This six-hour experiential training explores grief in three forms of loss - obvious, ambiguous, and continuous - through an expressive arts therapy and neurobiological lens. Participants will explore current neuroscience research on how grief affects the brain and body and examine how these findings can inform expressive, embodied, and integrated approaches to grief treatment.

Through clinical instruction, guided creative experiences, case application, and practical interventions, participants will learn to integrate visual art, writing, music and movement, exploring how the interplay between modalities can create new pathways for expression, regulation, and meaning-making. The training emphasizes a trauma-informed approach to expressive arts therapy, with attention to pacing, client choice, ongoing informed consent, cultural humility, and ethical clinical practice.

The training also explores the person of the therapist and the impact of accompanying others through grief. Participants will use expressive and reflective practices to explore managing “the grief of grief” and the ongoing work of self-care as an ethical practice for clinicians.

For those pursuing REAT, this course includes 2 hours of individual, 2 hours of application and 2 hours of approach specific training.

By the end of the training, participants will be able to:

• Conceptualize grief in three forms of loss- obvious, ambiguous, and continuous.

• Describe current neurobiological research on grief and explain how grief affects the brain, body, attachment, and regulation systems.

• Explain how expressive arts therapy can support grief treatment through expression, regulation, meaning-making, and integration, including the clinical rationale for an intermodal approach.

• Apply visual art, writing, music, and movement interventions to address grief in ways that are responsive to client needs, therapeutic goals, and readiness.

• Demonstrate trauma-informed and ethically sound use of expressive arts by incorporating appropriate pacing, client choice, ongoing informed consent, cultural humility, and scope of practice.

• Identify the impact of working with grief on the person of the therapist and develop expressive and reflective self-care practices that support sustainable, ethical clinical presence.

Format: Live experiential in person training offering 6 CEU hours. All art supplies are included in the cost of $235. There will be a 1 hour lunch break and lunch is on your own.

Training Location: My-T-By-Design Therapeutic Art Studio, 392 E. Sunbridge Dr, Fayetteville, Arkansas