What Is Body Art and How It Influences The Modern World

What is body art? 

The majority of people think that these words mean a technique of painting on the skin, and they are right, but… not completely.

This phenomenon is so popular and widely spread nowadays that even online essay writers create many works devoted to the issue. According to Wikipedia, body art is an art made with the help of the human body. Such art may have many bizarre forms like tattoo, piercing, scarification, sub-dermal implants, and body painting. You may not know that the majority of these things refers to the definition, but the latter one is the most popular among them. The definition itself also refers to a category of performance art when artist uses his/her own body to make a certain performance. So, this designation should not be messed up with one of its aspects, for example, with painting on the skin, because body art is an umbrella term for all these types of art.

This collocation also means an effective system of physical training comparable with fitness. Such sport direction is relatively new but very popular in Europe, especially in Switzerland, where it was created. Thus, you can easily estimate how many senses the simple word combination may have.

Body Painting as a Kind of Psychotherapy

As you can see, the definition of the phenomenon is very wide and includes a great number of points. Piercing and tattoo became the reason to create relevant subcultures. Skin painting is also known as the integral part of stage image of many performers, but what do we know about another side of such business?

As well as tattoo, skin painting appeared many centuries ago when people lived in tribes. That time patterns on the face and body had religious or ceremonial meanings and were used in different rituals. Nowadays, paint is usually used for creation of stage images, but there is one more useful application about which many readers don’t even guess. Skin coloring can be used in psychotherapy.

Psychotherapy as a branch of science has many different techniques to make people’s lives better.  Use of skin coloring as a method of treatment is a relatively new direction. It takes a lot of time and has several steps. They are as follows:

●     Psychotherapist counseling. 

     Personal consultation is an integral part of work with a psychotherapist. It is necessary to reveal one actual problem and form a certain request to work with. In the majority of cases, people cannot formulate their needs clearly, and even if they can, work starts from this very step. It is important for deep investigation of ta certain problem and better results.

●     Construction of mask. 

    Another step of work is the construction of mask. Psychotherapist determines what feelings and emotions are in imbalance in his/her client and decide what mask is necessary in this very situation of a specific person. A mask is a reflection of repressed emotions, with which the counselee will work with the help of the psychotherapist. The mask will be applied on the face or/and body of the client after massage. At this moment, body painting is used as a way to express all hidden emotions important in a certain situation.

●     Face massage. 

      It is needed to relax muscles of the client’s face before coloring itself. For this purpose, only water-based, non-allergic and non-toxic paints are used.

●     Creation of mask. 

     After massage, the psychotherapist will put paint layers on the client’s face to create a chosen mask.

●     Work with mirror. 

    This part is the longest and the most stressful one. The counselee will speak through his/her thoughts and feelings while standing in front of the mirror. The mask is necessary in the process because it helps to renovate the key situation in client’s memories. Certainly, professional psychotherapeutic assistance is necessary in the decisive moment. The specialist will help the counselee to accept traumatic emotions and look at them from the new point of view. After it, face painting should be removed.

●     Final counseling. 

     The last consultation takes place after the work with mirror. It is used for discussion of client’s feelings and anchoring of new ways of behavior, which are necessary for changing of client’s emotional state.

Such method of psychotherapy is relatively new but very effective. It helps people to cope with difficult emotional states, effective in case of depression, psychosomatic problems, and other disorders. Such a technique is still not so popular due to its labor intensity from both counselee and doctor, but it gives amazing results. People who work under the described procedure point out that their thoughts about difficult situations and especially emotions changed completely. The majority of repressed emotions were removed with the painted mask, and it gives clients a good emotional power.

Thus, such a method is a good example of combination of art power with psychotherapy, and a perfect illustration of alternative uses for body art that you might not even know about.

  

Image Credit: okayafrica, pinterest