Journey Into Heart
What is Clay Field® Therapy?
Clay Field® Therapy is a powerful modality that uses clay to bring about shifts and healing from issues and patterns that continue to cause blocks and imbalances in our body and being. Cornelia Elbrecht, Director of the School for Initiatic Art Therapy teaches this profound technique in Australia. According to her, all our past experiences, especially those that involve touching and being touched are stored in the memory of our hands. By coming into contact with the clay, we use the sense of touch to access those memories and bring about healing.
Work at the Clay Field® is a sensorimotor art-based therapy approach that is unique and is widely used with children and adults (including couples, families and groups). It is used in schools, with disability issues, health concerns like Bell’s Palsy and women's shelters to facilitate trauma healing - to name a few.
Professor Heinz Deuser pioneered this technique a few decades ago when he needed to find a way to work with children and adults who were challenged with various forms of disabilities (physical, mental, etc).
What he found was that through regular intervention over a period of time, each individual began to show positive shifts and improvements from the disability. He subsequently found that it was just as affective for able children and adults in bringing balance and repair to the body and emotional self.
He found that between conception to 7 yrs of age, everyone has a natural rhythm of growth - from how the foetus is meant to grow in-utero, the natural birth, physical/motor skills developments (that comes from crawling, feeding, standing, walking,etc) to how the child begins to interact with the world around it at home and at school.
If that natural rhythm is interrupted, it can impact the growth/development of the foetus (if there has been trauma or emotional/physical upsets to mum) or how the birth turns out to be (premature, Caesarian, breech, etc). It can also impact on how the child learns to feed, crawl, walk and even speech development as well as emotional development - all that can impact confidence, self-esteem, self-worth, negative thought patterns. This include even addictions, self sabotage behaviours and habits in adult life that are not supportive of relating to self, relationships and professional life.
So, in a clayfield, the use of the hands and how they choose to handle the clay has an impact on the brain. Regular sessions allows repair to begin to happen in the brain because touch is a very primal sense and clay is a tactile medium that allows that sense to be stimulated to bring balance to the physical body and emotional self.
It can take 3-5 sessions for some people to begin to feel and see shifts. For individuals with emotional and physical/health challenges, more sessions may be needed.
How does Clay Field® Therapy Work?
The Clay Field® is a flat rectangular wooden box that holds about 10-15kg of clay. A bowl of water is also supplied. A few suitable props for children are sometimes included. With closed eyes (children do it with their eyes open), contact is made with the clay. Through touching, scratching, digging, kneading ... one's personal story/issue is revealed. This simple setting offers a symbolic “world” for the hands to explore and how the hands enter the Clay Field® and move in it tells the client's life story and eventually bring resolve.
Clay as a powerful, tactile medium can help to convey and work through many issues such as anger, grief and loss, fear, guilt, trauma, etc. Instead of traditional talk based therapies, Clay Field® Therapy is especially helpful for people who find it difficult to express their feelings (including children and teenagers).
For Whom?
Clay Field® Therapy is suitable for children (from 3 years of age), teenagers and adults including couples, families and groups.
What is the cost?
Clayfield Therapy: 60 mins $160 (inc GST)
Longer sessions are charged at a pro-rata rate.
Group Sessions available (min 2 - max 6 persons) - Different rates apply.
N.B: There will be no finished product to take home at the end of the session.
