Creative expression requires an ability to work with feelings and channel them. Frustration, dissatisfaction, and even a sense of desperation may help you access an eloquence you never knew existed.

Creativity can be defined as an original act of imagination that brings something into existence. It is a desire and innate drive to make new connections between things, to give form, and to transform.

Creativity is a force moving through us, and only through practice do we learn how to cooperate with it. The 'process' is like a muscle. It needs to be exercised in order to function effortlessly.

A person's license to create is irrevocable, and it opens to every corner of daily life. But it is always hard to see that doubt, fear, and indirectness are eternal aspects of the creative path.

Creative energy manifests in the 'aura' of the environment - the distinct atmosphere, quality and 'air of the place.' It has a contagious effect on people. When we walk into the environment, we know immediately whether or not the energy is present. Most of us need communities as sources of motivation and vitality; and in keeping with the basic movements of energy in nature, people charge one another in positive and negative ways.

The greatest opportunities for creative transformation are often lodged in our discontents. Art is an alchemical process that feeds on emotional energy. When we realize that a perfect equilibrium in our lives might not be the best basis for making art, then we can begin to re-vision our stress points. So rather than try to rid your life of tension, consider doing something more creative with it.

Focusing-Oriented Art Therapy is a major contribution to art therapy literature and practice. Laury Rappaport introduces a contemplative method and philosophy grounded in the body's felt-sense of experience and its innate and largely unrecognized wisdom. This intellectually provocative, yet thoroughly practical text, establishes Rappaport as an emergent leader in the art therapy world and author of a book that every student and art therapist must read in order to appreciate the depth and breadth of our discipline.