The Healing Power of Creating Art

Ep. 187 (Part 1 of 2) | Dr. Sally Adnams Jones has pioneered the field of art therapy as an agent of transformation and healing, choosing to work particularly with people living with no economic infrastructure: refugees, and victims of natural disasters, genocide, war, pandemics, and more. What Sally has found is that creating art within a community works miracles for the dispossessed and traumatized, in that it provides an embodied, practical method of engendering feelings of pride, a sense of belonging, finding one’s voice, and perceiving the future as something one can affect and shape. In fact, this work is applicable to everyone everywhere—it is in accessing our creativity that we come to ask, “How do we start to build the world we need?” An Integral Taoist, Sally shares her perspective on the yin and yang of creativity, explaining that ultimately, creativity is emergence working through the human body.

At the heart of Integral Taoism is an understanding that the nature of emergence itself is to become aware of your polarity and integrate it. The more you do that, the more creative you become. The discussion transitions from the dance of polarity in creativity to how the polarities of yin and yang are playing out in politics today. Sally is a Canadian therapist and exceptionally well informed about politics—here we gain a perspective on current U.S. – Canadian relations and world politics that is revelatory. Recorded May 29, 2025.

“The basis of self-esteem is agency—and how you find agency is finding your hands, your heart, and your voice.”

Topics & Time Stamps – Part 1

• Introducing Dr. Sally Adnams Jones, pioneer of transformation through creativity, psycho-spiritual educator, artist, author (00:56)
• How did Sally come to this work? Every kind of trauma exists in South Africa (01:58)
• Sally’s book, Art-Making with Refugees and Survivors, is about how to access our creativity when we’ve been dispossessed and dislocated, with no agency left (05:11)
• Using your hands to access pre-verbal trauma: it starts with the thumb/hand/brain connection (07:07)
• Building self-esteem, pride, community, and hope through creating art (09:02)
• How does Sally build trust going into indigenous communities? (12:20)
• What happened to our creativity? In the modern era, we started discounting the right hemisphere (18:05)
• De-gendering creativity (20:43)
• Integral Taoism: understanding that the nature of emergence is to become aware of your polarity and integrate it (22:44)
• At the lower chakras, masculine and feminine come together as procreative; at the higher levels as creative (25:58)
• The ultimate understanding is about the mystery, an embodied channel to the divine (28:53)
• Creativity: emergence working through the human body (29:55)
• How do we potentiate through our body? Through understanding polarity principles (32:08)
• Sally’s initiation to Integral Taoism in a park in Beijing, China (36:49)
• As an integrally informed Canadian therapist, what does Sally think about current U.S./Canada politics? (41:51)
• Polarization, and how polarities and yin/yang play out in politics (44:12)

Resources & References – Part 1

• Sally Adnams Jones, Art-Making with Refugees and Survivors: Creative and Transformative Responses to Trauma After Natural Disasters, War and Other Crises
• Sally’s website: sallyadnamsjones.com 
• Sally’s podcast: Radical Emergence
• Dr. Carol Hofmeyr, founder of the Keiskamma Art Project, ‘Reluctant medic’ highlights poverty (Rhodes University, 2024)
• Iain McGilchrist, psychiatrist, philosopher, neuroscientist The Master and His Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World
• John Dupuy’s song, Ukraine! (YouTube video)
• Arthur Koestler, The Act of Creation
• Alfred North Whitehead, Process and Reality: An Essay in Cosmology

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Dr. Sally Adnams Jones is an Expressive Arts Therapist, Psycho-Spiritual Educator, podcaster, writer, and artist. A South African-Canadian, Sally lives on Vancouver Island, amongst the old-growth forest, owls, elk, and wild lupines. Her interests are in human development; the phenomenology of creativity; the emergence of intelligent, natural systems; her grandchildren; and a healthy future for all. 

Sally has developed a theory called Integral Taoism that explores polarity as a cosmic principle of emergence, including through human sexuality, power dynamics, and creative flow. You can find her at her website, sallyadnamsjones.com; her podcast, radicalemergence.org; on YouTube at Dr Sally Adnams Jones; or read her book, Art-Making with Refugees and Survivors: Creative and Transformative Responses to Trauma After Natural Disasters, War and Other Crises.

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Podcast produced by Vanessa Santos and Show Notes by Heidi Mitchell