A unique program at the Healing Lodge, Expressive Arts, allows adolescents to become creative artists, and musicians, giving voice to their stories and finding new forms of powerful and positive self-expression.

Music as a Path to Deeper Healing

Music touches us all deeply, and adolescents find understanding and meaning there. Residents engage deeply in creating their music through our Expressive Arts program. They explore their stories, history, feelings, and memories, processing personal issues that supplement therapy and clinical programs. Following this journey to self-exploration through music makes it easier and more enjoyable.

Expressive Arts programs like ours are rare in adolescent treatment facilities; even fewer are well-established with so much professional support.

One of The Healing Lodge’s most popular programs, the Expressive Arts Program, taps into the power of music and self-expression to support positive change in youth. The program enables residents to reach their full potential and experience the creative process. Youth learn emotional regulation and management, coping skills; recreation and leisure skills; and self-expression and creativity development through songwriting and production. Residents also have an opportunity to learn to play guitar, ukulele, and keyboard.

Youth can express themselves and collaborate with peers to explore shared experiences and ideas. They develop the ability to critique and analyze their work. Songwriting introduces the youth to various music technologies and teaches industry legal issues around intellectual property and copyrights.

Residents can share their work by performing, recording, and publishing their song(s). Youth will work on turning their stories into pieces over 12-1 hour group sessions and multiple one-on-one sessions. The process will take youth from the initial journaling to lyric creation to beat production and recording. Residents can have a musical or production experience without having a musical or production experience. Residents step out of their comfort zone, learn new skills, process past experiences, and look forward to creating new ones.

The program utilizes the latest technology to help youth to understand beat production and learn basic skills using music production software. Besides hands-on work, our professionals will discuss career pathways in the music industry, such as Audio Engineering. By the end of the program, residents will have a working knowledge of audio production and have completed at least one song of their creation.

Music as a Path to Deeper Healing

Music touches us all deeply, and adolescents find understanding and meaning there. The Healing Lodge regularly receives requests from other treatment programs about how we created our program and developed a healing environment through music. They often ask for advice to model a program after our successes.