The Benefits
Unlock healing & growth
-
Reduce stress and anxiety
-
Improve emotional resilience
-
Enhance self-expression
-
Gain clarity and inner peace
-
Boost confidence and self-awareness
What to Expect
A safe, creative space
-
Guided, supportive sessions
-
No art skills needed – just an open mind
-
Explore colours, textures, and shapes
-
Personalised approach
-
Fully online for your convenience
Start Your Journey
Simple & accessible
-
Choose a course that fits your schedule
-
Meet with a qualified art therapist online
-
Express, create and heal at your own pace
-
Suitable for individuals of all ages
-
Missed sessions can be viewed anytime
Discover the Power of Art Therapy
About
Meli Swan is an art therapist and educator living and working in Lutruwita, Tasmania. She has been a teacher for 20 years and in 2022, obtained her Diploma in Art Therapy.
Meli is passionate about the accessibility of art therapy and believes that it can be used at a foundational level, to support and nourish strong mental health. She strives to keep her courses as affordable as possible so that strong mental health can be achieved, regardless of income.
Testimonials
I appreciated the way the course was delivered. Being insanely busy meant I missed a couple of sessions, but I could catch up. To any educators, Meli gifts you great tools to add to your kit. You’ll laugh, maybe cry, but it’s really good stuff. Do yourself a favor and book in.
- Melissa -
I can’t recommend Meli highly enough. She's a compassionate and empathetic guide who helped me gain a deeper understanding of my emotions. I’ve completed TWArt twice ... The open, honest conversations are just as good, if not better, than traditional therapy.
- Hayli -
Meli has a vibrancy that puts everyone at ease and the content is a gentle introduction into art therapy processes that benefit day to day regulation and encourage deeper self-understanding
- Mel J -
Frequently asked questions
There is a connection between mind and body. Most people have their lives run by their unconscious. Thoughts and images float around in the dark recesses of their mind. These floating thoughts and images create emotions (if you want to break it down even further, ‘emotions’ are different manifestations of our nervous system).
An overwhelming number of decisions that dictate our life are made from a place of unconscious. There are neurotransmitters in the brain, that send messages to the physical body. There are neurotransmitters in the gut that send messages to the brain. So, both the brain and the gut can begin sending distress signals. In this modern life, who knows which – the brain or the gut – starts sending the signals first. We live in a world seemingly run by anxiety and depression.
The part of our brain that oversees our image collection, is called the hypothalamus. But it doesn’t store time with those images. Every time your eyeballs present the hypothalamus with some information, the hypothalamus finds an image that is similar and your nervous system reacts accordingly. This can be helpful if the situation calls for a quick escape, but unhelpful if there is no quick escape or self-defence needed.
This is where are therapy is excellent for emotional processing and bringing things to consciousness. We can experience an emotion and, using our own hand, create a new, safe image of that emotion. Slowly this creates new images for our hypothalamus to refer to.
“We’ve been here. You were ok. You will be ok again.”
Suddenly the unconscious is made conscious and slowly the nervous system responds, as more and more the conscious and the nervous system work together to provide feelings of safety.
During my courses, I also utilise a small amount of CBT strategies. Our nervous system is triggered by both linguistic and imaging areas of the brain, so it makes sense to reprogram them using both language and art. As writing is image, and we can transform our language to writing, language can be used in art therapy quite successfully.
-
Paper of any sort: paper of any kind. If you would like to keep track of your journey, you might like to get an art journal.
-
Colour pencils/textas/chalks: If you are prone to perfectionism, I recommend some horrible oil pastels from the supermarket – something you can’t possibly do ‘good’ art with.
-
Pens or pencils to write with: We don’t want perfect art, but we do want legible writing!
-
