Drawing from the Heart: A Seven-Week Program to Heal Emotional Pain and Loss Through Expressive Art

When it Hurts Too Much to Talk When the pain caused by difficult or unexpected life-changing experiences goes unexpressed and unreleased, it can unravel the fabric of your life. Where talk therapy fails to remedy the situation, expressive art proves successful. Breakthrough split-brain research tells us that imagery is our primary form of communication. Using an image to express a painful emotion allows us to see it in a way that is inaccessible through words, making us better equipped to transform a negative emotional reaction into a positive life experience. In this beautifully designed book, Barbara Ganim shows us how to use imagery to identify what we are really feeling, rather than what we think we feel. Says Ganim, “When you draw an image of what an emotion feels like, you can finally separate what your verbal thoughts are telling you from what your body’s actually experiencing.” She then explains how to deal with those feelings. With colorful drawings and quotes from students in her workshops, she demonstrates how others have used the drawing from the heart process to express and heal their pain. In as little as seven weeks—just a half an hour a day, three days a week—you can see dramatic results. You don’t need to know how to draw, nor do you need to purchase fancy art materials; crayons and markers will do. And the program is not just about serious stuff; many of the exercises call on your playful side. Expressive art as a personal tool for physical and emotional healing is well on its way to becoming as common a practice as yoga and meditation. Ganim’s self-help guide will put you directly in touch with this transformative process.

120 pages

About the author: Barbara Ganim, M.A.E., C.H.H.C. retired in 2011 from Salve Regina University in Newport, Rhode Island to pursue her own personal creative expression in mystical landscape painting and writing ghost mystery books for children. While at Salve Regina University, she was an Assistant Professor, Senior Lecturer, Program Coordinator, and co-founder of the Expressive Arts Institute and the Certificate of Graduate Studies in the Expressive and Creative Arts. These programs and the courses she taught were the foundation of a specialized expressive arts approach that became the basis of the books she has written in the expressive and creative arts. Barbara is the co-author with Susan Fox of Visual Journaling: Going Deeper than Words, Quest Books, Wheaton, IL. She is also the author of Drawing from the Heart: A Seven Week Program to Heal Emotional Pain and Loss, Quest Books, Wheaton, IL; Art and Healing: Using Expressive Art to Heal Your Body, Mind and Spirit, Random House/Three Rivers Press; The Healing Power of Art, a 9-hour Expressive Arts audio digital program, SoundsTrue Productions, Boulder, CO, 2001/revised 2010.