How the therapeutic act of somatic art stimulates creativity | Canada Voices

In her installation Energy Paintings: Fields, artist Zoe Kreye visually charts her body’s connection to the work she created – a process unlocked through her somatic art practice.

Somatic art, which involves following internal and bodily instincts as opposed to cerebral ones, is commonly used as a therapeutic tool to regulate the nervous system and release physical tension. Practices can include breathwork, self-soothing touch and gentle exercise.

Kreye’s enigmatic installation is on view until May 3 at the Carleton University Art Gallery in Ottawa as part of the gallery’s current group show, Material Journeys. The monumental piece features sheer panels of fabric dangling from the ceiling, marked by frenetic strokes of ink created by the Vancouver-based interdisciplinary artist each day over a six-month period. It’s part delicate material composition and part non-verbal diary, shown alongside other tactile works by artists Sukaina Kubba and Marisa Gallemit.

The term “somatics” was coined in the mid-1970s by American theorist and professor Thomas Hanna to describe a field of therapeutic movement and bodywork. More recently, the practice has been touted as an antidote to our overstimulated, chaos-riddled times and gained traction in the wellness space. In January, as noted by Bustle, “somatic art” was trending on TikTok, with the women’s magazine calling it a low-pressure way to get unstuck.

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Outside of the wellness industry, somatics has been increasingly adopted by artists around the world to help stimulate creativity.

Kreye’s introduction to somatic art began about 15 years ago, as she was wrapping up her MFA in public art and social practice at Bauhaus University in Weimar, Germany. She and three fellow artists formed a collective aimed at unlearning the overintellectualization of art-making, which involved diving into the theories of body-based spiritualists such as Dionysus and the groundbreaking Swedish artist Hilma af Klint.

“It came out of exiting academia,” Kreye explained. “We were thinking, what do we want to shed in terms of becoming an artist out in the world again? We started doing research and finding practices to help us unlearn societal norms, and much of that ended up coming from working more with the body.”

To create Energy Paintings, Kreye began by meditating and moving through somatic practices to help her use her body as a tuning fork. Then she listened to the sensations, images and impulses that came to her. She dipped her hands in ink and moved across the canvas “trying to find some precision and resonate my movement with the channel,” she explained.

In late 2025, Canadian curator Lee Plested launched the Seio Centre in Berlin, a member-led space that holds workshops and exhibitions for arts practitioners and teachers who want to learn about and experience somatic art. Plested had known Kreye for years and observed her shift to a more internally aligned art practice, and he brought her on as a teacher.

At the beginning of his own somatics journey, Plested was struck by how his mentor, Vancouver artist Bryan Mulvihill, incorporated tea services into his creative practice. Such rituals encourage mindful consumption and activate bodily awareness, he said, which can feed the artistic process.

“I’ve always privileged artists’ perspectives in my work,” Plested said of his decision to open the centre. “And increasingly, I came across artists who had practices that engaged ancient forms of art that would be tied to ideas of spiritualism or well-being, or any of these words in the art world that are quite complicated.”

Earlier this year, Plested said he planned to host a labyrinth workshop exploring how the cunningly crafted walking paths were designed to be experienced in a corporeal way. The centre’s schedule will also feature classes in ceramics and Gong Fu Cha, where participants engage in tea-making.

Kreye hosted a painting workshop at the Seio Centre, and she said she looks forward to more opportunities to share how somatics has enriched both her life and her work.

“It’s always hard to track how such a workshop lands for the participants until the end. Then they have profound reflections about how excited they are to try the embodied exercises with the clients they work with,” Kreye said, noting that her participants include fellow artists and art-therapy practitioners.

It’s about tapping into sensitivity as a superpower, she added, and how strengthening our sensitivity can change the social paradigm.