Drama and Play Therapy
Lesley offers individual sessions in person at her practice in Kenilworth, Cape Town, or alternatively online via zoom. Sessions are one hour long, and claimable from most South African medical aids.
Lesley’s therapeutic work is with children, adolescents and adults, with a focus on childhood bereavement, children facing challenging transitions, and with adults in the development of capacity for Presence, Resilience and Transformation, where her work integrates Creative Arts Therapy techniques, Constellations, active meditation and Inquiry methods.
In the intimacy of an individual session, there is the opportunity to work short or long term on specific issues or blocks, enabling a gentle unfolding and support of the journey home. Depending on your needs, Lesley will tailor her approach to meet you through methods most effective for your growth. The sessions will involve some talking, but usually an intervention will be offered involving movement, the body, image making, working with objects or story. The approach is valuable for those looking to work beyond words, to involve the wisdom of the body and to tap into the enormous healing potential and insight that personal creativity brings.
Lesley happily works alongside other healthcare professionals to ensure holistic support attends to each individual’s unique needs.
About Drama Therapy
Drama Therapy works to develop the creative healthy aspect of the individual, building inner strength and resourcefulness
The Creative Arts Therapies are fast growing professions in South Africa. Therapists are trained at Masters level and register with the Health Professions Council of South Africa. Art, Drama, Music and Movement Therapists are clinically informed to use their specific creative medium to support the psychological and social wellbeing of individuals, groups and communities. The Arts Therapies have consistently proven to be effective in addressing individual difficulties as well as group dynamics.
The creative arts therapies are founded on the premise that words are sometimes not enough to fully express the complexity of the human experience. The main focus of these modalities is the non-verbal mode of communication and the assumption that the creative process has potential healing properties. The focus is on every human being’s innate capacity for aliveness, health and well-being through movement, song, music, story and the symbolic representation of the self through drama.
In a Creative Arts Therapy session, internal challenges are expressed creatively, and in this way can be safely processed and managed. The arts provide a safe, non-verbal means for expression where the client need not feel overwhelmed, and where a mind- body connection can be facilitated. Furthermore, the approach focuses on strengthening the healthy, creative aspect of the client. People of all abilities and ages can benefit from Creative Arts Therapy.
Drama Therapy is an embodied, active form of therapy that utilizes a range of techniques to achieve therapeutic aims. Storytelling, role play, improvisation, movement, body sculpting, play involving objects, art work, sound making and ritual may all be utilized by the drama therapist in their individual or group work.
Drama Therapy can be a useful intervention:
* when words are not enough (or not available)
* when trauma has been experienced (as body based approaches are an important aspect of recovery to facilitate reconnection to the body and ‘unfreezing’)
* when there is an impasse in verbal therapy
* to develop self-esteem
* to discover play, spontaneity and Presence in the moment
* as support in transitions – using ritual and embodied processes to navigate change
* to increase role repertoire and rehearse a new way of being or relating