Page 7 - Silver Linings Issue4

patients and residents and allow them to explore.”
Katie adds,“ We give them some space and tell them they can’t do it wrong — as long as they try. The process of working with
art supplies and being in that mind space, whether drawing or painting, in and of itself is healing. It’s a meditative mindset when you can create the right space for it.”
From the American Art Therapy Association
Art for the mind, body and spirit.
Art therapy, facilitated by a professional art therapist, effectively supports personal and relational treatment goals as well as community concerns. Art therapy is used to improve cognitive and sensorimotor functions, foster self-esteem and self-awareness, cultivate emotional resilience, promote insight, enhance social skills, reduce and resolve conflicts and distress, and advance societal and ecological change.
Through integrative methods, art therapy engages the mind, body, and spirit in ways that are distinct from verbal articulation alone. Kinesthetic, sensory, perceptual, and symbolic opportunities invite alternative modes of receptive and expressive communication, which can circumvent the limitations of language.
Visual and symbolic expression gives voice to experience and empowers individual, communal, and societal transformation.
KEEP CALM AND CARRY YARN
Creative art comes in many forms.
Knitting is one of the more popular group activities enjoyed by Silver Hill Hospital patients.
Olivia Giuntini is a volunteer who has been leading knitting groups at Silver Hill for more than five years. She said
Olivia Giuntini Knitting group leader
the activity is popular among women and men of all ages.
“There is so much positive energy all the time,” she says. “Knitting can be very focusing. You speak the steps to yourself. I tell them to use words that work for them, but I’ll say ‘through, around, under and up.’ You repeat that to yourself and it’s calming and focusing.”
Olivia says she typically starts out with something relatively simple, such as fingerless mittens, when leading a group.
Georgia Nagel, an art group leader at Silver Hill, also teaches knitting, as well as crochet and jewelry making, at the hospital.
The pandemic has increased the awareness and demand for knitting groups at SHH. Olivia started working with adolescents five years ago and has recently added two of the adult houses at SHH.
“There have been studies done about the physical and mental benefits of knitting. It is relaxing and lowers blood pressure,” Olivia says.
Olivia found the volunteer opportunity at Silver Hill by chance. After retiring, she reached
out to a medical hospital about knitting
baby caps for the maternity floor.
When she did not hear back, she did an internet search for “knitting hospital” and the volunteer position at Silver Hill came up.
“They always say
with volunteering
that you get more
out of it than you put
into it,” she says.
“This is the first 7 place I really feel
that way.”
SILVER LININGS MAGAZINE | ISSUE FOUR | 2022