While there are storms and challenges all around, the cyclical nature of nature still serves as something constant and stable in our lives, echoing our own life cycle. Humans have always used natural materials for creation; the cycles of nature have been an object of creation, exploration, a ritual anchor, a sign of changing times, and sometimes precisely for the special moment within them. We are transient beings, yet we still leave our mark on the world.

In this workshop, we will view a brief presentation of earth artists who have explored questions about the space and time in which art exists. Together, we will investigate the qualities of working with natural materials, which symbolize the temporary, the ephemeral, the perishable, and the regenerative. We will draw inspiration from Haiku poetry about nature and the cycles of life.

Facilitator – Gili Navot, an art therapist and senior instructor at YAHAT, who runs a private practice. She is a senior lecturer in the art therapy program at Ono Academic College. She has 30 years of experience working with children and adults.

In this workshop, we will explore new art materials and materials that can be prepared independently in the therapeutic studio. All of this is intended for use in artistic therapeutic interventions.

Facilitator – Shabi Medzini, art therapist, psychotherapist, lecturer, and senior instructor.

Connecting to imagination, to the inner world, to meaningful images in the psyche, is a healing process. As art therapists, we recognize the importance of physical contact with creative materials as part of this process. The current technological era provides us with additional tools that allow us to give tangible visual form to abstract content. The very act of engaging with these contents, whether through conventional art materials or digital tools, is also a significant factor in healing the psyche. The psyche is the creative artist, whether with the help of a paintbrush, clay, crayon, or a computer mouse.

In this workshop, we will engage in individual work using digital technological tools as a means to express our inner world. Participants are invited to prepare a collection of meaningful images from their lives in advance for the workshop.

Facilitator – Pazit Dushi, art therapist , lecturer, and instructor; psychoanalytic psychotherapist and candidate at the Israeli Institute of Jungian Psychology. She specializes in working with children and adolescents, providing parental guidance, and incorporates a variety of tools—both traditional and technological—into her studio practice.

The past year has led us to experience extreme transitions between pain, despair, and hope, which have become permanent residents within us. In this workshop, we will use artistic creation as a bridge for these powerful experiences, transitioning between fields of expression and creation such as drama, movement, music, and visual art. The workshop offers participants the opportunity to explore the depths of personal pain, give it form and space, and discover the hope that blossoms from life's experiences.

Through three stations, participants will be invited to experience intense and complex emotions, process them, and discover the process of release and completion they enable. Finally, we will create a supportive group space for reflection, discussion, and sharing.

Facilitator – Dr. Michal Lev, integrative family and couples psychotherapist, art therapist and art therapy supervisor (License No. 1143). Master’s-level lecturer, faculty member at an Israeli academic institution, and developer of professional training programs worldwide; one of the founders of ARTIS—an academic program combining the arts and sciences at the Weizmann Institute of Science; active researcher in Israel and abroad.

In coping with trauma, especially after the events of October 7th, we are dealing with the damage and upheaval of trauma, but even more so with the difficulty of finding expression and validation for the difficult events.

In this workshop, I invite you to use the three stages of psychodramatic work to collectively build a strong and restorative narrative space shared by both the affected individual and witnesses. With psychodramatic tools, we will create a healing creative space that navigates between the desire to speak about trauma and validate it, and the desire to suppress it. Together, through psychodrama, we will mend the wounds of pain and trauma.

Facilitator – Dr. Meli Nir, psychodramatist, supervisor of therapists, and lecturer in the master’s degree programs in psychodrama at Kiryat Ono. She specializes in treating trauma in general—and trauma resulting from terrorism and combat in particular—as well as anxiety and crisis situations.

The group is a central component in the psychodrama process. Interpersonal relationships within the group are expressed through sociometry (relationship map). Using sociometry as a tool and interpreting the expressed phenomena contribute to the development of awareness and personal identity. In the workshop, we will experience the group dynamic while using sociometry as the core of the group process.

Mentors –

Hernan Pavlox, a psychodramatist and member of the Israeli Institute for Group Analysis, MATIA South Sharon, with a private practice in Ra’anana. Lecturer in the master’s program in psychodrama therapy at Ono Academic College.

Dr. Bat-Sheva Rakanti, a psychodramatist and certified group facilitator, is a supervisor. She is a lecturer in the master’s program in psychodrama therapy at Ono Academic College. She specializes in helping people cope with trauma, grief, and loss.

Since October 7th, the sense of existence for many of us has been shaken. The country's borders were breached, and in a parallel process, psychological structures cracked, and the intimate-couple space underwent upheaval. In the psychodrama workshop, we will bring examples of the gaps created in the couple's space and seek ways to create a strong and stable foundation for connected, healthy, and creative intimacy. 

Facilitator – Anat Biran Frost, a psychodramatist and certified sex therapist. She supports people throughout their life cycle in processes related to intimacy and relationships. She practices in a private clinic, at the “Ishi” Clinic, and at the Sexual Rehabilitation Clinic at the “Reut” Medical Center in Tel Aviv. 

In the workshop, we will bring existing "empty" spaces into presence and utilize their liminal qualities to create something from nothing.

We will refer to it only as a potential space for creation within its creative emotional context.

We will dwell in spaces of conscious emptiness that will serve as tools for unconscious materials, examining actual existence as a gateway.

Into the depths of the unconscious, and the symbol as a gateway to transformation and a space for creativity.

Mentors –

Mini Shoshan, my mother tongue is dance, and it finds expression in my studies of movement and dance therapy. Later, I developed a love for words through my studies in philosophy and literature. Currently, I work in a private clinic, am a certified supervisor, and lecture in the Dance and Movement Therapy program at Ono Academic College.

Dr. Yifat Shalem-Tzfari, together with her colleagues, established the Unit for Victims of Sexual Assault in Kfar Shaul. She is an expert in Yona Shahar-Levy’s epimotor method. She is a lecturer in the Movement and Dance Therapy program at Ono Academic College, an instructor, a researcher, and runs a private practice. 

We would like to invite you and us,

To a meeting in the space that opened before many,

that a movement can request for itself and offer to us,

In how we are and how we are not..

Within this enigma, there is space for us to create ourselves from our very existence within it...

Presenters – Tirtza Shpanoff, Manya, and Miri Kotik, lecturers and movement therapists.

This workshop is based on qualitative research that mapped therapeutic processes and interventions in movement therapy for children coping with anxiety (Bresler Nardi et al., 2022). The research results led to a therapeutic model that assists in diagnostic and evaluation processes, as well as in building a treatment plan tailored to the patient's needs.

Based on the research findings, we will learn about the "movement reflection" function as a basis for diagnosing and evaluating personal and interpersonal patterns. We will learn to characterize and distinguish between different types of movement reflections available to us as therapists, and how these can serve as a foundation for building movement language as a therapeutic language in the room and as a basis for deepening movement interventions according to the needs of the patients.  

Facilitator – Ayala Bresler Nardi, a movement therapist and instructor at the Clinic for Children and Adolescents at Geha Hospital. She is a lecturer in the master’s program in movement and dance therapy at Ono Academic College and a doctoral student in the psychoanalysis and interpretation program at Bar-Ilan University.