Year: 2025
Type: article
Abstract: Didi:Vivien, can you describe some of your early developmental experiences and how you began to develop expressive arts therapy programs around the world?Vivien: I have practiced the form of expressive arts therapy for 50 years now.I was born in 1949, in what was then a British Colony in South Africa.My Jewish grandparents had immigrated there from Lithuania at the turn of the century to escape religious persecution in Eastern Europe.I grew up in the hills and mountains around Johannesburg, and as a child, I developed the practice of what I now have come to call "praise dancing."I have been dancing since the age of 6, and until this day, whenever I come to a particular constellation of rock and running water, anywhere I travel in the world, I dance and move my thanks for being alive in that moment (Figure 1).As a young adult, I immigrated from South Africa to live in Israel in 1970, and following the Yom Kippur war in 1973, I realized my need for further training in helping others to work with painful issues through the use of the arts.At this point, there were not yet training programs in Israel in expressive arts therapy.I then moved to
Authors: Vivien Speiser, Di Zhang
Institution: Lesley University
Language: English
Subfield: Conservation
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: diamond
OpenAlex ID: W4414244877