Sonya Gracey, Art Therapy Practicum Candidate
gracey.sonya@gmail.com
www.sonyagracey.com/otherways
@otherwayscreative
Hours
MONDAYS & WEDNESDAYS 2:30 – 7:30pm
THURSDAYS 11:00am – 3:00pm
Session details
- 75-90 min sessions in person (online also available by emailing me directly)
- Sessions include art supplies for various art practices (any participant requested specialty supplies can be discussed and will be the cost of the participant).
Rates
- $50 -$80 sliding scale per session
- No One Turned Away For Lack Of Funds (NOTAFLOF) Pay What You Can (PWYC) options available.
I have a tool we can work with if this is something you would like to explore for one or more sessions.
Special Offers
Special offer until end of July 2025 for RETURNING H&H clients!
Book a 60 minute Art Therapy session with Sonya for only $30!
Any further sessions with her can be determined on a sliding scale with Pay-What-You-Can options!
No one will be turned away for lack of funds. If you want to try Art Therapy – now is the time!
PeriMeno-Magic Art Group
POSTPONED – stay tuned for future dates
In-person at Heart & Hands Health Collective
2612 Quadra St.
$100 – 160 for the 4 week series ($25 – 40/session)
Register for one or more of the series!
Advanced registration required, payment by e-transfer to otherwayscreative@proton.me
**Please reach out if you are unable to afford these rates.
This series is for anyone navigating perimenopause and trying to survive in these intense times! It will be a political, somatic, and collective inquiry portal. Come as you are!
Each week we will be working with a new creative prompt sign up for one, or several. We will be working with pen and paper, collage materials and poetry. No experience necessary.
Accessibility:
**There are air purifiers in the space and masks are recommended.**
The location is on a primary bus route, is mobility aid accessible and there is an accessible washroom. We will be using folding chairs without arms. Any accessibility concerns or questions please do not hesitate to contact me so we can work on getting things in place that work for you!
If you are actively sick please stay home. I will do my best to catch you up, and will even drop materials off to you if that helps!
What is included: All the supplies you need to participate will be made available to you to use at no additional cost.
What to bring: Please bring any snacks or drinks you enjoy or want to share! Also bring comfort items you may enjoy like a pillow for your chair.
How to arrive: Please, please come exactly how you are! And this includes if you are tired, grumpy, anxious, avoidant, sad or mad! Who isn’t these days?! Also for those that prefer bra and waistband free or maybe jammies and comfy clothes this is highly recommended!! This is a low-demand, low-performance event. We are going to get real and so feeling good in our bodies is so key!
Cancellations: If you have changed your mind or cannot join us please let us know since we do have people on the waiting list!
What is Art Therapy?
Art therapy is a psychotherapeutic practice that uses creative inquiry and expression —such as drawing, painting, collage, sculpture, and other art forms—as a way to explore emotions, process experiences, and support healing. It is based on the idea that making art can help people to explore and communicate thoughts or feelings that might be difficult to express in words.
In a therapeutic context art-making becomes a portal: a space to explore, grieve, and imagine beyond what is. Rather than focusing on artistic skill or finished products, art therapy values the process of making as a way of accessing deeper knowledge, self-understanding, and transformation. For many, it is also a tool for resistance and empowerment, offering a space to challenge dominant narratives, reclaim stories, and imagine new possibilities.
Art therapy is a practice of creative liberation from normative restrictive constructs — working to disrupt how white supremist ideologies, the gender binary, heteronormative-patriarchy, ableism, ageism, diet culture/anti-fatness, and all systems of colonialism seek to disconnect, isolate and diminish us in order to extract and generate profit.
Art is a way of remembering otherways. remembering relationships with our bodies, our stories, one another, the land and the more-than-human world. It is a way of resisting the forces that tell us we are made to work, accumulate, and spend and work some more. I believe we are magic! Everyday we are figuring out how to live in systems that were never designed for our flourishing.
Who is this for?
I believe that we are all existing under and, in our own ways, often inadvertently upholding systems of oppression and that art is (and always has been) an avenue for resistance, remembering, reimagining and recovery. My work is divergent affirming – rooted in supporting people to find their way back to themselves not only as an act of individual healing but also as a necessary contribution to collective healing (rejecting individualism and culture of toxic wellness industry).
The folks I imagine working with are those who may not yet found or have had access to what they need in mainstream psycho-therapy settings or other therapeutic practice spaces. People who feel or have felt excluded, gaslight, invisibilized or pathologized within their experiences with health systems / counselling / therapeutic services. People experiencing anxiety, depression, hopelessness, grief, overwhelm, anger/rage, self-loathing, self harm, suicidal thinking, intrusive thoughts, exhaustion… for very good reasons (read: persistent violence / polycrisis / facism / oligarchy) who are looking for a way to keep going.
My work is especially attuned to those navigating
- identity, neurodivergence, gender expansiveness
- anxiety, grief, rage, sadness
- chronic pain/chronic health challenges, disability / changing abilities
- call-in/call-out culture, conflict, accountability in relationships / teams
- relationship dynamics and transitions (including separation and divorce, polyamory/ethical non monogamy/relational anarchy)
- pregnancy (including planning/decision making, loss, abortion)
- parenting (including co-parenting, parenting complex/divergent kids/kids experiencing multiple barriers,school anxiety / refusal, homeschooling/unschooling)
- being in a fat body
- aging, perimenopause, menopause
- overwhelm, burnout, exhaustion, freeze (in general as well as specifically connected to employment, family roles or organizing)
- the unresolvable tensions of being in relationship with a world in crisis.
I invite imperfection, unlearning and messy transformations – Art is not just a reflective process but an active portal to imagining and enacting more just and liberated ways of being.
What to expect
What I offer in sessions
- Deep witnessing and listening
- Resourcing through relationships (with each other, our communities, our lineages and ancestry, land, ritual and magic)
- Creative inquiry and expression with a variety of materials / methods
- Guided journey practices
- Intentional presence and attunement
- Body awareness and noticing
In-Person 1:1 sessions
- Initially, you can book a 15 min appointment with me to have a chat and see my face :)
- Then if you decide you would like to see me for a session, you will fill out a short intake form and book an appointment with me.
- When you arrive you will check in at the front desk, and I will meet you there.
- When we get to our room, there may be music playing (without lyrics) and you can decide if you want it off or on. You pick where you would like to sit.
- Then we chat to get to know each other, and you tell me as much or as little about your lived experience and/ or any hopes you have for art therapy.
- I will likely offer an arriving or check in practice (like a guided visualization or sensory practice or metaphor play) that you can accept or decline
- We explore some possible art making ideas related to what feels interesting to you!
- We do art!
- When we are done with the making, we explore what the process was like for you. We then may do some journaling or poetry or more art!
- We chat about what we could do next time and make a bit of a plan about the next session(s).
- We laugh and sometimes we cry. We practice being together, sometimes in silence if it feels right.
- Everything is inquiry and everything is optional, which means we only do what feels right in the moment.
About Sonya
Sonya (she/they) is a polydisciplinary creator whose practice is rooted in living decolonization, neuroqueer world-making, and justice-oriented mutual care.
I am a white settler of Irish, germanic bukovinian ancestry that came to live on and benefit from the unceded stolen lands of the Xwsepsum and lək̓ʷəŋən peoples by way of her peoples occupation of several First Nations lands including Kahnawá:ke (Mohawk), Anishinabek, Očhéthi Šakówiŋ (Sioux) and homelands of the Métis. My practice is an emerging action of coming into right relationship with this land and the impact that my being here has on local peoples.
I consider myself a recovering benevolent. My work is deeply personal and related to my own lived experiences of struggle, grief and transformation. I am a neuroqueer solo mom to two autistic teens surviving in capitalism. I spent 23 years as an RN working in healthcare (street outreach, reproductive justice, harm reduction) where I became increasingly aware of the violence of the status quo and my role in that. Last year I gave up my registration as a nurse – but kept all my lived experience with people and relationships! I have refocused my practice towards art and am just about finished a 2 year diploma in art therapy. I work from a decolonial, intersectional framework that centers relationship and access. I am currently using a sliding scale and pay-what-you-can model rooted in mutuality and collective sustainment.
Through relational, somatic (body-based) art-making, Sonya’s work fosters personal growth, embodied political action, and a critical awareness of the interconnectivity of the personal, collective, and systemic narratives that shape us and we shape. Their practice integrates neurobiology and eco-attachment-informed approaches while challenging dominant therapeutic frameworks that reinforce settler colonial and capitalist ideologies.
Sonya is a student at Kutenai Art Therapy Institute where she is completing a 2 year post graduate diploma, a member of the Canadian Art Therapy Association, a facilitator with the Erotics of Liberation Practice Field and a care weaver member with The Liberatory Wellness Network (LWN).
Full CV can be accessed here