. I'm used to when I was working at the health department, I was very mobile. Like I'd have to go to a jail or somebody's home or their workplace or just being in my car and meet them in a parking lot or a park. And so I didn't have access to a studio. So I did a lot of small project kind of things or small like, like I had a Mandala journal that I created. So with a like, if you took like any, it's like about the size just like this. So the circles were for Mandala was really like not too intimidating to like, oh my god, that's too much white space for me. And so just having grounding exercises and then using oil pastels, which were on purpose to be able to layer and be able to scratch through and blend. So the choices of the materials and the project and sometimes it was just a process was more process oriented versus like a product. It really just depended on what was going on with the individual. And what I need to be ready for really at any time is like really kind of what I'm really hearing for is like the metaphors and other things that people are talking about as they're talking to me have a lot of imagery. And that can be just helpful even if they don't want to do art therapy physically to even use those images to consider like, how does this transform to that? Even so using their imagination to consider how something shifts. So it doesn't necessarily have to be like physically doing the art sometimes. And I think I'm going off on tangent now. I think it's great because I think a description of what actually happens is part of it. Yeah, yeah. So I'm kind of, one thing I was going to say about art therapy in general or even therapy in general is it's like there's so much to learn and I'm constantly learning because there's all these different techniques and things like that, not just in therapy but also just different things you're doing with the art materials or the process and there's so much research that's always coming out and how we're learning. So it's just a constant, I mean, for me, it's like very nourishing, like, oh my God, I'm just like a sponge. I just want to, I want it all. Sometimes it's a little like too much. Oh my gosh, I just want to do it all. There's not enough time in the day to get it all in. But that's how I know I'm in the right place because I'm like, this is what I'm built for. But it kind of keeps you ready for any situation because you just don't know the next person that you're interacting with or what they're going to bring up. You kind of have to be ready for whatever that is. And the health department, I didn't have any choice over who I was going to be working with. They were, a lot of people were like living with HIV and were at a higher risk of acquiring HIV and STIs and so a lot of different and other addictions and other barriers and various things in life. But I just never knew what the mix with that individual was going to be. So I just had to be working on my own little toolbox over here and also take a really good care of myself so that I'd have access to those tools and be really present for that client when I'd see them. So that's a pretty good summary, I think. Can you repeat the question too? Yeah, I mean, I have some sense of what there is, but I don't know what you do on it. Yeah, great. So just kind of what the job actually entails. And I think I heard you say something about like what, I know for me when I was getting advice into going into the field, everyone kept telling me like you need to know what you want to do. Like as you're learning, what is it you want? And I've always worked with kids, so I knew I wanted to work with kids and I have had access to studios. So for me, I wanted a space to like enter, work and leave. So a little different than your experience. So I knew that's what I wanted and I was lucky enough to intern with these two. And so I had the experience of a studio space and so finding a job, I wanted that as well again. And I think I like that because of the flexibility of being able to use materials kind of organically as the client brings things up. And Art Therapy has talked a lot about like certain materials eliciting certain emotions and containing certain emotions. So if you want someone who's really intellectualizing and really like wanting to talk about a problem, I might be like, oh, actually maybe we should do some watercolor and like get a little loose and like let some of your emotions out. So kind of thinking about a client in that way and how what materials might be beneficial for what's going on, which is what you talked about. So a day in my job right now is I'm also a primary therapist to several clients who I do family therapy with, milieu therapy. So like help them with behavior management skills. And then also during our individual therapy sessions, I might bring in our if they're open to it or challenge them in a nice way to try something new and like step outside of their comfort zone. I also have individual clients who have their primary therapist and then I'm their art therapist. So we work a lot in metaphor. I'm making a manga right now with an individual like who really wants to like solidify their identity and is kind of like exploring, you know, different things like for their path. And so all the characters kind of relate to a part of who they are. And then I lead groups as well. So the kiddos live in a dorm and I do art with the whole dorm group. And we talk about dorm issues. We talk about mindfulness. We talk about breathing. We talk about communication. And we make art. Sometimes that's open ended and people can just express themselves and have an hour to create. And sometimes I'm asking them to do something along the lines of like figuring out what senses they like and they don't like or what's going on inside of you and what's something you show other people. And like how can you create that and say that, but you don't necessarily have to say it aloud, which is what I love about art. It's another whole language. And even if only the client knows what they're talking about, I'm doing my job. And that's like really all in there for you. So yeah, awesome. Yeah. Fantastic. What do your days look like? What do you do? Wow. It's I just I love being on panels where everyone has such different experiences. So thank you. What do my days look like? Because you're also managing other. I am. That's what I do mostly. I think the most exciting thing that happened today, we have a new medical dog in our psychiatric department and it's pretty exciting to be with a dog at work. I'd say a lot of my work currently is really about imagining new ways to think about healing and trying to translate that to people who work in hospitals. So the people that I work with are, you know, we're in a western medical hospital. So we're either in the psych department, which is very particularly focused on psychiatry and psychopathology, meaning like what makes people sick? What makes people suicidal? How do people, how do kids recover? And so there's a very strong focus on diagnoses and behaviors and how to manage behaviors. And then in the medical units, it's very much about solving the mystery of the medical issue. And I think what drives me is helping people in those sciencey kind of orientations think differently about how to heal themselves, how to heal patients, and also how to heal and shift culture. So a lot of my work that I've been drawn toward has been cultural change. That's kind of why I got into art therapy at the beginning, actually. I was an art teacher for my first, gosh, eight years of adulthood. I was an art teacher in public schools and it was hard. I loved the kids and I loved the art, but I did not love the school systems. And just like the drive of having six classes a day with 36 kids a day and producing artwork and grading their artwork, it didn't match with what I wanted to be doing. I wanted to know the kids better and I wanted to see what they really wanted to make, not what could go on the wall. So finding art therapy for me was a real gift and happened only after I spent some time out of the country and in West Africa in the Peace Corps and really watched and experienced how art could bring people together in a village and also how it could shift the way they think or behave about certain things. So my focus in the Peace Corps was HIV-AIDS education and a lot of the people in the village where I lived didn't read. So we used theater and we used acting and we used comedy to talk about condoms and something that they never ever talked about and the comedy and the theater made it okay somehow and watching that and really thinking the arts in general are so powerful and they can shift an entire village's orientation about the way they think and the way they behave. So I came home and I'm like, I really want to find a job where I can do that and be part of social change and that's how I found art therapy. So I'm still trying to do that. I work with our Diversity, Health, Equity and Inclusion team at Children's using the arts to try to help people think differently about the way we're serving kids in Aurora when we are a mostly white female hospital and that's been really important work for me and also I think for the hospital to see again how the arts can help us think differently and see differently and solve problems differently. So I know that was very theoretical and not specific but that's why I think these answers are interesting, right? Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, I feel like we're only gonna take a picture. Yeah. It is fun to get to sit next to you different than our roles. We're kind of getting to bust out of our regular workday roles and that's really satisfying and dance movement therapy, we're generally in a circle and people are often like de-rolling in certain ways and putting on other roles in new ways and getting to have a different experience of themselves and that's something that's really fun for me about the work that I do but then also for experiences like this, like being in a different space and are you all visual artists in this room right now for the most part or do we have different kinds of visual art? Are there dancers in the crowd? Comedians, I don't know. Comedians. We do all come together around visual art but I'm sure that we all have all kinds of things, you know, theater and different things that we do too. Yeah. Also I think some people are here from psych. Oh cool, awesome. I think at least we have some RSVPs. Okay, that's great. I was just curious who is who is out there. Yeah, visual art though, it's dominant. Well and that, you know, to me, since everything starts and ends with the body, I mean the making of art is obviously very somatic and whether you're doing small scale or large scale, you're having some sort of physical experience too in addition to that visual piece. So to me, everything is a bit of a dance. I think part of your question originally included something about PATH, like how we might have come to be. That's the next part. Is that the next part? Okay, yeah. Although, you know, you can weave it together if you want. Okay, I'm always interested. But I'll ask the guest. So I'll start then with my daily work and I'll just tell you about my day today, this very day, because every day is a little bit different. Today I was working with a group of children like elementary age, six, about six to, or more like seven to 11 years of age, kiddos who come to the hospital to have like a two week long mental health curriculum. That's in our partial hospitalization program. And I was with three young children today in their classroom and I use a lot of props in my work. It helps first elicit maybe different ways of moving and interacting with each other depending on what kind of props I'm using. Also it can help create safety because if you can imagine you walk into a room and the furniture is all up to the side and it's just an open space that can really create some anxiety for people. So if you give them something to hold on to that can help sort of ground them and anchor them and feel a little more comfortable. So today the props that I had with me, I have these ribbon wands and they have a glitter stick and then ribbons that come off of it. And I had this little girl who was incredibly anxious and trembling with anxiety. And once she had the ribbon wand in her hand she sort of loosened up a little bit. She had something else to focus on that was outside of herself. And when I gave the invitation for all of us to stand with our ribbon wands and share some sort of a movement with the rest of the group, she took her ribbon wand and she started wrapping it around her arm. And so we're all following her, doing it with her. And then she released it from her arm and she started talking about how this was an emotion and she was letting go of it. And I didn't do that. She did that. You know we just create the opportunity for these things to arrive. You all know as artists that sometimes you start to engage with something and things happen and emerge that you could have never planned for. And that's also part of the therapy piece of what we do. We get to let ourselves be surprised by what emerges. And so she did this. This little girl who was really scared and trembling is now engaged in this expressive process of talking about her emotion and letting it go. So then I just follow that. And then the next kid I was next kid wanted to release anger. So we had this whole beautiful and I'm so grateful I had this group today so I can talk with you about it now because it doesn't always go like that. I just want to be very clear. It doesn't always go this way. But we got to have this very organic experience of recognizing the connection between emotion and our bodies and then using some sort of creative act to connect all of us and break through some of that isolation. So that's an example of the group I had today. And other times I'm doing lots of writing whether that's notes that I don't want to do or having meetings about various different programs. So there's a whole other administrative aspect too. But that's what the clinical work tends to look like. I think it's good to acknowledge all that other part though. Because as artists we have this idea that we're going to do this amazing job. But there's always parts that you're like no. Exactly. All that other stuff though. Yeah. Great. Cool. All right. We're going to jump back over to you. And now we'll talk about sort of your background, your schooling, but also just the events that brought you to want to do this kind of work and make a good edit. And just sort of someone coming to what would, who would be a good candidate for it, what kinds of experiences would benefit them if they want to go for this? Well I got my BA in psychology. And then I went to the pretty soon after that I went to the State Health Department. And I was doing what they call, well now everybody kind of seems to know what contact tracing is for STIs and HIV. And I was doing that for about five years before I was like I need to do something else. I mean I felt like I was going and I was asking so many questions of people and opening Pandora's box and they were like oh I never talked about this before. And then I'd be like okay well thanks bye. I just, I didn't feel right about it. And after a while I was like I want some tools and plus I wanted to, I wanted to get into it or like you know I want to know more. And how do I really support this person? And so then I went to Europa University. But honestly I was just talking about like how it happened. It really like literally art therapy came to my door where I was moving out of my apartment and the woman who came to look at it, she was an art therapist and worked at Naropa in admissions. And we were just talking you know so just total happenstance that she arrived at my door. And the more she told me about our therapy and it was really just totally in passing because I was like oh we were just going to hang out and we were just going to do this. And then you know she kept saying you know you're you're a really good candidate for this. And I'm like really are you sure? And you know because I've been doing yoga a long time I would talk about chakras and things like that. But especially Naropa right. And especially Naropa right. I mean well Naropa is what's special really about Naropa is that it's a contemplative education which means that it's grounded in mindfulness which is really rare to find. So I honestly with the art therapy part I had to take some extra classes to get into it. And even the classes that I took just like painting classes and stuff. I'd never really taken an official painting class before. And but I was artistic. I just hadn't done a class. And so when I was doing it I was like wow I can't believe I didn't get a degree in this. You can get a degree in this you know. I was just having so much fun. But I realized too you know looking back like it just wasn't really supported in my family. You know my mom was actually really talented in art. But she wasn't supported either. Like she had been accepted into the Chicago Art Institute and didn't go because they couldn't afford it. And it was a long time ago. But she had won awards and things for her art. And she was a very creative person. And she told me years later she's like yeah I'm really sorry I discourage you. You said you wanted to be an artist when you were like five. And I was like I did. I'm sad. So really when the art therapy program came to my door I realized you know like I'm going to do this for myself. I don't know if I'm going to be an art therapist or not. But I felt it felt like really nourishing and important to do for myself. And and so you know it's just a blessing that I that I got so much out of it for myself. And it's something that I can offer the world. So then so the question I think so yeah yeah absolutely. And so for those of you who don't know neurophysymbalder right so it's it's quite right right. And so they have they have a lot of different kinds of degrees with the it's the the Transpersonal Counseling Psychology Department and they have and one of the tracks is with art therapy. So it's a three year program and they have a wilderness therapy too. Somatic somatic yes. Yeah it's a great program. Awesome great thanks. Great segue. I also went to Naropa as we talked about. Like I said I graduated just this past May and I completed my like the last year of our track is an internship which I also completed at Denver Children's Hospital. Children's Hospital Colorado sorry. What's that? Yeah my places are similar titles. But before that I struggled with dyslexia as a kid growing up and I found a lot of like solace and like comfort in art. And so I always sought out art for me. And then as I grew older like then I went to school for art. I my undergrads in art education. I was a teacher but I didn't like mainstream. Where did you go for that? Oh yeah. Pittstown University in Pennsylvania. And I didn't like the idea of being in public education. So I started working at the Aspen Art Museum here in Colorado which is a free museum if you're ever there. And I was an educator for them so I'd go into schools and I see kids at the museum and give tours and slowly started doing their outreach programming, working with moms and newborns, working with Alzheimer's folks, going into the jail system. I also worked at a community art center and was working with kiddos overcoming addictions. And we would do like a three hour journaling workshop where we had all these collage materials out and it was just like a buffet. It was just these gorgeous materials and these kids coming in and you would just kind of hang out them all day. But I remember the one thing that all of their people said was like you're not allowed to ask them about their treatment. You're not allowed to say anything to them about like you know you wouldn't know where they are but like you can't ask anything. And that was so hard because a lot of the kids would just bring it up and it was just there and I would have to be like oh well let's just talk about your art and I would have to bring it back to the art. And I had a similar experience going into the jail as well. I wasn't allowed to ask about their case. I wasn't allowed to like encourage that kind of conversation which was just naturally happening and that was what really led me to wanting to be an art therapist because I was like this is already happening. If I'm going to continue to do this kind of work I need to be more prepared. I want to be able to help people express the way they want to and understand what they're really talking about. I think a lot of stuff comes up in art that because we're trained we're able to like help someone really understand and I love the idea that art is a reflection of who we are and it's a mirror holding things up to us whether we want to hear it or see it or not. And another concept that got me interested in art and when I was talking to art therapists about going into the field someone said you know like well where do images really come from? They all come from somewhere and they come from within us so like what are those images saying and what are they asking you? So through that I ended up at Naropa and it's definitely I'm learning a lot being new in the field and I can tell you that almost everybody I graduated with I graduated with 16 people anyone who was applied for an art therapy or therapy job has been hired so that made me feel really good and I hope that inspires some of you. I also wanted to say like if you're interested in this like go for it and seek out shadowing or like seek out these moments where you can be with the community making art. How can you meet new people making art and kind of like dip your toe in a little bit to like what that feels like for you? Yeah good advice yeah really good and interesting coming from education into that. Yeah so great thank you so much. It's an interesting transition moving from being a teacher to a therapist it is because it is so different right and yet there are so much there's so much crossover because if you love being with kids yeah I think what's happening for me is I'm finding that I really also love doing therapy with adults or talking about art and making art and culture change with adults has been really gratifying for me. How are they different? I mean and yet not I mean adults tend to be more there are more obstacles to get to what's real and what's in there right with kids like they show it they're right there so there's a beauty in that. Yeah I find a lot of the work I do with adults is healing the messages they received as children right that you're not an artist or you're not good enough or your sky is not supposed to be purple or green it's supposed to be blue so just all these kind of artificial limitations that art education I think in this country is put on kids so it'd be really interesting I'm excited to start hearing from you what your experience has been like because you're all in art school right? High school and MSU yeah yeah and some I think some people are social working very cool yeah so I'm excited for this to get interactive so my trajectory I already talked about it a little bit my when I was 11 my brother told me he was gay and he was 10 years older than me and for my high school graduation he brought me out to New York City and introduced me to his world and I grew up in Nashville Tennessee so it was pretty different and it just like took my brain and exploded it in this really big beautiful way I had like 80 new big brothers and went to a lot of parties and it was 1985 and it was you know very kind of out and big in the streets and then about gosh I think it was a year later he told us he was HIV positive and turned out about 80 of his friends 80 percent of his friends died so most of those big brothers that I met died and it was very it was just big that was 1985 it was a huge cultural shift for me as a young adult coming into adulthood and making sense of why my brother was dying and how old were you? I was 20 when he died so and I was in school in Boulder and I was in art school I was in a photography class and I couldn't like everything I was taking pictures of just didn't feel like I was taking pictures of squirrels on on high wires and I just and I took pictures of my sister's wedding nothing really landed until I started working with HIV AIDS and talking about my brother and making art about that experience for me and how hard it was to watch him struggle and suffer and then die and so for me art it was making that art that healed me right and then that healing became a vehicle for me to kind of I followed it for years I thought that I was going to be an HIV AIDS educator for life I thought you know I was going to try to change the the sex education system in the United States and put condom machine in every high school well that didn't happen and when I realized that wasn't going to happen I changed direction but I think the reason I tell that part of the story versus like the the specifics of the education is that I I felt the change in me and knew how I mean it saved my life like I it it cured me of depression right being able to make the art that processed my grief and pain and to be able to do that for people who are also struggling and to offer them the same vehicle that saved me is is it is a true gift to me that I'm able to share so for me it's a calling and I didn't find art therapy and tell us in my 30s so you know a lot of struggle and a lot of kind of confusion about like who am I as an artist and why do I like making art and why is that important and so for me to find ways to connect with other human beings that's really what it was about for me and I think anyone who has struggled and suffered and and and and felt the feeling of art being a vehicle for healing could be a great art therapist yeah yeah it's an interesting path too I mean we sit here in a gallery and I think in art school we imagine we'll show in galleries right but there's lots of uses for it right there's lots of different ways to channel that and then I would say 80% of art made in art therapy never goes on the walls maybe 90 right 99 yeah yeah I was surprised how much I could get excited about a little thing that was like just you know some blobs of color you know if it meant something and then to the client and it was like you could you knew it was a real shift for them it was real it was meaningful expression for them like oh my god that's it means everything yes um I am really uncomfortable and insecure about making visual art so that's not my comfort zone movement is mine and that's why I do what I do um so I think that's another really important piece of all of this is why why and how did that ever become separate from just us living our lives whether that's the visual art making or moving and dancing um and how all these things have been sort of chopped up and separated and there was a time when this land belonged to other people and um you mentioned healing and the land acknowledgement and that really struck me because um dancing and making music and making art were all just part of daily life and weren't even called art right like it was life and um bringing those things back together as part of what drives um me and I transitioned from performance to therapy so different than education to therapy it was performance to therapy and that's a really interesting um shift to make as well but my first career was that of of an actor and I did that for a while and then I didn't do that for a long while um so I don't know if there are any aspiring performers out there but go for it and it's it's tough um I found in my training as a dancer and an actor that there were all of these physical practices that would elicit emotions that would help me feel more relaxed or more calm or one day in an Alexander technique class this was in my undergrad I went to Sarah Lawrence College which is out in New York um the instructor was working with me on opening up some tightness that I had in my chest and I started I just started crying and there was all of this emotional content there I don't even know what it was about but suddenly there was this connection I was 19 at the time I'm like okay this is fascinating I'm having this emotional experience based on something that happened in my body um so I think that is initially when the seed was planted that there's there's something to um movement and this body that I live in it's not just a functional machine but it's a it's a place where I live and also a mode of expression so that would have been that when the seed was planted but then I did all kinds of other things and I did a bunch of weird theater and a bunch of avant-garde stuff and then I got involved in politics for a little while and doing some activist things because I was like I'm gonna help change the world and that's really hard to do changing the world is hard um we should all still try but it's hard there are lots of different ways you can do it I've tried a few of them and this is my current way of doing it um and baseline uh comes back to for me dancing feels so good it feels good to do it by myself and it feels even better to do it with other people there's this nonverbal connection that happens and you know in our job at the hospital I've learned ways that I um studied at Naropa the somatic program there to you know connect clinical language to what I'm doing in my dance movement groups and that's all important to be able to translate it for other professionals and to make sense of it and it all comes back to it just feels good and that's important and that's okay and we need to not lose lose sight of that lose sight of that um especially with with these kids that we have and so many teenagers struggling with depression and anxiety to the point where they don't even want to be on this planet anymore so we find ways to connect and even have a moment of maybe being like oh I I'm alive and I want to be here at least at least for now and you just get through the next until the next day um so now that I hear myself saying all this I'm I I do love my work and it's really tough it's really hard um just because of working in a hospital setting so dance movement therapy and all and art therapy I think you're hearing it from these three too it's going to look different depending on where you are um and who you are and who you are um so yeah my path was just really kind of stumbling along um acting into politics and then one day I was like oh my gosh there's this thing called dance therapy um and it took me all the way back to myself as a child and remembering um that I wanted to be a dancer and that we all have sort of this birthright to move and dance um and it doesn't just have to be people that know how to do it the term somatic I think I think it's a beautiful word but I also think it's a little bit confusing can you just kind of define it I'm so glad you asked me yeah soma uh means body so somatic is really having to do with the body so somatic work is body work yeah so it's another one of those words that I paid a lot of money for but we're just really talking about our bodies yeah well and I love the idea I love the idea because there are 16 of us at children's hospital 16 creative arts therapists so that's art therapy music therapy dance movement therapy drama therapy and yoga therapy and literally it's 16 different ways of doing it it's a great plan that every individual does it differently every single one of us and I there's so much coolness in that to me like it's it's not the kind of profession you go into and there's a there's a prescribed way to do it you go in and you get to be like the best version of yourself I love that also though just because for um practical senses you would probably have an undergrad in oh yeah psychology art teaching yeah I just take psychology classes um from a local college to get the credits I needed to apply to graduate school and then you would do a grad program yeah correct and you would get licensed as a therapist you would then work on your licensure after graduation which is what I'm also doing so you'll you'll have the credentials to apply for licensure now I have my provisional license which um hopefully I'll be licensed in the next two years but I'm getting all of my requirements met through my job and there's a lot of detail in there licensure is helpful if you want to bill insurance it's helpful for legitimization if you're a music therapist you don't need licensure there's just a lot of details and if anybody wants to know please ask we can tell you but I feel like it's almost too much to get into it was better to not know that when I was I was like it was funny you can kind of count on an undergrad and undergrad yeah right yeah and then do you need to um work for somebody else can I just jump in real quick on that undergrad to grad um I can say for the American Dance Therapy Association they do offer um alternate route possibilities so if you haven't gone through the undergrad to graduate pipeline which is pretty standard and for various reasons um there are opportunities to become a dance therapist through some alternate route and then you work that out with the ADTA okay music therapy is also different yeah people hire bachelor level music therapists all the time oh cool okay it's just a different profession so it's good to know that there I mean there are those requirements and then yeah it does it their own way even though the schooling is the structure yeah so if you have a specific question about that yeah yeah and I think that now we can open it up to questions do people have questions yeah go ahead um so I've actually I discovered 30 when I was in high school I've dedicated a lot of time in metro here to combining arts therapy there are psychology and services and social work degree degree all with preparation yay reading to go but now I'm in this middle period between my undergrad with my graduate school and I'm a little I'm just like I feel this nervous tension of like what do I do to prepare myself to get into these places I feel a lot of weight on making sure that I'm prepared like emotionally to handle the things that are going to come ahead so I have two questions one of them is the recommendations on like ways that I can kind of did my supposed to feel that many mentioned like practicing art but the second one is how do you guys take care of yourselves like when you do have these really heavy things I know that sometimes really poor things on you know you have to make sure that you're a couple different worlds I'm curious on your individual ways great questions as the only person up here who didn't go to Naropa it is a three-year program and it's expensive so as long as you're prepared for that I just think that's important to say yeah that's why I didn't go there yeah did you stay in Colorado because as far as I know Naropa is the only school in Colorado that's part therapy association yeah yeah it's a real interesting conversation um no I went I got my grad program in uh at the Art Institute of Chicago I think Leslie offers an art program online yeah too Leslie University Leslie yeah so something to look into yeah um Naropa prepared me emotionally for handling what my clients brought to the table and it was an emotional program it was like three years of therapy for myself doing art therapy on myself and you know I was nervous going into the field like did this did this program prepare me and I would confidently say it did um and and kind of um what Hilary was saying is like it is a it's a hard job you don't know what someone's going to tell you and how you're going to handle that I seek supervision I talk to people who are like more experienced than myself I have my own art practice I try to at least and um I try to have fun outside of work I get in the nature I do the things I really fill my cup up and even on the days I don't want to I try to remind myself like this is going to be good for me um yeah and as far as like getting into the community to do art um I'm like newer to the Denver area I've been here for five years but I would look into like community art studios around here um seeing about like even getting some friends together for like an art night every once in a while just like the more you kind of cultivated or um I just joined a guild of weavers because I'm trying to get into weaving so I like joined a weaving community group so just if you're into something like start googling it is there a group out there um because there probably is you know um so I if I think of anything else I'll let you know there's also the the art therapy association of Colorado yes which they have a website really great contacts you can write them get connected I also was told to see an art therapist I saw my own art therapist before denying to go to school yeah yeah I also if you want sort of volunteer opportunities to make art especially with children I can thank you nice but I think the self-care question is also really important so I'm glad you answered that Chelsea I really believe that all of those things are key and the act of making art yourself I think is part of that that's one of the most important pieces of the resilience that keeps you going would you agree with that I would totally I was you know regardless of what people say about your art or whether you're marketable or not just do it for yourself um one of the things though to you that uh that really complements my own art is is meditation um like before I went to Naropa I just happened to see this flyer about insight meditation and um it's vipassana and uh it just happened to be also the kind of uh meditation that Naropa did so I just it turned out well for me but um that is such a huge important foundation for me I can't say enough about that I mean it's to just they call it a practice for a reason because you never really get there you're just it is something that you just you you do for yourself all the time you know and it's in the moment and it's um you know using that that sense of focus is so uh applicable one to the moment but to so many other things that we do in our lives that I use it every day even if I'm not meditating in that moment um you know that uh at my altar or something it's something that that I carry with me um just like I was saying about the imagery you know I was just using the the metaphor of meditation with a client the other day um I guess he's super depressed he's like given himself a certain amount of time before it's like he would kill himself and no pressure um but uh just kind of hearing the way he talks about even like his um the way he does computer programming and and how he um just trying to kind of relate everything you know relate imagery and those metaphors and analogies and things to the things that are relevant to to people he was like wow that's a really good analogy ever so he just like his mind is turning so it's really like it's feeling it's like he's feeling heard you know he's feeling really heard really seen and ways that we can you know start to communicate um and I really don't think I would have done that as well had I not uh had this important tool I would just say self-care self-care you know just keep get really good at it you know it's a practice obviously but regardless of whatever that stuff is that you do because it's my meditation it's my exercise it's how I eat how I you know make sure I have social life you know our everything is it just it's all important walking walking walking it's like the cheapest and most accessible yeah self-care thing you can possibly do walking upside it's a big one um for me it can be very regulating for your nervous system in parks especially yeah parks especially looking at things that are looking at things far away trees green yeah oxygen yeah I think we can squeeze in one more question um yes uh yeah and um what I want to know is is this university off for any kind of continuing to be because someone who's already on the track has some fictions counseling but I've always had an interest in art semantics you know visual arts anything is there anything that's a lot of sight wrong degree program at MSU well I don't want to get industry work that's what we have to think but at Naropa at Naropa like a slide like track vacation kind of thinking unfortunately not what I know of it's it's a tricky question it is a tricky question because you're becoming a mental health practitioner that's really really important so to have a certification in in one of these modalities is it's tricky because we are spending like two three years in these master's programs and so generally I think the certificates are not as um what's the word I need robust robust or so I would not hire someone with a certificate right does that make sense and at the same time I would never want to say don't do or don't do this don't it's not that I wouldn't want you to do the work it's that it's it's a tricky conversation yeah because it's also kind of about profession protection right yeah right I can say that regarding um bodywork somatic work there are actually all kinds of different trainings out there and certificates that do exist yes like really specific ways of working with the body yes so if if that is of interest to you and maybe you've already looked into these things but there's somatic experiencing if you've looked into that yeah um so that could be a possible path um gosh there's actually all kinds of things EMDR is considered a somatic approach you know interestingly so um on on the body side of things I think there's probably a lot of different things available to you to incorporate into your your work yeah and a trauma focus too yeah I would just add like there's there's the expressive arts therapies um like conferences and there's a lot of them are online and some of them have like those like certain track like if you're working doing grief work and there may be some specific things around doing art therapy um activities with that so that's that's another way that's just an example um that's another way to get to be able to incorporate some art that that is really grounded another way to maybe incorporate it more is that um having some supervision with an art therapist so that you have like that kind of perspective and um and support and so that it's it's done with some integrity and you know when you're out of bounds or when what's within your bounds that's great advice that's great advice I like that and you know when you are seeking your job you can make sure to find places with creative arts therapies already there so you can collaborate yeah I would just say um some of the primary therapists like there's um five on our team and then only two art therapists and often they'll be like oh I'm having this family session I know they're really interested in art like what do you think would be beneficial for their family what's going on and sometimes I'll even go to that session with them but I'll also just be like oh maybe do this and give advice and let them use the materials so there is a lot of collaboration a lot of collaboration which can be really rich I think the the tricky part is when like a psychiatrist for instance would make art with clients and call it art therapy that's when it gets tricky does that make sense okay but there are some other programs like you mentioned the online lesson program yeah oh there's no and Brad has like a residency program so there are other options too without diving changing your whole life right and going in for three more years there's a good one in Santa Fe too um oh yes that's right yeah what is it I can't remember the name of it but my supervisor went there so and is it a university or is it a yeah it's a graduate program um I can probably Google it all right well we are that is our hour I know so that's that's yeah thank you so much thank you all for listening yeah thank you good luck to everybody yeah so our next art and work panel will be about muralism so that'll be uh January 18th so we'll both be talking to muralists and also um a woman who has started a mural um festival and how she went about going back about that so I know can we go back for another to the public yeah I love all your friends I love it awesome great thank you thank you everybody and if anybody wants to talk to us one on one oh great yeah so come on I'll stay for five minutes yeah thank you I appreciate that