MA-REAF Approach

Felt Sense-Based studio art is at the heart of the Museum-Art Based Receptive-Expressive Arts  Focusing (MA-REAF) approach

© Antoni Shkraba Studio / Pexel

Receptive-Expressive Arts

Receptive-Expressive Arts provide a "two-way street" for healing and self-discovery

The receptive arts process involves intentionally and quietly engaging with a work of art through "slow looking". You may explore internal associations and feelings and get a sense of being in the moment. By observing a real or imagined artwork, you can identify and communicate a personal theme and then distance yourself from it

During the expressive arts phase, you can use creative methods such as drawing or painting to give visual form to the feelings and insights that arise from the receptive encounter. Using intermodal expressive arts will deepen your ability to communicate your inner landscape

MA-REAF | REAF-ME

Receptive-Expressive Arts Focusing which draws from Museum Art (MA-REAF) is an integrative, body-focused approach to well-being. It combines the principles of Eugene Gendlin's Focusing with engagement in visual arts. This is achieved by using museum art in the studio or by actively imagining museum spaces. MA-REAF uses receptive and expressive methods to facilitate introspection, emotional processing, and personal growth

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

 

Receptive-Expressive Arts Focusing for Museum Experience (REAF-ME) is a process that engages with exhibited art through a body-focused approach that goes beyond intellectual analysis. REAF-ME connects viewers with the museum information about the artist, as well as with their own sensory and emotional experiences of the artwork

Visitors move back and forth between receptive activities like observing art and expressive activities like drawing or movement, fostering a deeper, personal connection to the art and the self. This can create a restorative, transformative, and meaningful experience by bridging the gap between the professional artist's work and the visitor's own internal sense of "the More", which exists beyond known concepts and ideas

Meet Your Art Sense!

Enroll and Explore!

MA-REAF Programs are designed for therapeutic, self-exploratory, and community-oriented use of the arts:

Expressive Arts Focusing (EXAF)

Therapeutic studio art based on expressive arts practices used in Focusing settings, with or without fine art references

Creativity Focusing (CF)

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

Creative Compassion for Peacebuilding (CCP)

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

What is Felt Sense-Based Studio Art?

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

© Aysin / Pexels

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 Museum-Art Based Receptive-Expressive Arts Focusing (MA-REAF) Programs

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

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-based therapy

 

We use this method as our core procedure 

 

 

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

Make Space For Artlife. Start With Felt Sense Arts!