Healing through art
As a psychologist, I have been trained in various forms of therapy. It is not always just about words, talking, journaling, and reflecting on your childhood. There are many forms of therapy. Among these many therapeutic approaches is a category we call “arts-based.”
This encompasses many ways of expressing yourself and facing difficult things through movement, visual metaphors, storytelling, and so on.
Early in October, the Cultural Center of the Philippines invited me to give a talk at the National Arts Education Summit, held at the Metropolitan Theater in Manila. I talked about the therapeutic benefit of art, and how mainstream psychology and Philippine shamanism can actually be allies in healing.
Art as a form of therapy
There are so many kinds of artistic expressions, usually grouped into visual, literary, and performance art. We can look at art itself in two ways: either as a product or as a process. As a product, we see sculptures, woven textiles, paintings, and novels—basically anything that can be for sale at a store.
But if we only see art as a product, we are removing the actual thing that makes art so meaningful: the experience of doing and consuming art. If we only see art as a product, then we should really be afraid of generative artificial intelligence (AI) because it makes products faster and easier (at the great cost to human dignity and our shared ecology).
Art is, more importantly, a process. The artist—whether actor, painter, writer, dancer, and so on—gets lost in the art they make. In psychology, this is known as the “flow” state because when you are in it, it feels like you are in the flow. Time slows down or disappears completely. We might say that “time flies.”
The audience even experiences this flow. They too get lost in art. Think of your favorite movie or story. Imagine the villain character you hate the most. Revisit a graphic novel that feels so real that you want to be in there.
What makes all of these so powerful? Art serves as a gateway to the mind. It gives us access to unique forms of knowledge and intuition. These are forms of awareness that are not usually accessible in everyday life.
Through art, we can experience the heights of passion, or a sense of oneness with the world and other people. Through art, we can be invited to open up again, to love again, to fight for the truth, and so on. Art calls to our greatest values.
Art is not just an escape; in fact, it is more like an immersion in reality. It invites us to see things in a different way.
Art and ritual
Every ancient society has had a shaman. The word “shaman” actually comes from a Siberian Tungus word that means “to know.” The shaman is the one who knows the lore, history, and issues of a community.
(We have our own shamans, of course, but we call them baylan, babaylan, mumbaki, and so on. They play a similar role.)
Shamans use different art forms in healing and knowledge work. In their rituals, they use music, chanting, poetry, dancing, drama, and the like. To heal a person, the shaman has an entire arts-based toolkit at their disposal.
Psychologists and folklorists have agreed that shamans served the role of the psychotherapist before psychology was even established as a field. And both psychologist and shaman go through training in techniques and theories of healing—the psychologist learns schools of thought; the shaman learns mythological perspectives.
The psychologist deals with inner demons such as fears and traumas; the shaman deals with spiritual forces in their environment. Whether we call it “spirit” or “repressed memory” does not matter—they will affect the patient just the same.
In the end, it is a matter of what metaphor or frame of mind works. If the patient resonates with a mythic or religious worldview, then the language of psychology will probably be ineffective.
What we can do
The real struggle is the colonial mentality embedded in us. Thus, two questions arise:
1. Is it demonic?
2. Is it scientific?
If “demon” means evil, undesirable, and dangerous, then what the shaman is doing is anti-demon. Exorcism and healing have existed before the Catholic Church in various forms because shamans have had to deal with some real spiritual dangers.
And in a way, the shaman and the priest share the same goals: to bring light, healing, and a closer relationship with the spiritual world.
If “scientific” just means “what is approved by Western institutions,” then we are just lapdogs, or tuta, to the foreigners. Science is just an approach to learning. Real science deals with the realities that real people really deal with. Part of the Filipino’s everyday reality is their spiritual heritage, cultural traditions, and Indigenous ways of living with the environment.
Never one or the other
To conclude, it is not about choosing one or the other. It is about learning from each other and improving the cultural relevance of both arts education and psychological intervention.
If arts teachers and advocates believe that art can change people, and maybe even Philippine society, then they have to accept the therapeutic effect that art can have on each of us.
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