Finding Home: Exploring Feelings of Home and Spatial Un-belonging

Taylor Bourassa, DTATI Cand.
Ottawa, ON

Home is a sacred holding space

a space for wonderful discovery

self exploration

self acceptance and appreciation...

Home is the embodiment of safety,

rootedness and comfort.

Home is ancestral, primordial,

it echoes through time.

Where does the feeling of home go,

when home is challenged,

stolen,

colonized?

How does one embody the safety and comfort of home,

when feelings of home are overshadowed by feelings of un-belonging?

Neale (2017) proposes that identity and place are strongly linked – the connectedness one feels to a certain physical place, informs and influences their identity. When there is a disconnect from the physical place of home, how is identity and development impacted? What are the repercussions to physical and mental health? How might someone navigate through life despite lacking a sense of rootedness or feeling connected to a place?

All of our needs, from physiological and safety needs to self-esteem, are inter-connected. With this in mind, addressing feelings of home, belonging, safety and connectedness are fundamental to our work as art therapists, especially for those who face racism, colonization, and displacement in their lived experiences.

We can perhaps address the idea and feeling of home in the work we do as art therapists in three ways: the therapeutic relationship, the therapeutic space or environment, and the particular art-making methods we use. Eco-art therapy may be a helpful framework that can address feelings of home across these three areas.

In eco-art therapy, the hierarchy between client and therapist is addressed. By moving the therapy session outside of the regular office or professional environment and into the natural environment, the therapist’s position as exalted expert can be destabilized. The natural world has a democratizing effect, where client and therapist may enter into this space with a more equitable relationship, as neither party can own or control the environment, thus fostering the opportunity to collaborate towards healing (Jordan, 2016).

Holding space: rotting apple on a tree trunk.

Some natural locations have a particular internal resonance. For instance, woodland can be seen as having a holding or containing effect, and direct contact with natural environments can heighten sensory awareness (Jordan, 2016). This heightened sensory awareness can influence the embodied felt sense of “home” when paired with art-making that encourages the person to focus on and explore the space. Further, the natural space can become a witness to a person’s story, and a partner in the therapeutic relationship (Hasbach, 2016). The natural space is a holding environment, a container, the original mother. The person can explore ideas of home through the felt sense of home inside of their bodies and by using art and metaphors in the natural environment.

Through specific interventions the person can be led to explore their current understanding of home, what the word means to them, and the feelings they associate with “home”. Issues of displacement or spatial un-belonging may be addressed through art-making and body-based practices that facilitate the re-shaping of a space as home. Below I will outline a proposed exercise that may help in exploring these feelings of home.

Finding Home

Invite the person to explore the natural environment, finding spaces that feel like home to them in some capacity. This could be a hole in a tree, the leaf of a flower, a bed of grass at the base of a tree-trunk: whatever it is, invite the person to explore this space with openness and curiosity. Ask the person to sit with their chosen space, and to visualize what their home looks like; what does it feel like? If they could place words to their feelings, what would they be? Safety? Security? Containment? Joy?

Invite the person to notice their body as they explore this home space: where do they feel sensations in their bodies? What sensations are they feeling? What becomes activated for them? Are these feelings associated with words or images in particular as they explore this home? What do the boundaries of this home look like? Is it a shared communal space, or a space just for themselves?

Once the person has comfortably explored their space, ask them to find an object that symbolizes this space as home for them. A piece of home that can be found in this space; returned to and further explored, shared with others, or carried with them in their mind as they navigate the world, knowing that they have a place of belonging out in the world, a piece of home which they can access later through visualization, or meditating on the spaces associated words and bodily sensations.

Visualizing the home space can be just as helpful as accessing the actual space because the human brain responds similarly to a physical experience and a vivid mental event: specific visualization can produce desired physiological responses and induce the firing of appropriate neurons (Findlay, 2008). This suggests that even when the person is unable to access the physical space where they felt at home, they can visualize and meditate on this space to access similar feelings and sensations experienced. In this way, home can truly be carried with them and felt in the body.

Conclusion

Home may be an important idea to explore and address in therapy. In a world where feelings of home are difficult to access due to displacement, discriminations, or feelings of spatial un-belonging, these issues may take precedence within the therapeutic space. I outlined one very brief example of an activity in a natural space, and suggested two other ways in which we can address and explore these feelings in therapy: the therapeutic relationship and environment. Just as all of our human needs are interconnected, so too are the therapeutic relationship, space, and interventions.

I propose that when addressing feelings of home in therapy, starting from an eco-therapeutic perspective may be a helpful way to begin. Feelings of safety, containment, security, belonging, connectedness, and spatial belonging can be explored through the interactions people have with the therapist and natural environment. Using natural materials inside of a natural space can allow us to practice eco-consciousness as we navigate feelings of home with the original, natural Mother.

References

Findlay, J. C. (2008). Immunity at risk and art therapy. In N. Hass-Cohen & R. Carr (Eds.). Art therapy and clinical neuroscience (pp. 207-222). Jessica Kingsley Publishers.

Hasbach, P. (2016). Prescribing nature: Techniques, challenges and ethical considerations. In M. Jordan & J. Hinds (Eds.). Ecotherapy: Theory, research and practice (pp. 138-146). Palgrave.

Jordan, M. (2016). Ecotherapy as psychotherapy: Towards an ecopsycotherapy. In M. Jordan & J. Hinds (Eds.). Ecotherapy: Theory, research and practice (pp. 122-137). UK: Palgrave.

Neale, K. (2017). Feeling ‘at home’: Re-evaluating Indigenous identity-making in Canadian cities. Platforum, Journal of Graduate Students of Anthropology, 15, 74-94.