Karen Sedgwick stares intently at the outline of a body on the legal-size paper in front of her before selecting a red chalk crayon and beginning to fill it with dark red lines that stretch up and down the arms, legs and torso.
She adds some blues and more red, especially in the left side of the chest where the heart would be. With a dark green, she creates a tubular shape under the body’s feet. That, she says when she’s done, is the hoverboard that has been sitting in the corner of her living room since her cancer diagnosis.
“When I finish treatment, I’m going to ride it again!” she says resolutely. “I love the freedom I feel on my hoverboard!”
Karen’s artistic creation, and the inner thoughts it helped connect her with, were part of a recent session of the free Art Therapy Support Group for cancer patients and their family members at Backus Hospital. Led by Art Therapy Facilitator Lauren Ciborowski, the support group taps all forms of art to help people cope with their diagnosis and treatment for different types of cancer.
“It gives patients a chance to take time for themselves and unwind. It gives them a sensory reboot,” Ciborowski says. “It’s a useful tool for coping with everyday living in general, too.”
In most sessions, Ciborowski leads the group in a practice of free association, in which they are urged to empty their minds of conscious thoughts and fears.
“Since our reasoning, judging minds guard us and filter our thoughts, free association can be used to access the ‘energy patterns’ and allow us to be more open to experience,” she says.
On this day, she plays quiet music and participants write whatever thoughts come into their heads for five minutes. It’s something easy to try outside of the support group, too, with journals in which patients can record and perhaps then understand the stresses they face.
Ciborowski follows that with a guided meditation, which she notes has been shown to lower blood pressure and the level of stress hormones in the body. The stream of energy unearthed during the mediation fuels the Somatic Body Drawing Sedgwick and others then work on silently. The idea of this art directive is to transfer any images or feelings that arise during meditation onto the paper.
Art therapy, she says afterward, helps cancer patients wade through the negative emotions that may overwhelm them and reconnect with themselves.
“You lose your identity because you’ve become a patient,” she says simply. “This gives people that sense of self back.”
She uses a variety of art forms and participants do not need to have artistic ability to attend. One month, the group made zen gardens by decorating cigar boxes with inspiring words and filling them with meaningful trinkets. One woman brought her kindergarten son with her and they made worry stones so he could tuck his into his pocket at school and feel stronger.
“This is all about validating their emotions. If you take care of the mind, the body will follow and you’ll be more able to fight off the cancer,” Ciborowski says
Sedgwick, a Jewett City teacher who had a mastectomy earlier in the year and faces follow-up radiation, says she found great relaxation in her art therapy experience.
“Art has a different purpose altogether here,” she says, gesturing to her chalk drawing. “I envisioned the radiation scanning the body and got progressively more relaxed.”
Art therapy classes are held monthly at Backus and are open to all cancer patients. For more information, contact Oncology Nurse Navigator Jessica Vanase at 860.425.3870 or Jessica.vanase@hhchealth.org.