Our Approach

Felt Sense-Based Studio Art is at the heart of the Museum Arts In Focusing (MAIF) approach

© Antoni Shkraba Studio / Pexel

INFOBOX The MAIF approach

Museum Arts in Focusing (MAIF) is an integrative, body-focused approach to well-being. It combines the principles of Eugene Gendlin's Focusing with a process-oriented approach to art from museums. This can be achieved by using physical or virtual representations of art from museums in a studio setting—such as visual, audio, installation, or performance art—or by actively imagining museum spaces and their exhibits. Museum visits can also be included

Receptive-Expressive Arts Focusing  (REAF) is the primary program of the Museum Arts In Focusing (MAIF) approach, facilitating aesthetic mindfulness, self-discovery, creative expression, and personal growth

Our MAIF programs use Felt Sense-Based Arts to enhance receptive-expressive methods from a  Focusing perspective. The MAIF approach offers a unique perspective on the creation of meaning, setting it apart from Museum Education, Focusing, Focusing-Oriented Therapy, art therapy, and other therapeutic arts approaches

 

Learn more about the MAIF Training Benefits

Receptive-Expressive Arts

Receptive-Expressive Arts provide a 'two-way street' for healing and self-discovery. It uses receptive (viewing art) and expressive (creating art) methods

The receptive arts process in MAIF, known as 'Receptive Arts Focusing', involves intentionally and quietly engaging with a work of art through Slow-Looking from the Felt Sense. By spending time with the artwork, you will develop a sense of being in the moment. This encourages you to explore your inner feelings and bodily responses, which are heightened through your visual dialogue with the artwork. By observing a real or imagined work of art, you can identify and express a personal theme and then distance yourself from it

During the Expressive Arts phase of MAIF, also known as 'Expressive Arts Focusing,' you can experiment with various art materials and creative methods, such as drawing, painting, or collaging, to express feelings and insights that arise from the receptive encounter and the Felt Sense. Using intermodal expressive arts practices will enhance your ability to express your inner landscape through all the senses

Receptive Arts Focusing and Expressive Arts Focusing are two approaches that comprise the Receptive-Expressive Arts Focusing (REAF) program, which is part of the MAIF approach

Expressive Arts Focusing

Unlike other uses of the term 'Expressive Arts Focusing' (Rappaport, 2021), the active element of REAF, Expressive Arts Focusing, encompasses more than spontaneous expressive arts activities that lack inner guidance and may or may not lead to Focusing

Expressive Arts Focusing is intentional, implying a guided process. A client's initial intention to transition from a receptive to an expressive art experience may be nonspecific, such as seeking stress relief or improving well-being. In all cases, the intention to express requires slowing down and becoming grounded in order to engage in Felt Sense-Based Art activities and process the MAIF paradigm of engage, express, and explore

Listen to Your Art Sense!

Enroll and Explore!

MAIF programs are designed for therapeutic, self-exploratory, and community-oriented use of the arts:

Receptive-Expressive Arts Focusing (REAF)

Studio art in Focusing settings which is based on Expressive Arts, using art from museum collections and exhibitions

Creativity Focusing (CF)

Creative arts activities that blend the fundamental principles of design with Focusing principles, with or without references to museum art

Creative Compassion for Peacebuilding (CCP)

Receptive-expressive arts engagement drawing inspiration from museum art and the Relational Empathy paradigm

What is Felt Sense-Based Studio Art?

© Antoni Shkraba Studio / Pexel

Felt Sense-Based Studio Art, also known as the art-making from the Felt Sense, is a slow, art-based, body-focused process of making meaning. It is both therapeutic and an art form in its own right. It unfolds the Felt Sense as a work of art in the process of becoming

"A felt sense is an internal aura that encompasses everything you feel and know about the given subject at a given time–encompasses it and communicates it to you all at once rather than detail by detail." –Eugene Gendlin, from: The International Focusing Institute

Felt Sense-Based Arts, or 'Felt Sense Arts' for short, comes from the living body and from the body's forwarding of the creative life force

How The Founder of Focusing Prof. Eugene Gendlin Would Have Said It

Please note: These are not the original words of Eugene Gendlin. They stem from an "inner Gene" that emerged from in-depth studies of his work and two theses on generating meaning through the Focusing method with application to the  therapeutic arts. They also stem from meeting him in person in Berlin in 1996

Words are social forms. Arts are social forms. Arts themselves are not moving forward alike words are not moving forward when you use words or arts only. So taking arts only is not moving forward and interpretating arts only is not moving forward unless you approach arts experiential

This means to ask if there is a step coming when you are refering to your art. What I mean here is a step opening up to something. Even when you interprete a piece of art in best ways, the whole stays within a certain social form and social forms do not change. What changes the form and brings a shift, this little step forwarding, is to pause and wait for art to come

Art does not come from talent or skills only. What comes as art comes through the body, and what comes through the body is social or cultural and with a More of that is not part of the social and the cultural. This kind of art has forwarding life energy in it. This kind of art is what I call experiential art

A Gendlin lecture at Humboldt House Achberg GER, venue of Gendlin's European teachings 1992-97. Video presentation of the German-Swiss Focusing Network (2023) at the hall where Gendlin gave this lecture

Learn more about the Focusing Founder Prof. Eugene Gendlin

Understandings used in MAIF

Understandings of Art Therapy and the Creative Arts

We have been trained in various European Art Therapy approaches with a concentration on Receptive Art Therapy and Dynamic Shape Drawing

 

Receptive Art Therapy

Receptive Art Therapy involves working with aesthetic perception using receptive-active arts engagement in clinical psychotherapy, counseling, palliative care and other related fields (Petzold, 1999; Pöppel, 2015; Franzen & Menzen, 2022). In museum environments, it is also referred to as museum art therapy

 

This method forms the core foundation of our Museum Art In Focusing (MAIF) framework

 

 

Dynamic Shape Drawing

Dynamic Shape Drawing is a practice of anthroposophic art therapy, developed by artist and special education teacher Hermann Kirchner (GER) and Waldorf school pioneer Rudolf Kutzli (CH). In Dynamic Shape Drawing, basic forms are transformed through rhythmic moving and swinging lines following breathing 

 

We use this method

 

 

Person Centred Creative Arts

Pioneered as Person-Centred Art Therapy (PCAT) by Liesl Silverstone- video, this approach has been forwarded by Ani de la Prida, BA, MA, Adv.Dip. to Person Centred Creative Arts

 

We use this method

 

 

Client-centred Art Therapy

by Dr. Norbert Groddeck

 

We refer to the theory and applications

Understandings of the Expressive Arts Therapies

Focusing Oriented Expressive Arts  FOAT®

by Laury Rappaport, PHD, MFT, REAT, ART-BC

FOAT® is a mindfulness based approach for positive growth and change integrating Focusing and the Expressive Arts. FOAT® applications are supported by publications and research

 

We use and teach this method

 

 

Person-Centered Expressive Arts Therapy PCEAT

by Nathalie Rogers, PhD, REAT

 

We refer to the understanding of the multi-modal process named The Creative Connection

 

 

Sensorimotor Expressive Arts Therapy | Guided Drawing®

by Cornelia Elbrecht, BA, MA (ART Ed), AthR, SEP

Guided Drawing® is a sensorimotor and body-focused art therapy for trauma release, using mindfulness, sensory awareness and trust in the guidance from within

 

We use this method

 

 

Trauma-informed Expressive Arts Therapy

by Cathy Malchiodi, PhD, LPCC, LPAT, ATR-BC, REAT

 

We refer to the understanding of the EXA traumatology

 

 

Intermodal Expressive Arts Therapy

by Prof. Dr. Dr. Paolo Knill and Prof. em. Stephen K. Levine, Ph.D., D.S.Sc, REAT

 

We refer to the theory of polyaesthetics and the practice of Intermodal Decentering (IDEC®)

Understandings of Art Education

Coming from a study of design techniques for vocational teachers, we use various understandings of art education

Bauhaus Art Pedagogy

 

We refer to the didactics of the Bauhaus Founders

 

 

Museum-art Pedagogy

 

We refer to the interdisciplinary didactics of MoMA

Person-Centered and Experiential Understandings: Focusing and Person-Centered Psychotherapy

Focusing 

Focusing is a body-mind practice and a method of the person-centered and experiential approach developed by Prof. Eugene Gendlin

Focusing explores personal issues, relationships and situations from felt experiencing. Focusing works with situational body awareness, which is mostly noticed from within. The Focusing process initiates organismic micro-changes, body shifts, and new steps towards life solutions

We learned from international renowned Focusing pioneers and teachers who developed a wide range of Focusing approaches:

Focusing Gendlin

Inner Relationship Focusing Ann Weiser Cornell

Intermodal Focusing Plus Focusing Network (FN)

Existential Well-Being Counseling Mia Leijssen

Wholebody Heartfelt Conversation Kevin McEvenue

Focusing with the Whole Body Astrid Schillings

Integrative Focusing René Maas

Dynamic Expressive Focusing René Veugelers

Focusing oriented Expressive Arts FOAT® Laury Rappaport

Focusing-Oriented Relational Psychotherapy Lynn Preston

 

We use and teach these methods

 

 

Experiential Collaging

by Prof. Dr. Akira Ikemi

 

We use this method

 

 

Person-Centered Psychotherapy and Counseling  (PCT)

Person-centered psychotherapy and counseling (PCT) is a form of talk therapy with a wide range of applications today. These applications are discussed controversively as some of their concepts surpass the original concepts of PCT founder Carl Rogers

We have been trained to use PCT with understandings of existential, depth-oriented, behavioral and critical-marxist concepts to enhance the person-centered concept within a collaborative therapeutic relationship, and adapt to the client's individual needs

 

We use this method

 

We blend various therapeutic understandings using "crossing," an experiential concept introduced by Eugene Gendlin. We cross approaches in a person-centered way, keeping Felt Sense-Based Studio Art at the center

Find Strength In Art. Let Your Hands Do What Your Eyes See!