Maan ystävien blogi

Clay therapy

Reflection is an important part of human life. You take the time to think about your life. You can think about what happened or what may happen, what makes you happy, what your hopes and dreams are … Everything is possible. Even though reflection is important, it can easely be forgotten in our day to day life. Luckily that is not the case for everybody.

On Wednesday Lauri Takatalo, a former intern of FoEF and current student Community Educator, came to the office of FoEF in Helsinki. With a original therapy in mind he gave the employees, some volunteers and me (intern at FoEF) the chance to do our reflection in an original way. In stead of just reflecting, we could expres our thoughts visibly by using clay. We took the time to reflect about what makes us joyfull and strong but also about what makes us sad. These reflections where represented through clay figures that matched the personal answer to the reflection. By using our hands and creativity we were able to make all kinds of different shapes.

There was a colour for each emotion on which we could reflect: green for hope, red for strenght, yellow (or orange) for joy, bleu for sadness and purple for humble. The results were different for each person because everybody has another story to tell and another way of interpreting the meaning of the emotion. The shapes vary from a cross to worms for hope or from cake to a seat for strenght. But the most important thing was that we could take the time to reflect and express our thoughts to each other. There was room for talking and listening but of course also for laughing. There should always be room for some joy! The environment was relaxed and open and everybody enjoyed this orginal reflectiontherapy.

So, we took some time to reflect. And if you can, you should do it too. Think about your life. What makes you happy or sad? What do you hope for or dream of? What gives you strenght?

Guillaume Vandenhemel

Intern at Friend of the Earth Finland