2-Day Experiential Workshop: Yoga & Art Therapy Interventions for Anxiety and Mood Disorders – Ellen Horovitz

Are you feeling challenged or stuck with your clients? Need new ways to help them combat negative self-talk, mood disorders, and physiological challenges?

By combining yoga and art therapy techniques you will discover new and innovative ways to help your clients reduce physiological manifestations and mood disorders and replace rumination with healthy behaviors and thinking.

Watch Ellen, international speaker, author, expert art therapist and yoga therapist, to experience firsthand how to combine creative arts, present moment awareness, yoga, and self-compassion with your clients to calm worried minds and soothe painful emotions.

This exploration, rich in didactic and experiential practice, will teach you how to create a safe container, increase mood regulation in your clients and use specific strategies through:

• Creative art activities
• Gentle yoga
• A balanced schedule of meditation
• Breathing techniques
• Mindfulness practice
• Group discussion
• Clinical teachings, videos and case studies

Open the creative pathway for transformation and learn how to calm your central nervous system through yoga and witness your experience through creative artistic exploration.

You will leave this recording personally restored and confident in your ability to lead your clients towards creative expression, greater peace, transformation and mood regulation.

1. Identify who would benefit from art therapy and yoga therapy
2. Explore the ethical implications and limitations of using art therapy and yoga therapy in treatment
3. Review art therapy and yoga therapy and pain assessment techniques and their role in treatment
4. Explore how to set a safe container and cultivate trust when working with mind/body issues with clients who suffer from anxiety, mood disorders, dual diagnosis, co-morbidity and more
5. Apply mindfulness techniques and practices to address negative thoughts with your clients
6. Demonstrate how to use art/body exercises for nonverbal communication
7. Acquire hands-on art therapy and yoga therapy techniques for individual, couples and family populations
8. Implement partner yoga techniques as a strategy to aid couples’ counseling.
9. Apply breathing practices, body movement and self-compassion for emotional regulation and mood disorders
10. Demonstrate meditation techniques and incorporate for deep rest and restorative poses for mood disorders.
11. Practice chair yoga techniques for physically and emotionally challenged populations
12. Review adaptive art techniques for physically and emotionally challenged populations

Art Therapy & Yoga Therapy

• The psychotherapy behind art therapy and yoga therapy
• Streamlining your reports using healthcare apps in treatment
• Techniques for mood regulation (Sample: Breath of Joy)

Physical and Psychological Assessment

• The Morris-Payne Assessment and its purpose (interactive)
• Self-Pain Assessment for patients (interactive handout)
• Genogram Analytics app (interactive and video)
• BetterMind app (interactive)
• (Case presentation of 22-year-old suicidal female using Apps)
• Art Therapy Assessment (CATA, KFD, etc.)
• Chair Yoga Techniques for Physically Challenged

Create a Safe Space for Client and Therapist: Safe Boundaries, Touch and Ethics

• Establishing Confidentiality
• Permission to modify, stop, redirect
• Safe attention to the breath
• Ritual of Invitation
• Attention to Environment
• Therapeutic Attitude and Body Language

Clinical Applications of Combining Art Therapy and Yoga Therapy Techniques to Build New Neuropathways

• Psychosocial versus physical issues – starting with the body
• Understanding the body from a physical and emotional platform
• Current research in the field of art therapy, yoga therapy and mental health

Mood Disorders

• Videos:
• Bipolar child (11-year old male and his mother)
• ADD 11-year old child and mother

Case studies

• 18-year-old Bipolar, adolescent (addiction disorder) and family)
• 23-year-old suicidal female

Physiological Dysfunction

• Videos
• 65-year-old female stroke survivor
• 64-year-old female sexual abuse survivor

Case studies:

• 78-year-old depressed male and his wife: Couples’ therapy
• 10-year-old ADHD (child custody case) and his family

Experiential Component: Yoga Therapy Techniques for Anxiety, OCD and PTSD

• Warm-up, techniques:
• Breathing and meditation techniques for mood management
  • Lift depressed mood
  • Calm an anxious mood
• Sequencing: Counter poses, benefits, and modifications of each pose
• Sound, breath and visual imagery to address both depression and anxiety
• Yoga therapy strategies to incorporate: Body awareness, imagery
• Reduce rumination and negative self-talk

Experiential Component: Art Therapy Techniques for OD, PTSD & Physical Challenges

• Understand the development stages of art
• Media selection
• Warning signs in artwork
• Reduce anxiety (mandalas, safe places)
• Discharge anger (straws)
• Physically challenged
• Mindful doodling
• Using fibers to quell OCD and PTSD
• Worry dolls

Combining Yoga Therapy & Art Therapy Techniques and Beyond

• Journaling
• Combing mantras and postures
• Collaborative art making
• Family yoga therapy & art therapy techniques
• Partner yoga therapy exercises
• The importance of recapping
• Assigning apps in between sessions
• Sequence Wiz Yoga App
• Assigning homework to increase emotional and physical regulation in between sessions
• Smartline: HIPAA compliant formats for distributing homework and texting

Physiological and Psychological Effects of Incorporating Yoga Therapy and Art Therapy

• Priming the brain using yoga and art
• Elevation of mood
• Dissolving chronic tension held in the body
• Decrease symptoms of depression and anxiety
• Complementing talk therapy with through somatic practice and mindful engagement
• Release of repressed emotions stored in the body
• Increased ability to self-regulate mood and cognition
• Ethical implications of using these modalities and its limitations in your practice