What can art do for us emotionally?

In this rich and wide-ranging conversation, hosts Lisa and Lauren sit down with Cathy Malchiodi, expressive arts therapist and psychologist, to explore one of the most fundamental questions about human creativity: what can art actually do for us emotionally?

Cathy draws on decades of experience to explain why art has been humanity's go-to healing tool long before psychology ever existed, and why the body, not just the mind, is central to that process. The conversation digs into the difference between being "creative" and being "expressive," why most of us stopped making art around age ten, and how "art wounds" from early experiences can follow us into adulthood. Lisa and Lauren also bring in their own observations from World Art Break Day, exploring why sitting down to make art alongside strangers unlocks surprisingly deep conversation and connection.

The episode also ventures into the challenges of our device-saturated world, the importance of getting people physically together, and the question of what, if anything, AI-generated art can offer the human spirit.

A thought-provoking listen for anyone who has ever said "I'm not an artist" and a reminder that you don't have to be.

More from Cathy here: https://cathymalchiodi.com/

Transcript

Lisa 0:02

Welcome to Artist Moving Podcast. This is Lisa and Lauren. We are so excited to have Cathy Malchiodi with us. Cathy, introduce yourself to our audience, please.

Cathy 0:13

Okay. And I appreciate my name being pronounced correctly because it's a difficult name. I don't blame anybody for mispronouncing it. But uh yeah, uh, so you know, my background is actually a core in the visual arts. You know, I started out an undergraduate in an art school, formal art school. But um, you know, in being an artist, it wasn't quite enough. I always felt that art had a bigger picture in the world. I didn't know then about the therapeutic or um health-related things that you could do with art, but I felt it in myself. So somehow that pathway evolved into studying things that were related to the arts, art therapy, dance movement therapy, music therapy. Um, and I eventually got that pathway to become an expressive arts therapist, also a psychologist, because that's how you can work in mental health more easily, but still my core is in the arts. So I basically, I this long pathway of using the arts for personal growth and self-care and self-sustainment, but also in being able, really fortunate to be able to take that information uh and leave my core as an artist as part of it, uh, in in working with people to help them find those same pathways. And I think today in this world, right now, it's even more important uh for people to consider that pathway. So, yeah, so that's my fortunate life path in the arts.

Lauren 1:47

Love it. Speaking of that, um uh the necessity of it at the moment, I'd love to ask you the question: what can art do for us emotionally?

Cathy 1:58

So that's a big question that I don't know if we have the answer to through science. Let's put it that way. But we have that answer through humans behavior for thousands of years and going to the arts well before we ever had things like psychology and psychiatry and psychotherapy, all the mental health domains, all the healthcare domains. People went to the arts to feel better. So, you know, I always say when people ask me for evidence, right? I get asked a lot. I say, okay, there's evidence coming out in this century through neuroscience and you know, lots of wonderful research studies. However, the thousands of years of humans doing this to recover and restore and repair is the real evidence. So, you know, it had to do with emotions, it had to do with transforming things that felt really uncomfortable or traumatic, loss, you know, things that went on within communities. Um, you know, but we now in this century, I think, are thinking about the arts not only as that, as a human behavior that's been restorative, it's also something that has to do with the body, because all the arts are body-based. And that's one thing, you know, that I learned becoming a mental health professional on the side, you know, being this artist in my core, and then becoming a counselor and a psychologist. The talk therapy does not touch that. It can be very helpful. It's obviously very helpful. There's a lot of evidence that good talk therapy, um, you know, with a therapist, psychologist, or psychotherapist, is really helpful. But what's missing, and I hear this from people all the time, there were things I couldn't communicate with words. And that's sometimes where they end up with someone like me or any number of practitioners that are arts-based, they need that channel of communication for whatever reason. And you know, part of it can be trauma and loss cannot be expressed with words adequately. It's a feeling in the body, or you might be somebody, I'll just throw this example out there, who considers themselves neurodivergent. So you, you know, you may be on that continuum and feel words are just not my first way of communicating. So there's many different varieties out there and different reasons we might find this helpful. I think all people find it helpful, but those are like two really good examples.

Lisa 4:34

Let's um, I'm interested in the neuro um divergent. Did you say let's talk about that? Like, what is what does that mean um to our audience?

Cathy 4:43

So, all of us, if you look at how we exist in the world, we're all neurodiverse, we're all different. So, you know, if you if if you two and I did the same, you know, kind of prompt, you know, we were told to make color shapes and lines to represent something, we'd all do it differently. Um we all would be responding to the same question or prompt or theme. But uh if you're neuro, so we're all neurodiverse. Neurodivergence technically covers a lot of ground people who have autism or autistic people who identify as having attention deficit issues, but also people who have trauma, post-traumatic stress, or any number of things can identify as neurodivergent because communication is different for them, senses are different for them. So that's a wonderful thing about the arts. You've got so many senses to work with. So it really opens up possibilities for people that may feel the typical ways of communicating, I'm not good at that, or I can't really get my point across. And when you give them some form of art, whether it's movement or sound making or image making, enactment, playfulness, all those kinds of things, it's a different channel of communication. And you know, it gives people another way. I always say the arts are forms of lived experiences. We talk a lot about lived experiences through storytelling. You know, people do that. And and and that's a respected way of communicating one's experience. But the arts, there is this sensory, you can call it nonverbal, but it's usually the sensory-based kind of way that resonates with people. When they get something out, even if it isn't described in words, they feel like that's it, that's how I communicated that in that gesture or that mark on paper, you know, or that sound on a drum. They really resonate with feeling that that's very authentic and that's a form of lived experience, too. I think that gets dismissed. We don't think because we also think it's gotta be words. Yeah, yeah.

Lauren 7:01

Yeah, yeah. Something I've also noticed is that I think that in some cases the art making doesn't feel as like direct to the person doing it. It's more of an indirect act of communication. And so I think maybe do you think that that maybe contributes to um because someone doesn't necessarily have to like be staring at someone else's, you know, in the face and and talking about their trauma or their experience, that they're able to feel more free with expressing it.

Cathy 7:35

Um, so when you say art, do you just mean one art form or do you mean like any?

Lauren 7:39

I mean, I I was thinking that mostly. I'm thinking about when we do art breakday and like you watch people and they sit all they're sitting doing is sitting down and like painting on a piece of paper or drawing with markers, and they're not looking at each other, right? They're looking at their work and they're doing their work. But the conversations that they're having at the table are very deep and thoughtful. And I'm curious if it's because there is an indirectness to it and you feel less on this in the spotlight, per se.

Cathy 8:09

That could be, yeah, the answer to what what researchers, and they're not necessarily in the arts, but in language and development, they've known for more than 25 years that if you and I sit down and just have a conversation together, you know, we might have a good conversation and a lot of things are shared. But if as the therapist in the room, let's say, and I'm working with you, and I have you draw or doodle while I'm talking with you, you'll tell me two to three times more than remember more than and just talking alone. So is that the indirectness, or does, which I think might be the connection, images stimulate language because even early on, when we're young children, there's a point, you know, if you have children or have been around young children, people start to ask them about their scribbles. You know, you can't even tell what they are, you know, really. But then the children start to respond and start to tell stories, and they start to, you know, develop their language skills that way and their storytelling skills, because an adult or caregivers, they're asking questions about that. So we don't know the answer. I think what you said is possible that because it's not so direct, and there's something else flowing in that moment uh that stimulates language. Also, a lot of times for people, these are novel activities, they're novel experiences. So then you feel less inhibited. It kind of breaks things up in a way. Yeah, we just don't know the answer to that, but we know the response. We know that people get a lot more out, and and especially in a group where they're just hanging out in a studio, for example, and doing things together, and they may be working on their own thing, but there's a lot of interaction and a lot of things going on in the dynamics. So, community is a really important piece, I think, in all of this. It doesn't get talked about enough, that there's a lot of different relationships going on that help people feel safe and comfortable, and we're all doing something together, and we're all here supporting each other in some way, even if we're just working on our own creative act. Yeah. These are things that are really remarkable about how the arts really bring about health.

Lisa 10:32

Yeah, artist healing. Um, I have a question, like more of a challenging question, because that art break day and in our experience of facilitating art, um, there's that fear factor. I don't have the courage to sit down. No, no, no, I'm not an artist when it's not even about that. So um, let's talk about that. Why do people or what at what age do people start getting fearful of like I'm I'm not good? You know what I mean? I can't draw the apple like an apple. And when when the benefits are like beyond, right? So that's kind of yeah.

Cathy 11:02

So we don't know that now because of all the changes that we've gone through with now children are focused on devices. So the last century research, I don't think it's been updated, but we're really new previously in development, like at about the age of 10, we kind of get divergent then. And some people stay with it, but very few, and others, you know, just go on to do other things. I mean, you have a lot of things to do as a child going into, you know, pre-adolescents and adolescents with learning skills and the you know, language areas and math, and all these different things that are going to prepare you for life. So a lot of people don't stay engaged in the arts. So I could say previously, and it's probably still fairly true, but we don't know for sure if it is the same as it was before devices came along, you know, all our uh iPhones and you know, desktop and all this. But people usually stop at about the age of 10. And I can see it kind of when they first come in, if we're doing visual stuff, because they're just kind of back there in that age range. And you know, what I say is look, you know, it's like language. If you stop using a language, you don't get any farther in it. And this is a language, and we're gonna do a lot of different things that are just mark making and just see where it goes or see if this really resonates with you because making sound or or music or something else might resonate. But let's see where where this goes. But they're kind of relieved to know that the rest of the world has not has kind of stopped there. But you know, the thing I really want to say is there's a difference, and I think people need to pay attention to this. The two words that we use a lot are creativity, creative, and expressive. And there is a difference in that. And I I've always leaned into expressive because let's put it this way yeah, every day I don't necessarily wake up creative. I'm somebody who went to art school, right? No, there's some days, it's not coming in that direction, but you can always be expressive. And one time when once people hear that from me or whoever is facilitating something, okay, just gonna be expressive. You can just, you know, express through a movement something, or express through how you're sitting a certain kind of feeling, or express through, you know, a sound-making instrument, or express on paper, choose a color. What kind of you know, shape, color, and line are you today? That's just being expressive. I think creative has gotten in the way a little bit. People feel like, you know, creative, I don't think so, you know, and you eventually people do find out though, if they stick with it, they have a moment where they think like, huh, I really did this well. I'm really proud of this, or I really got something from this. I think I had a creative moment. And they probably did for them because it's personal, it's cultural, it's you know, it's got a lot of different definitions for different people. So I think we have to be a little bit cautious of bringing that in too soon because then people think like, oh my goodness, you know, am I creative? And a lot of a lot of the criticism comes up in you know in their internal dialogue. If we go with expressive, yeah, we all can be expressive, you know, just in very simple ways, and then that can lead to other things. So yeah.

Lauren 14:39

Yeah, we always try to tell people that it's about the process, not the product, you know, to try to get them to remember that they still might hear in their heads that word creativity. Yeah, I know, and I think I like the idea of just like it's it's about expression, it's not about um, it's not about having to, I don't know, reinvent the wheel, right? I think that a lot of people think creativity needs to be something that no one's ever done before. Um, they kind of put it in that category, and I wouldn't put it in that category, but um, you know, we judge ourselves, and and I think, yeah, creativity.

Cathy 15:18

I always thought, well, that leads to some kind of product that gets a label that it didn't that, whatever that magical standard is of creativity. So that's another thing. I always have conversations with people about uh, you know, what their life history was, personal history with the arts, because they have some really interesting stories to tell about times maybe early on. I uh I had a really learned friend who speaks seven languages and has two advanced degrees, and she remembers with crystal clarity when she was eight years old in a classroom, and the teacher held up her picture, and it was a picture of a horse, but the teacher held it up and said, Isn't this the most wonderful picture of a sewing machine that I've ever seen? She stopped drawing then. I'm sure the rest of her life and she became very skilled in languages, right? Seven languages, advanced degrees that you know were you know, really a PhD and a couple of master's degrees, actually. And she remembers that moment and she's every time somebody asks me to do something like that, I freeze. So I don't just have that conversation with people and find out, like, oh wow, well, now I understand somebody traumatized you about you know your ability to do any kind of expression and creativity has been you know just off the menu for you. Yeah, no, for sure. Yeah, stories, yeah.

Lauren 16:46

Yeah, no, Lisa talks, she calls those art wounds. And I feel like everyone everyone has an art wound. I mean, I have like tons of different stories. We all have art wounds, yeah, right. And I that's unfortunate.

Cathy 16:58

But except for me, I don't have those. I think why that's why I kept moving forward. I I had teachers that you know just knew that I was really passionate about doing things that were arts-based, and they encouraged that in the classroom. So I was really, really fortunate because that that's not the standard story.

Lauren 17:20

Right, for sure.

Cathy 17:22

But I, you know, I was lucky that way, that people kept kind of saying, Oh, yeah, and they noticed that I was enthusiastic, whether I was good at it or not, was not really the core issue that I was enthusiastic and really was excited about being in those kinds of activities.

Lauren 17:40

So that's a that's a curious thing in terms of like our culture and society, is that we tend to speak a lot more towards talent than we do about than we do about passion. And I think if we allowed people to have more passion about something that maybe they were mediocre at, I think the world would probably be a better place. Um because it feeds you your passions if you're able to um pursue them. Um and you know, but I think everybody wants to be like a YouTube star. And so, like, you know, where everybody wants to used to want to be the president of the United States, I don't think anybody does anymore. But like when I was a kid, right? That was and that was one that's that is one position that not many people are gonna get. And so you you can't really necessarily you have to find a way to balance that conversation with kids about like, well, what else are you passionate about? Um, you know, because I think pursuing a passion and not having to reach the top of the summit is not something that many people talk about. You know, it's either like you either do 100% or you don't do it at all. And I don't I don't think that's the way to go about life. Um you know.

Cathy 18:56

Yeah, I mean, I'm just thinking here, I don't know why I'm thinking about it, but uh the whole field in uh the arts called um music, not music, uh hip-hop therapy, excuse me. Hip hop therapy is yeah, I I've participated in some of that. I I had such high respect for the people that are doing that work because they're getting adolescents in classrooms and elsewhere to follow a structured path to learn how to do something that they are impassioned about in their life because they are listening to that kind of music and giving them the guidance of like, how do you do this? And what are the structures for this, and then giving them the opportunity to be expressive and eventually, I would say most of them become very creative with it. Yeah, they're able to express personal experiences, but also in that particular pathway, societal challenges, social justice issues, all kinds of things come out through that art form. So I was just thinking about that when you were saying that about you know, giving people a way towards the passion that actually does help them get to the place of feeling like, huh, I think I did something really important here, or it was really important to me, or I felt that I did something novel that I didn't know I could do.

Lisa 20:20

Yeah.

Cathy 20:21

So, you know, even if we're not skilled, I think there are pathways that help us think about ourselves and as skilled as being able to do something.

Lauren 20:31

Yeah, I I think when you when you surprise yourself, right, and you say, Oh, I never thought I could do that before, I think that is a that is something that you carry with you, you know, and I think that's a really important to give people the opportunity. And people have a tendency to, I think, shy away from things, myself included, that we are not going to be perfect at. Um, and I I think that's a disastrous path.

Cathy 21:01

But the other thing that happens why I think there's real change that doesn't happen maybe as well in other areas, other ways you could encourage people to feel good about themselves.

Lisa 21:13

Yeah.

Cathy 21:14

If you do something in the arts and you get impassioned about it, and then it eventually turns out that you've done something process-wise, that feels good. It doesn't just feel good in your brain, it feels good in your body.

Lauren 21:27

Yes.

Cathy 21:28

And that's the important change. People have to feel resensitized in their body, like, wow, I can, you know, I can see that in people too, when their posture changes or the way they walk in the room. So I always say, you know, in my field of expressive arts therapy, it's really a process of helping people come home to their bodies in a way that makes them feel good about themselves on this deeper level. You know, and you can't talk somebody into joy or curiosity. Or confidence, they have to feel it somehow. So that's why I always think about like, okay, why do I do this work in particular? I think talk therapy, again, really works in a lot of settings. There's a lot of evidence for it, making really great changes. But a lot of times people need to feel it much more deeply. You can't talk people in a session into feeling happy. They have to feel that happiness in their bodies somehow. So this is the thing about the arts. Again, we can tell stories through it, of course, and you know, and eventually maybe even tell those stories in words, but it's the senses that are the most important because it's a sensory-based experience. And then when it's combined with feeling good about those senses, that's a really powerful dynamic. It's huge.

Lisa 22:52

What I'm sensing is uh, I mean, we know this, we're we're the course here, but art is very primal. Um, but how do so you were also leading to technology and devices, and we're in this new crazy world where we are disconnected with our body? Absolutely. But how do, and as I think generations um grow, it's going to be even more difficult because you know, artificial intelligence is off the chart. But um, how do you become the illumination to people to go, hey, this is primal, this is who you are, just move, just feel it. And so um, how do you do that? How do you, you know, is it a mother?

Cathy 23:31

Is it that's a big one, yeah.

Lisa 23:34

Yeah, yeah.

Cathy 23:35

No, I was just thinking, um I think it's possible, but you have to get people in the door first in a real situation. We've been able to do some of that on Zoom, but people need to be with people. That's the first thing. It's that connection between people, and that's where a lot of things happen in the arts when there are groups of people and communities participating together, even if they're doing their own thing, but they could be doing something together, singing together, making sounds together, and acting together, or working out some kind of group process in the arts. Um, that's the first thing that, but that that's the piece is getting people and especially young people away from the devices a little bit. And I think there's hope there. There are adolescents now that have learned and seen that getting off their device has given them better sleep. It's given them better mental health, and they're open for these opportunities if they're provided. That's why we need so many more of these things that are that are um you know available in communities that are accessible so people can get to them to be in real life.

Lauren 24:49

Yeah. I I agree with that in terms of the accessibility. I think you need there needs to be something that an adolescent can discover. And if it doesn't exist, um then they're never gonna discover it. And I think that is the part that sometimes saddens me is that um the resources, you know, you can't have an art center open if nobody shows up. So no, um, it's sort of like a um it just, you know, I I guess it seems to me like it needs to be a a cultural, you know, um societal push towards it. Um, because you don't, you really, you know, the thing I think is so magical about art is um you don't need much in order to make a huge difference in your life, you know. Um you don't even need a pen and paper, you know, you can just listen to the birds, you know, on a park bench uh or look for shapes in the sky. Um, you know, it's really about, like you were saying, about connecting your your mind, body, and spirit at the same time. And um, I'm constantly talking about people with, you know, we we call it the flow. Um I have three, I have three children and they find their flow in three different ways. And um, and they're it's probably gonna change as they as they age. But that's how we talk about it, right? And it's a way where you um you get to that place where you're you're not really thinking anymore, you are just your being, you know. Um, and you're and and it's so helpful. Um, I watch it like you were saying, I can see the I can see the senses changing um moment by moment in my children. And it's hard because you're like, um, I want everybody to do that. I want everyone to experience that, you know? And so is there, I know there's never a magic pill, but like is there like one do you think there's one tiny thing that like you could suggest to someone like, oh hey, well, why don't you give this a try? Do you have you ever in your experience, is there something that you lean on?

Cathy 26:59

And yeah, I don't know that there's one thing for everyone, but one thing that if we're back to the adolescent stage, journaling and making that visual journaling and maybe writing, you know, seems to be still a pretty powerful thing if you can get, you know, that individual involved in that. Um, but I wanted to go back to, I think, you know, what you were saying, you mentioned the word flow. And this is the thing in expressive arts I look for is if I can get somebody involved in it, where's that creative flow for them? Because that's a unique restorative experience. That's like being mindful and being timeless and being totally absorbed in something that you just really love to do. And now, what I'm gonna say is more of what a therapist looks at these days, which we have pretty rampant in our society. Feelings of freezing and feeling immobilized. I can't do anything to change my situation or the situation in general, or feeling like I'm always wound up. I I want to fight this, I feel angry, I feel anxious, or wanting to run away from it all, which we call the free response. So we got fight, you know, flight and freeze are the three things people talk about in trauma the most, other things, but those are the three basics. How I think about it is we've got in the arts two things that counter those. One is the creative flow, get just get into that, get into your journaling, get into drumming or drum in a drumming circle or whatever um art form resonates with you, and you get into that flow state where there's just like, I don't want to leave this. This feels fantastic to me. But the other piece is just like the excitement, which I just say it's either fun. And one of my uh military patients said, fervor. He said, Why don't you put that F-word in there? And I'm like, Whoa, he's what does that mean? That enthusiasm, I get enthusiastic about that. Yeah. When people are in those two states and they can be in both at the same time or back and forth, they're not in those fight and flight and free states. And that's when I think if you can get people involved, any age, you know, involved on that level, they start to want more because that does feel good. It's something now I want to pursue, whatever it is that's my um expressive or even creative outlet, uh, because that helps me get away from all those other terrible feelings. And those feelings are pretty prevalent right now in a lot of us.

Lisa 29:34

Yeah.

Cathy 29:35

You know, they may be more in people that have more challenges and have I know.

Lauren 29:39

And in terms of like uh in terms of adults, right? I do feel um that adults feel I think the words I would describe would be um overextended, overwhelmed. Um, this like a sense of dread um and the and helplessness. And I think a lot of that has to do with what you were speaking to about not feeling connected and trying to get everyone in the room together really does make a difference, and that seems to be harder right now.

Cathy 30:10

Um, you know, we become isolated, we're more connected than ever, but we're isolated at the same time.

Lisa 30:16

I know.

Cathy 30:18

That's the contradiction, and yeah, I'm I we back to AI. I'm just um, you know, somebody just sent me an email and inviting me to help with some AI doodling program. And I'm like, immediately, no.

Lisa 30:34

All you need is just have a piece of paper.

Cathy 30:37

You need to do this. The humans for thousands of years have done this with their hands on some surface, okay? Right there, you know, is like you can't take that leap and expect that this is going to be better. Now, maybe that person is thinking this will be more accessible to certain people who can't, you know. Okay, but on the whole, I don't, you know, people now are using AI to generate graphics every day. I see them all the time. Um, instead of using a graphic artist or trying it on their own to put it together. And to me, I look at those AI graphics, they don't have a soul. Very soulless and all the same. And but why are we doing this? I'm seeing this even come from my colleagues who are in expressive arts. And I'm like, wait a minute, we believe that the hands-on person-to-person experience in the arts is what's restorative. You're using AI to create these graphics, you're not even asking an artist to help you. Right. Yeah, I know.

Lisa 31:42

I think to me, wow, think yeah, I think that's overwhelming in itself, and I think that's on the horizon. And I think um practitioners like us need to be prepared for it because I think there's gonna be a rebound effect where people are gonna, there's gonna be more trauma. There's gonna be more, you know what I mean? And there's needs to be like uh an illumination, like you need to get back to you, right?

Cathy 32:07

Yeah, so yeah, yeah, you're giving up yourself to AI. I always see that because you have to give them a lot, give whatever AI is, the they of AI, a lot of information to generate whatever it is. And I think that's a that's a whole other issue, but it's like, why are you interacting with AI when you could be interacting with something, like either your own, you know, expressive work or somebody else. You know, I don't know. I that that to me is is mystifying. It's going too fast.

Lauren 32:40

Yeah, and I I think that is the I think that's the nature of it, you know. Um, I think about like what you were saying about kids having cell phones. I think uh the introduction of A is very similar. As like a parent, you're you are a salmon going up a river if you're not getting your child a phone, because everything in society assumes that your child has a phone. And so everything is set up for your child to have that phone. Um, and it's the same it I think people are noticing that with AI, because now the expectation is that you are supposed to be faster because there's this thing that will help you be faster, and then everyone's gonna jump on that train. And I'm already noticing that um language is being totally influenced by AI, how people are communicating with one another, because it's not their voice. Like you said, it has no soul. And I think that it will, if we're not careful, um, you know, I think that we're going to find that it is just going to push us into a world that demands a lot more from a person than they should be doing, and it will continue to disconnect us. I don't doubt there are good things that AI can do. Um I I I just think that we should use it with um, you know, caution. Like I I saw this artist and I'm forgetting his name at the moment, but he used AI and he actually found more of his voice through it, which was amazing. But he used it for that as a tool for that. You know, he was very um con, you know, conscious of what he was doing with it. And I think that there was a lot of power in that. Um, so yeah, I would just right, it's like tread carefully and cautiously, and um, and we could do great things. I think we could do amazing things. We could always do amazing things, but we we tend to go towards the more um cheap, fast convenience as opposed to um slow, high quality um, you know, connection.

Cathy 34:49

So yeah, yeah, I agree with all that. I just my question is because I, you know, I deal with people who have some kind of major challenge. So they've had trauma or loss or something, you know, that they're really challenged by and they're in a lot of pain about it. Um, you know, does that kind of thing resensitize the body to all those things I'm talking about, like joy, enlivenment, curiosity, sense of self, playfulness, compassion? That would be my question about that, because that's kind of my goal. You know, it's not just only like, okay, you're feeling good with you know, this form of expression, you want more of it. Wow, you're feeling like you're really doing something novel, or maybe you've gotten that place of creativity and you know, your value system. But are you getting these other benefits? Right because I think that's what the arts are about. I mean, they're supposed to be about giving our body that experience of when you listen to a powerful piece of music, for example, and getting those tingle feelings, you know, uh that creates that heightened emotion. You're getting that enlivenment in some way. Is that happening with the AI process? That's what I want to know.

Lisa 36:11

Yeah, yeah.

Cathy 36:12

And again, when I'm looking at the graphics that are being generated by people from AI, and they're not, they're not artists per se. They're people that are using it to generate a graph that tells you something or advertises something. There's no soul in those images. It's really interesting. It's palpable that there's nothing there. It makes sense, it conveys, you know, what the information that they want to convey, but you can feel like, wow, this doesn't feel like it has any life to it.

Lisa 36:44

Life, the essence of life.

Cathy 36:46

That's what I'm wondering about. And I hope that people who are using it, because I know there are some arts-based therapists that are really interested in it, that they're thinking about that. Like, what is that? What's happening to our senses? You know, whatever. Is it rekindling something in the body that's getting stolen by a lot of what we're going through?

Lisa 37:15

That's what I'm sent. That's what I'm sensing. This expression, uh expression is about um sensory, right? That's what I'm getting. And then creativity is more about um, you're gonna kind of finish a product or something, or yeah, and it's something novel that you think like, oh, you know, yeah, I did that.

Cathy 37:35

You know, like, wow, you know, this feels like I pulled together a lot of things and it's it's come out in in this way that feels really novel and exciting. And yeah, but you know, how was the process? Did you want more? Like yeah, I I love that.

Lauren 37:52

I love that notion of like the idea of um finding your flow and then that fervor. I like that word. I think that's really yeah, like that that you're you're really it gets you excited about it. That's another thing, is that like I don't know that many people allow themselves even to get excited anymore.

Cathy 38:13

Um, and I think we forget the ability to, yeah, because we feel numb all the time. Yeah, so much overwhelm going on that you know, that's one way to survive. It's not wrong, but it's the way that you survive by just cutting off and like I'm not gonna let myself get too involved in this emotionally or get excited or anything else because you know I'm already overwhelmed, I just want to keep things at a excitement is a stress, even excitement. It's stress. I can see where people have to kind of shut it off. But then again, I I mean, I do think that's from all these decades of kind of being in the midst of art as my own self-sustaining method. It's all about that other, it's all about that. Oh, get into that timeless state when you, you know, all of a sudden panic because you've been doing something for two and a half hours and you were supposed to start dinner.

Lisa 39:13

Yeah.

Cathy 39:17

But it's that wonderful sense of being absorbed in something and not wanting to let go of that. But then being like, you know, as you decide, oh, I have to walk away from this, looking back at whatever it is you accomplished, either an image or writing lyrics or I don't know, any number of things, and and feeling that like, wow, I I really like what I did. I don't want to leave this, I'm so excited about it. Yeah, yeah, just enthusiastic about it. So I thought that was a great observation because I always kind of thought, well, you know, it's fun. That's the other, you know, it's fun I was thinking about. And that mediates all those other things that fight and flight and freeze. Right. In those places, you can't be in those other places.

Lisa 40:01

It feels like it's uh involution versus X, you know, it feels like um it's an inner journey versus, you know, um staying on your baseline is like an external journey. I want to make sure everything's safe, you know what I mean? Um, but to go within is where you find the magic. That's where the magic is.

Cathy 40:21

Although what's interesting with the arts is is uh, and now we don't talk about it as much, I think that we need to in like expressive arts therapy, for example. The fact that other people get to witness what you've done or be part, you know. I mean, even if you're doing something together, singing together or making music together or enacting together in in a drama or playful kind of situation. That is another piece that I think you know, people work up to and they like that too. If somebody sees the image that I made and they you know are able to witness it and enjoy it. So there's there's that. When you said external, I was thinking that's one thing we don't talk about enough. It's like how do we pull that in? Because people do sometimes or a lot of times want to be seen in a different way.

Lauren 41:11

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, there's a lot.

Cathy 41:15

Well, yeah, there's a lot to unpack, isn't there?

Lauren 41:18

Yeah, thank you. Thank you for talking with us um today. I really appreciate it.

Lisa 41:23

And then Kathy, where can people um find you and um your work?

Cathy 41:28

And I think you're they just google my name. Okay, we started with that, it's unusual. They go to Kathy Malchiotti.com, you know. I mean, just go do a Google search. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You'll find yeah, you'll find a lot. Yeah.

Lisa 41:47

All right, thank you so much. This was amazing, and I think people are gonna benefit from this conversation. Right.