An apt title for the potential personal experience this global pandemic has encouraged. Two days after it was announced that gatherings of 50 or more people needed to be postponed, and that public schools in New Mexico would be closed until April 6th (now that has been extended through the end of the school year),…
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The initial impulse to create a unique higher learning institution devoted to consciousness began in 1976 in Alamogordo, NM. Then in the fall of 1979 the first 12 students began their course of study.
In the first entering class was Katherine Ninos, M.A., LPCC, who now teaches and mentors other teachers in the Consciousness curriculum.…
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Wild Heart Gallery
Beth Lykins, an Art Therapy/Counseling student finishing up the first part of the Southwestern College masters program, approached the Wild Heart Gallery about hosting an exhibition featuring the artwork of her fellow students who completed the Winter 2017 quarter of AT/CN 592, Art Therapy Techniques: Studio Art.
Fortunately,…
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Wild Heart Gallery
To find out more about the exhibition in the Wild Heart Gallery called Moment of Truth, I sat down with Sarah Ehle, the liaison for the cohort of 13 art therapy/counseling students preparing to go into the internship part of the Southwestern College masters program, to talk about the meaning of this theme.
…
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TLDR:
White privilege is entrenched in our society, and not where it might be expected. Many people who consider themselves "not racist" act in ways that are still oppressive. Racism and oppression are as much "ways of being" as "words" that are said. I was surprised that I have a history of being an…
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The writing group at SWC is a place where students, faculty, and staff can come together and share in a communal free-writing experience each Thursday at noon. Patterned after Natalie Goldberg's exercises, we start with a prompt of some sort and write for a few minutes, then, if we want, we share what we wrote.…
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So what's cool to do and see around here?
If you are like me, you are new to New Mexico and the Santa Fe area. Part of what drew me to come to SWC was the location. The moment I stepped into New Mexico for the first time I knew my soul was coming home!…
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Part 2, if you missed it…
Part 3: How Using Ownership Language Changes My Worldview
By changing the statement from "we" to "I" in this entire blog series I have shifted my perception of life. I no longer blame “society” (you, we, or any form of “other”) for what I am perceiving as a…
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Living in New Mexico has always been a dream of mine, and when I had the chance to move here to come to SWC, I jumped at the opportunity! It wasn't long before I was itching to explore my new world, and when I did, I was truly awestruck by the beauty within minutes from…
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Part 1, if you missed it...
Part 2: Practical Examples of Ownership Language
I look around and see so many things that say "Stop doing THIS!" or "Don't do/think/act THIS way!" or even "Fight THIS!"
With so much negative bombardment, is it any wonder I feel so overwhelmed and defeated much of the time, especially…
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Part 1: What is Ownership Language
In many of my classes our teachers have been training us to use “I statements” during discussions. For example, it applies when you fall into the habit of using we, or you, when you actually mean “I” in a statement, as I just did in this sentence. See what I…
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Hello! My name is Beth Lykins, and I am a current student at SWC. I am starting my final quarter of my first year in the Art Therapy and Counseling program, and I wanted to share a student’s perspective of life at SWC. I am attending part-time, so I generally take two courses per term.…
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The recent crop of counselors and art therapists from Southwestern College commenced on November 7, 2015 at the James A. Little Theater at the New Mexico School for the Deaf in Santa Fe. It was a beautiful ceremony unlike any other I have attended, and being a former college professor myself, I have seen quite…
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Come Undone by Laura Schoff
I feel with such a passion that art has the capacity to heal in many different ways. It has been my support, my processing, my guide, my inner world displayed. Without this art, I may have not have completed my first classes at Southwestern. A year and a half(ish) ago,…
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I'll start with an ending. One Art Therapy Techniques class in 2014 ended with each member of the group creating an altar of the art that was made during the quarter. We made Mandalas every class, as well as masks, body tracings, finger painting, inner guides and characters, and containers. In that class, I made…
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1996 Grad, Jack Lehman, MA, LPCC, Certified Trainer – Center for Nonviolent Communication.
In Thailand, north of Chiang Mai, I worked individually with workshop participants in front of a group. It was a 2-day Introduction to Nonviolent Communication. I spent much of the winter of ‘10 -’11 in Thailand and gave 3 workshops there and…
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What is a Container?
There are so many types of containers, a person, place, or thing that holds. Many images come to mind: a milk carton, hands, shoes, a home, a room, a box, a nest, my heart, a chair, a mouth, a closet… Many sensations come to body: warmth, safety, fear, constriction, flee,…
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by Debbie Schroder
The front door was already open and as I opened the sliding glass door to my patio, a fierce gust of wind blew through my house, lifting an antique plate and a figurine right off of the shelf they were on. They crashed to the floor in jagged pieces as I quickly…
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by Debbie Schroder
As it got close to 6:00 on Monday evening I could feel my eagerness to begin painting. Every Monday evening the in-state art therapy interns and I engaged in amazing relationships with our canvases. We painted for an hour, then shared our work and talked for the rest of…
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by Lisa Marie Paradis
Where do you hail from?
You and yours snug tightly
In between the dream
Awaken to five year old father's soul inhabited by butcher's
Chicken floating gently across
the room- enter the
back of the neck- boulders
upon the fleeing road-where
do you hail from?
barbed wire divisions in size-fait-memory-Is the
…
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1998 Grad, Gretchen Wachs, M.A., LPCC
Having worked as a visual artist for most of my life puts me in a unique position as a creative psychotherapist, as I am no stranger to the deep psychological work that goes hand in hand with true creative investigation. This works in reverse as well, and I truly…
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1996 Grad, Susan Boyes
I live and work in Ann Arbor, Michigan, where I have a part-time position as an art therapist for traumatic brain injured adults in a rehabilitation center. I also have a thriving private practice, providing art therapy to TBI clients and others in their own homes, or in my office. I…
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1985 Graduate, Rick Cotroneo
I started a part-time practice in classical homeopathy. My background in Education made me a candidate to serve as a commissioner on the Accreditation Commission for Homeopathic Education in North America (ACHENA). Just as Southwestern College has grown over the years through the process of accreditation, so now I am working…
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by Debbie Schroder
The idea seems simple, initially. When making a Genogram (kind of a family tree) use an image instead of a square or circle (how Genograms are usually done).
Each week in my Family Art Therapy course, one or two students shared their art-based Genograms. Never doubting our…
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Southwestern College Santa Fe, NM