I recently came across an article from HR Economic times Indiatimes that mentioned a study from IIT Madras that advocates applying expressive art therapy techniques in the workplace to benefit the employees and consequently refine overall corporate culture.
Art Based therapy activities may greatly help channel the creative and expressive sides of employees and boost productivity according to the study.
Arts have a significant history in many cultures and have the potential to shape thoughts, feelings and behaviors. Compared to traditional training methods, experiential and artistic methods induce a positive mood, encourage creativity and innovation, and offer metaphorical and improvisational advantages to expand one’s thoughts and behavior in the workplace.
– Prof. V. Vijayalakshmi, Dept. of Management Studies, IIT Madras
Why is Art Therapy or Art Based Therapy becoming famous?
Rising Stress Levels: In the recent times, there has been significant rise in the overall stress levels of people working in organizations resulting in various emotional issues as well as physical issues.
Overwork & Work-pressure: We all are aware of the corporate grind. The employees over work and also work under lots of deadlines to complete. This leads to so much stress and emotional suppression that one forgets to connect with themselves leaving no space for emotions & reflections.
Poor work-life balance: Due to the changing and demanding lifestyle we all want to earn enough to fulfill our needs, desires and hobbies. This demands us to keep working for longer hours and taking bigger and better projects that help us climb up the ladder to earn better and more. What we forget or probably can’t manage is balancing personal and professional life because work eats our personal time making it difficult to unwind, relax and be happy.
Art Therapy is something that’s within us, whether we see or we don’t: The music that we hear in the background while working, the colours that we wear everyday, the movies we make time to watch, the stories we listen and tell to people, the stare we do at the sky to just observe how beautiful it is, the ambient restaurants that we choose, etc. everything is artistic that helps us be happy, feel better or relaxed or grounded. Imagine if someone told you to draw something or to play in rains or to just dance to a tune how would you feel? Transported to childhood, right?! That’s when you feel relaxed, more connected to yourself, your emotions and feelings and it becomes easy to express yourself.
Art Helps Say & Understand: “This song is dedicated to……”, or sending reels to each other, remember doing this and believing that the listener would get what you want to communicate? That is the magic of expressive art therapy. It helps you connect with each other without having to put words, it just gets simple and straight to you. When it becomes simple to say, it becomes simple to understand.
It’s unstructured-ly structured: All the expressive art / art based therapy sessions are made in a way that helps you enjoy the process have fun, get insights and effectively carry and/or implement what you have learnt / absorbed. This means that you don’t have to follow some one day timetable and wait for the breaks to happen to feel relaxed after the boring sessions.
Who doesn’t want to have fun! : We all love leisure and fun things, people, surroundings because we want to be happy and have fun that breaks our routine; art based therapy helps you with that very thing.
Why should you consider Art Based Therapy Trainings and Workshops for your Organization?
- A medium of having fun, engaging with every activity and skipping the lecture and presentations to learn and implement later.
- Something that you actually do and do it while having fun can have better retention rates. The employees can absorb better and remember better.
- No efforts to think if the employees will get bored or not, the activities are already fun.
- An expert-led facilitation, at Samvid, Awareness Within we have our experienced UNESCO CID Certified Art Based Therapy Practitioner – Jinisha Bhatt who conducts well crafted art based therapy workshops customized according to your challenges and needs.
- Art can fit into anything – any kind of trainings like team management, leadership, communication, productivity, stress management, managing emotions, etc. art therapy gels perfectly with your goals.
- Happy employees with better experiences can also work to give you better results. This gives your organization a chance to bring in some novelty.
What more do you need!! Do invest in giving your employees the fun-filled trainings and workshops via expressive art or art based therapy to enhance their performance, improve their wellbeing and self-concept.
