From the author: The article was first published on the website Workshop of a Harmonious Personality The colorful language of feelings and experiences, images of dreams and fantasies is unusual for the mind of a rationally thinking person in a big city living at great speed. But as difficult as it is, it is also important, because every time we turn to art, with its help we try to adapt to changes in our lives, we try to find the meaning of what we do, feel, think, the meaning of how we live . Our inner world is limitless and multifaceted. It is filled with images that help us understand ourselves and penetrate the depths of the unconscious. However, it is believed that only creative people have a special gift: by creating a work of art, they can distance themselves from what they have experienced, rethink and reach a new, higher stage of spiritual development. It is the method of art therapy that allows every person to create their life in the literal sense of the word: sculpt happiness, draw sadness, write about conflicts, sing resentment and dance the mood. Anyone can realize their potential and, as a result, come to harmony with themselves - no special training is required to practice art therapy. For the first time, the term “art therapy” (literally art therapy) began to be used by the English doctor and artist Adrian Hill. In the 40s of the last century, working with tuberculosis patients in UK hospitals as an art teacher, he noticed that creative activities distracted his patients from difficult experiences and helped them cope with the disease. Classic art therapy involves self-expression through visual arts: painting , graphics, photography, drawing, modeling. Today, this method also includes other types of arts used for psychotherapeutic purposes, such as puppet therapy, mask therapy, music therapy, dance movement therapy. Those who encounter art therapy for the first time often have a question: how do these classes differ from lessons? in a theater studio or literary workshop? There is a clear boundary between art therapy and artistic creativity. For participants in psychotherapeutic groups, art is not an end in itself, it is only a means that helps to better understand oneself. These classes are focused not on results, but primarily on process. In special classes, such as painting or modeling, all efforts are directed toward creating the most perfect work of art. One of the tasks of art therapy is to help a person recognize and learn to express his own feelings, and the artifacts that arise during this process have only practical significance - they serve as material for analyzing the experiences that gave rise to them. A unique feature of art therapy is that the focus is not as much a work of art (the product of the client’s creativity) as the specific and unique personality of the author with her needs, motives, values ​​and stereotypes, striving for self-development and expanding the range of her capabilities. Physiologists say that for most people the speech center is located in the left hemisphere of the brain. Accordingly, its right half is associated with imaginative thinking or creativity. By mastering speech, a person learns the rules, laws and prohibitions of human communication that determine his behavior. Feelings, emotions, experiences, i.e. unconscious processes, a person can freely express using color and shape on paper. Therefore, it is much more difficult to convey feelings in words than to depict them using color and shape. Therefore, we can safely talk about the advantage of art therapy over other forms of psychotherapeutic work: almost every person (regardless of their age) can participate in art therapeutic work, which is not requires from him any abilities for visual activity or artistic skills; art therapy is a means of predominantly non-verbal communication. This makes it especially valuable for those who are not enough/507/