At the end of the academic year of the FECAT (Foundation course in Expressive and Creative Arts Therapies) program, the student present their professional and personal journeys. There is so much I want to share about the beauty, depth and the struggle of this process of getting to know oneself, and yet I’m always at a loss for the right words.
What is unique about this journey – the confidentiality, the sacred Temenos (container), that guarantees absolute privacy, is also the most difficult boundary to negotiate when one wants to share this work with the public at large. So what we end up sharing are abstractions, images, without the actual stories that make the therapy process through the expressive arts, so personal and yet so universal. There is a growing tribe of us – therapists, trainers and trainees who are witness to this incredible process in ourselves and the other, every year.
Many times I think its best not to share anything at all, given the piecemeal way in which information is consumed and distributed on social media. But it is such a potent process, this embodied embrace of oneself and so so crucial to the fragmented times we live in, where every polarity is a site for discord, dispute and rage.
Anitha Santhanam
Trainer & Supervisor, FECAT
At the graduation ceremony of FECAT batch of 2016