Screen Time for Autistic Children
Jonas Torrance is a registered Dance Movement Psychotherapist and a behaviour consultant, who has worked with autistic children for over 30 years. He also facilitates…
Jonas Torrance is a registered Dance Movement Psychotherapist and a behaviour consultant, who has worked with autistic children for over 30 years. He also facilitates…
Here in the UK we’ve just received our copies of Positively Parkinson’s, and we wanted to share an extract of this inspiring book with you.…
On 29th June 2012 Claire Schrader hosted a celebration of Ritual Theatre: The Power of Dramatic Ritual in Personal Development Groups and Clinical Practice. The…
“We hope that the readers will be able to read this book and reconsider their own work, no matter where they work. Although globalisation is often thought of as damaging to local culture, the spread of information gives us all ways to learn from each other. Considering the benefits of meditation, holistic health and collectivist values as they apply to art therapy provides an angle that is not reflected in other literature. Instead of looking for a new series of techniques or interventions, we hope that readers will discover fundamentally new ways of conceptualising both their work and how they work.”
“[This] is not a book about disease but about finding solutions according to different ways of gaining back one’s physical, emotional and psychological energy balance. For many, it is also a path towards empowerment and finding a new meaning in daily activities.”
“Underachieving children typically don’t feel connected. The process of training children to reframe their visual connectedness with the world is not only about vision. It is about utilizing vision to reframe the relationship between children’s inner reality and their external reality. Vision is merely the vehicle, the classroom, the training ground. The true benefits accrue when a child, perhaps your son or daughter, takes what he or she has achieved in the safe and nurturing environment of therapy and applies it to the outside world. It is then that a child’s entire sense of who they are and what they are capable of, has been modified for the better.”
“Touch is one of the most fundamental ways to offer support and caring and is often underestimated or disregarded in healthcare settings… A hand massage is a wonderful, easy introduction to using touch. From a caregiver’s perspective, they often feel disconnected from the person who is ill or weary of touching them, so it’s a wonderful way to approach the ill person and provide care in a manner that is satisfying to the ill person and to the caregiver, and safe.”
“It was an exciting time, because it felt like a real movement in personal well-being was taking place. It wasn’t being led by doctors, but by ordinary people who were looking for more than symptom relief. They wanted therapies that were natural and non-toxic, and a way to be involved in the healing process. That was a key—becoming an active participant in wellness and illness instead of being a passive recipient of care. The quest for ways to be involved in the healing process, and for tangible ways to share it, became the continuing thread of my studies, writing and teaching.”
“…the book is about how ritual theatre can be expressed in a contemporary way that fits in with the way our lives are. People are hungering for this because the technological age is making us more and more disconnected, more in our heads and this is producing tremendous suffering under the labels of stress, fatigue and health problems. Ritual theatre along with the Arts Therapies counteract this. So the book includes ways in which ritual theatre is being brought into hospitals, institutions and work with marginal groups as well as to the general public.”
“There is rarely one route into, and out of, wellness. There are often several contributing factors including lifestyle and mindset. We also need to bear in mind that wellness may not mean “no disease” or “less pain”. It may mean pathways of acceptance or transition.”