- Purpose : Kneading, smoothing, grinding, cutting your clay ball, will reduce your stress, relieve your body of all the toxins that anxiety releases. These repeated gestures will calm your mind, soothe your emotions.
- Materials : Clay or modeling clay, your hands
- Duration : 30 minutes to 1 hour
Putting your hands in “the earth” activates a primitive memory that keeps buried sensations, emotions, and feelings.
At a time when the head and thought are very solicited, clay essentially mobilizes touch.
It is an excellent exercise for children and adults because it allows you to really feel like an artist and work with the material.
Rules :
Ask the person to make a sculpture that represents them or represents what they like. This can be realistic or abstract. Colored clay allows you to express your emotions through colors (it is better not to talk about this link before the end of the session).
Comments :
Once the sculpture is made, ask the person questions and write down their answers:
- What would be the title of your work?
- Do you like your sculpture?
- What feeling does this color represent?
- What is your sculpture’s favorite food?
Etc.
The idea is that every answer you write down will become a line of a poem: at the end of the session, you have conceived this poem, and the person realizes that their sculpture inspired them.
This is an excellent exercise to do if the person has difficulty expressing their emotions.
There is no need to know where we are going, what is modeled, or what is built during the session; our unconscious uses our hands and shapes the clay as many messages that we are free to decipher, share, or keep for ourselves.
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