TherapyWalks Presents - TherapyShorts: For Healing From Your Pocket: Recent Episodes
Atara Vogelstein
Atara Vogelstein (she/her), Licensed Creative Arts Therapist and Drama Therapist, brings you TherapyShorts: short therapeutic activities, for healing from your pocket. Atara shares expressive, meditative, and reflective exercises, grounded in her creative arts therapy, drama therapy, and embodied practice. On-the-go or slowing down, TherapyShorts may offer you space to reset, recharge, and check-in when you need that extra moment, day or night. Brief guided meditations, mindful walks, art, movement, or writing prompts may be generated to accompany you on your healing journey.
This extended episode features Atara Vogelstein, Drama Therapist, LCAT, in conversation with Talia Weiner, LMFT in-training. In this casual interview between cousins, Talia (she/her) and Atara (she/her) discuss core processes of Drama Therapy and Creative Arts Therapy and reflections from the field, touching on key concepts such as working with trauma and attachment, embodied and projective engagement, and building safety within a therapeutic relationship.
Interview date: March 19th, 2024
Questions? Comments? Curious to learn more? Visit www.therapy-walks.com or drop a comment on the episode
References and further reading:
Haen, C. (2023). Integrative drama therapy in the treatment of trauma: Matching aesthetic properties to patient needs. In C. A. Malchiodi (Ed.), Handbook of expressive therapies (pp. 287–302). Guilford.
Jones, P. (2011). Dramatherapy: Five core processes, Dramatherapy, 14(1), 8-15. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/02630672.1991.9689804
Koch, S. C. & Fuchs, T. (2011). Embodied arts therapies, The Arts in Psychotherapy, 38: 276– 280, doi: https://doi-org.proxy.library.nyu.edu/10.1016/j.aip.2011.08.007
Landy, R. J. (2009). Role theory and the role method of drama therapy. In D. R. Johnson, & R. Emunah (Eds.), Current approaches in drama therapy (pp. 65–88). Springfield, IL: Charles C. Thomas Publishers.
Mahon, B. Z. (2015). What is embodied about cognition?, Language, Cognition and Neuroscience, 30:4, 420-429. DOI: 10.1080/23273798.2014.987791
Malchiodi, C. A. (2019). Trauma narratives: Multiple layers of storied expression. In Trauma and expressive arts therapy: Brain, body, and imagination in the healing process (pp. 243-283). Guilford.
Moreno, J. L. (1946/1985). Psychodrama, first volume (4th ed.). Beacon, NY: Beacon House.
Stevens, Adam D.F. (2023), 'BART, the Black American Role Taxonomy: A culturally expansive approach to role theory and method', Drama Therapy Review, Breathing Beyond Borders: Racial Justice and Decolonial Healing Practices, Vol 9, pp. 81-99, doi: https://doi.org/10.1386/dtr_00121_1
Williams, B. M. (2017), ‘Role power: Using Role Theory in support of ethical practice’, Drama Therapy Review, 3: 1, pp. 131–48, doi: 10.1386/dtr.3.1.131_1
Vogelstein, Atara. (2018), “Drama Therapy & Empathy: An Autoethnographic Study of Empathy in the Emerging Drama Therapist.” ProQuest Dissertations Publishing, New York University, Steinhardt School of Culture, Education & Human Development, Program in Drama Therapy, 5 May 2020, pp. 1–136. ProQuest, LLC, https://www.proquest.com/openview/36f180f64a42b8e19cfd4da9fe0718ce/1?pq-origsite=gscholar&cbl=18750&diss=y.
Atara guides an imaginative exercise in cocooning, inviting listeners to create or experience safety in their environment.
Atara invites listeners to quiet the chaos of the outside world, to tune into their bodily sensations, and to find space or relief from tension. Atara begins to introduce a process she utilizes within Drama Therapy, somatic externalizing.
Welcome to TherapyWalks Presents - TherapyShorts: For Healing From Your Pocket. In this episode, host Atara Vogelstein introduces this series of therapeutic shorts. Atara (she/her) is a Drama Therapist and Licensed Creative Arts Therapist in New York. Atara has experience providing trauma-informed and body-centered psychotherapy to individuals and groups of varying ages and populations, with specialties including trauma and attachment, stress and anxiety, emotional and behavioral regulation, and self-esteem and empowerment.
Throughout her life and this pandemic, Atara has found relief and restoration through being outdoors and interacting with nature. By implementing TherapyWalks into her psychotherapeutic practice, Atara intends to merge the healing qualities of the natural world with her expertise in creative arts therapies and transforming internal worlds. Atara brings a commitment to social inclusion, diversity, and justice; to being an ally to marginalized communities and actively responding to systemic and intergenerational trauma, abuse, oppression, and racism through her therapeutic, artistic, and personal work. Atara carries patience, energy, joy, creativity, empathy and understanding. Atara welcomes movement and stillness in all therapeutic journeys toward becoming unstuck and discovering change. Atara received her M.A. in Drama Therapy from New York University's Steinhardt School of Culture, Education & Human Development, and her B.A. from New York University's Gallatin School of Individualized Study. Atara is a member of the North American Drama Therapy Association (NADTA).
Disclaimer: while elements of this series or episode may be therapeutic to listeners, this series is not nor is it intended to be therapy or any form of psychotherapy, which requires a contractual agreement between therapist and client. If you are in need of urgent mental health support, please contact a mental health professional, a crisis resource center, or emergency services in your area (or call Lifeline: 1-800-273-8255).