Incorporating Art & Spirituality in Practice - A Personal Reflection

Krista Heide
Nov 16, 2024
2 min read

Updated: Nov 27, 2024

Written by Sandi Smoker, who often facilitates our Community of Practice online group.

Sandi served as a Certified Spiritual Care Practitioner with Providence Health Care in Vancouver, BC, and is an Art Therapist candidate with the Vancouver Art Therapy Institute. Currently, Sandi serves as Mental Health Counselling Supervisor at the Pender Islands Health Centre in the Outer Southern Gulf Islands.

The Beginnings

In the early days of my Clinical Psycho-spiritual residency at St. Paul’s Hospital located in downtown Vancouver, a patient requested a few simple art materials to stave off boredom. The empowering connection between the arts and spirituality came to define my practice, and continues to do so, presenting profound implications for intra- and inter- personal engagement toward wellness. In the many patient encounters that followed, I felt as if I were standing on holy ground as I witnessed “aha” moments through simple scribbles on a page, or collage-making.

Fig. 1. I am the Good Shepherd, collage and mixed media

Incorporating Art in Spiritual Care Practices

Lisa Hinz, in her book Drawing from Within, suggests engaging in artmaking that helps to develop rapport between the practitioner and the person in care (Hinz, 2006).

For example, I invited a patient to personify their experience of living with an eating disorder, and named it ED. I then offered a gentle query:

What Promises did ED make to you?
What has been the Reality of living with ED?
What is your Hope For going forward?

Under each category, the patient engaged with art materials to create symbols or make marks relating to Promises, Reality, and Hoped For. Together we explored the patient's reflections, noticing that Promises often express spiritual longings for connection, belonging, self-worth, meaning-making and reconciliation with self and others. The Reality of living with ED manifests contrary to its promises.

Fig. 2. Symbiosis -

Water soluble oil pastels

Motivation for Intentional Art-based Engagement

Witnessing the way art and spiritual practices can sometimes offer a profound shift in perspective, nourishes my own spiritual practice of holding hope. It also sometimes reveals a patient’s forgotten dreams for a full life, or heightens an awareness of a part of themselves that wants freedom to speak up and live into what they most need.

Through my personal and professional journey of incorporating art and spiritual practices, I have discovered profound implications for intra- and inter- personal engagement toward wellness. I encourage you to join us for our monthly Art and Spirituality Community of Practice to explore how these powerful connections could play in your practice.