Drama Therapy Integrates Mind, Heart and Body...

It's Perfect for Children's Therapy

I work with children starting at age 2 up to teens.

How Do Children Change and Grow?
I teach and present to graduate students on the topic of children and Child Therapy at graduate schools like JFK University.  Current brain research shows that in order to really learn something new or heal past wounds it is helpful for the client to participate in an experience that engages the right brain, limbic system and brain stem, as well as the left brain. Drama Therapy and Expressive Arts Therapy provide creative processes—imagery, symbolic play—that involve the right brain. Somatic Therapy helps to integrate the limbic system—which regulates emotions and the brain stem—which influences breathing and body processes. Combining these expressive and somatic processes with traditional therapy, as well as CBT/DBT, can get the whole brain involved in the healing process.

Drama Therapy and Children
Since play is the language of children, I am able to gain rapport and help a child express, in their own language, what is bothering them. Drama Therapy with children is a directive form of play therapy that can use drawing, puppets, games, dramatic and developmental play to help a child cope with shyness, loss, divorce, anger, ADHD and more. 

Drama Therapy and Expressive Arts Therapy
This work is active and experiential, using drawing, storytelling, improvisation, movement, or writing in a therapeutic context. Role playing allows a client to act out issues and problems, gain perspective on real life roles or patterns and experiment with alternatives. Symbols and dreams can offer access to the unconscious. Structured exercises provide containment for nonverbal expression of feelings.

Somatic Therapy
Somatic therapy is body-based, working with a sense of mindfulness or deepened attention to the body, where much information is held, including sensation, emotions, memory.