I am an experienced state registered (HCPC) art therapist and Buddhist
orientated psychotherapist, a teacher of Buddhist psychology, retreat leader, spiritual mentor and guide. I am a Buddhist priest in the Pure Land tradition and an ordained member of the Order of Amida Buddha. I live in Malvern and practice from a converted coach house, Seishi House in the grounds of Amida Mandala, a Pure Land temple located on the Worcester Road.
An art therapy consulting room is more like an art studio and sessions include both art making and verbal discussion. This is viewed as a process of discovery in which we travel side by side as a means to explore your life. Typically people talk about the things that trouble them, the pattern of their relationships, how they are feeling and what they may consider are limits to living a more fulfilling life.
There is no proscribed list of areas to explore in a therapy session and the approach I offer is one in which you are invited to trust in the process of discovery that a therapeutic environment encourages and supports. Trust develops at a different rate for each person. The art process allows a way of engaging with a creative journey that supports the gradual revealing of material and at a pace that suits each individual.
The art created in art therapy can be a mirror of our internal worlds or processes, and the unconscious dynamics that effect us. Sometimes, but not always, we might talk about what is revealed and how this gives us a view of the therapy relationship and the patterns of relating in other important relationships. This can be viewed a process of thinking together about ways in which you can become more flexible in relation to areas of experience that might cause distress, sadness or depression.
At the core of the process of art therapy is the importance of relationship and encounter with an image and another person as a basis for personal change and transformation.
I have an integrative approach, my main trainings being in Art Therapy and applied Buddhist psychology. I am influenced by object relations theory, psychodynamic thinking and transpersonal approaches to therapy as well as Buddhism generally. I also have an interest in trauma and have recently been training in a relational approach to working with people who have difficulties as a result of traumatic experience. I see art as a wonderful medium for working with our experiences and as a vehicle for growth.
You do not need to consider yourself artistic or good at art to engage in art therapy. Nor do you need to be Buddhist.
As an art therapist I have worked with children and adults, within family settings, mental health services and family centres. I can offer both individual and group work, short and long term. I also offer consultations via Skype and can combine face-to-face work with using digital methods of communication.
I have been qualified as an art psychotherapist since 2006 (Unv. Of Hertfordshire), I am a member of the British Association of Art Therapists (BAAT) and have had a training in Buddhist psychology with Amida Trust. I teach Buddhist psychology via an online programme for the International Zen Therapy Institute.
*I am registered as Simon T Williams (AS09405)