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Expressive Arts Intensive
Department of Counseling Psychology

Expressive Arts Therapy

Embracing the power of the arts for healing, growth, and social change.

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The Expressive Arts Therapy program uses an innovative Scholar-Artist-Practitioner model that unites academic knowledge, clinical practice, and community engagement with the arts as the central focus. We embrace all artistic disciplines as means of positive transformation.

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Get a glimpse of the EXA program experience

Get a glimpse of the EXA program experience

Creativity That Makes A Difference

The Expressive Arts Therapy M.A. at CIIS unites evidence-based psychological training with a wide range of creative practices to health, growth, and social change. We embrace all artistic disciplines as means of positive transformation.

Our program emphasizes hands-on learning through experiential and collaborative coursework. We place a premium on co-learning between students and faculty by creating opportunities for rich, playful, and diverse conversations and experiences.

Expressive Arts Therapy is one of five master’s programs offered through CIIS’ Counseling Psychology department. The pedagogy provides an engaging online, hybrid curriculum that weaves multimodal expressive arts, such as visual and digital arts, music, dance and movement, poetry, spoken word, and drama into all courses.

The program works on the innovative Scholar-Artist-Practitioner model that focuses on uniting academic knowledge, clinical practice, and community engagement. Throughout the program students engage with peers and faculty in a collaborative, liberatory-focused, arts-based environment. We place a premium on co-learning between students and faculty by creating opportunities for rich, playful, and diverse conversations and experiences.

Explore Our M.A. programs

Which one of our five unique specializations is right for you?

    Close up of a hand using a paintbrush to daub white paint onto a canvas. Still from video by Yaroslav Shuraev from Pexels.

    Expressive Arts Therapy

    Integrate creative expression with clinical and community practice

    Purple water with boats

    Community Mental Health

    Focus on healing through social justice and structural change

    Person dancing

    Drama Therapy

    Utilize drama and theater to promote psychological health

    Rainbow mural in Ouarzazate, Morocco

    Integral Counseling Psychology

    Incorporate the mind, body, and spirit into therapeutic practice

    Somatic Pyschology

    Somatic Psychology

    Bring an embodied approach to whole-person healing

    Close up of a hand using a paintbrush to daub white paint onto a canvas. Still from video by Yaroslav Shuraev from Pexels.
    Purple water with boats
    Person dancing
    Rainbow mural in Ouarzazate, Morocco
    Somatic Pyschology

    Faculty in Conversation 

    Our faculty research a wide variety of subjects, including multicultural and social justice counseling, neuro-diverse populations, and the integration of the arts into spiritual practice.

    Hand holding a jar full of sparkling light

    Exploring Rumi to Make Sense of Ourselves

    In this episode of the Public Programs Podcast, Expressive Arts Therapy Professor Shoshana Simons, talks with author Melody Mozeei about her life, her recent book The Rumi Prescription, and how the wisdom she found exploring Rumi can help us make sense of our modern lives.
    Parent and child walking on a forest path with sun shining through the trees

    On Family Constellations Therapy

    Family Constellations begins with this premise—it did not start with me. Many of us become entangled with the unhappiness of those who came before us, unconsciously adopting destructive familial patterns of anxiety, depression, failure, and even illness and addiction.

    CIIS faculty in Expressive Arts Therapy Mimi Savage joins Marine Sélénée for a conversational introduction to Family Constellations and how we can all harness this philosophy to take ownership of our lives.
    Friends sitting with the sun shining between them

    The Science of Friendship

    In this talk faculty Christine Brooks explores issues with friendship research, the phenomenon of loneliness, and making friends as adults. While the presentation might be from 2017, understanding the various ways nurturing our social networks increases our health and wellbeing is just as important and relevant today.  

    Our Program in Action

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