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This article from Venturous Counselling offers accessible, grounding art therapy exercises between sessions to stay connected to your therapeutic process. These creative healing practices don’t require artistic skill, expensive materials, or a specific outcome. They’re invitations to stay in relationship with what’s surfacing in your healing, using your hands, your senses, and whatever’s available. Venturous Counselling is a queer- and BIPOC-led therapy collective in Vancouver and Port Moody offering expressive art therapy, somatic therapy, walk and talk therapy, EMDR, and nature-based therapy for youth, adults, and relationships. Our registered clinical counsellors support people navigating anxiety, burnout, grief, trauma, chronic stress, chronic pain or illness, self-worth and body image concerns, relationship difficulties, and nervous system overwhelm, with care that acknowledges social and systemic context. Sessions are available in-person in Vancouver, Port Moody, and Burnaby, or virtually across BC.
Table of Contents
- The Space Between Sessions
- How Do Art Therapy Exercises Between Sessions Actually Help?
- Before You Start: Releasing the Pressure to Do It Right
- Practices for When You’re Activated or Anxious
- Practices for When You’re Numb or Shut Down
- Practices for When Something Is Surfacing and You’re Not Sure What
- Practices for When You Need to Feel Your Own Presence
- What to Do With What You Make
- Next Steps: Bringing It Into the Room
The Space Between Sessions
Therapy happens once a week. Sometimes every two weeks. Sometimes less.
And in between, your process keeps moving. Something shifts at 2am on a Tuesday. A feeling arrives while you’re washing dishes. A dream leaves residue you can’t shake. The insight from last session settles into your body differently three days later.
The space between sessions is where a lot of your healing actually lives. And most people don’t know what to do with it.
Art therapy exercises between sessions aren’t homework. They’re not assignments your therapist grades. They’re practices you can reach for when something is moving inside you and words aren’t the right container for it. When you need to do something with your hands. When your nervous system needs engagement, not analysis.
Expressive art therapy in Vancouver and Port Moody at Venturous Counselling often includes conversations about what practices might support you between sessions. These aren’t prescriptions. They’re possibilities. And the ones that land are usually the ones that feel like relief rather than obligation.
Venturous Counselling supports youth, adults, and relationships in Vancouver and Port Moody through expressive arts therapy, somatic therapy, EMDR, walk and talk therapy, and nature-based approaches, all grounded in anti-oppressive, justice-oriented practice.
How Do Art Therapy Exercises Between Sessions Actually Help?
Art therapy exercises between sessions help maintain nervous system regulation, deepen therapeutic processing, and give you a tangible way to stay connected to your healing between appointments.
There’s a continuity problem in therapy. You do deep work in session. Something opens. And then you go back to your life, where the demands and patterns that brought you to therapy are still running. The gap between sessions can feel like a reset button you didn’t ask for.
Creative practices between sessions help bridge that gap. They keep the channel open between your conscious mind and the material that’s surfacing. They give your body something to do with the activation or the tenderness that lingers after a session. And they create a record, something physical you can bring back into the room.
Research supports this. Studies on somatic therapy for trauma and nervous system overwhelm show that practices between sessions that engage the body, not just the mind, help consolidate therapeutic gains and support nervous system regulation over time. Creative practices work the same way. They keep the body involved in the process even when you’re not in the therapy room.
The key is that these practices need to feel accessible and low-pressure. The moment they become another thing you’re supposed to be good at, they stop working. So everything here is offered as an invitation, not an instruction.
Before You Start: Releasing the Pressure to Do It Right
The most important thing about art therapy exercises between sessions is that there is no correct way to do them. The practice is the point. The product is secondary.
If you’re someone who tends toward perfectionism, who has a hard time starting things without knowing how they’ll turn out, who measures yourself against standards you didn’t set, this section is for you.
Nothing you make between sessions needs to be shown to anyone. Not your therapist. Not your partner. Not Instagram. You can throw it away immediately after making it. You can keep it in a drawer. You can bring it to your next session or never mention it.
The purpose isn’t to produce something meaningful. The purpose is to let your hands move while your nervous system does what it needs to do. Sometimes meaning arrives. Sometimes all that arrives is five minutes where you weren’t performing, managing, or thinking your way through your experience. That’s enough.
If you’re navigating self-worth and body image concerns, the inner critic might show up the moment you pick up a pen. That’s useful information. Not a reason to stop. If you’re carrying burnout and systemic exhaustion, even thinking about adding another practice might feel like too much. Then don’t. Put this article down and come back when it feels like an opening, not a demand.
Practices for When You’re Activated or Anxious
When your nervous system is running hot, activated, anxious, restless, on edge, the goal is to give your body something rhythmic, sensory, and grounding to do.
Scribble release. Take any writing tool and any surface. Set a timer for two minutes. Scribble. Not drawing, not doodling. Just the physical motion of moving your hand across a surface with pressure. Fast, slow, heavy, light. Let your arm do what it wants. When the timer goes off, stop. Look at what’s there. Notice how your breathing has changed.
Colour your inhale and exhale. Choose two colours. On the inhale, draw a line or shape with one. On the exhale, switch to the other. Keep going for a few minutes. This pairs creative engagement with breath regulation, giving your nervous system a dual anchor.
Tear and arrange. Take a piece of paper or a page from a magazine and tear it into pieces. No cutting, just tearing. The tearing itself is a release. Then arrange the pieces on a surface. Not to make something. Just to see what configuration your hands choose when your mind isn’t directing.
These are the kinds of practices people navigating anxiety therapy in Vancouver sometimes find most useful between sessions, because they work with the body’s activation rather than asking it to settle through willpower.
Practices for When You’re Numb or Shut Down
When your nervous system has gone into shutdown, numb, flat, foggy, disconnected, the goal is gentle sensory engagement that invites the body back online without overwhelming it.
One colour, one page. Choose a single colour. Put it on paper. That’s it. One mark, or a hundred. The invitation is to reconnect with the sensory experience of making: what does the colour look like as it touches the surface? What does the tool feel like in your hand? You’re not trying to feel something. You’re just noticing whether anything is there.
Texture inventory. Without leaving the room you’re in, gather three to five objects that have different textures. Hold each one for a minute. Notice which one your hand wants to keep holding. If you feel like it, set them in a line. Notice the order you chose. There’s often information in the sequence.
Slow trace. Place your non-dominant hand flat on a piece of paper. With the other hand, very slowly trace around it. As slowly as you can. The slowness is the practice. It asks your nervous system to be present at a pace that’s different from the one your mind is running.
These are particularly relevant for people navigating chronic pain and chronic fatigue counselling or grief that sits heavy in the body. When the system is depleted, creative practice needs to match the body’s actual capacity, not its “should” capacity.
Practices for When Something Is Surfacing and You’re Not Sure What
Sometimes between sessions you can feel something moving, a shift, a discomfort, a pull, but you can’t name it. These practices give the unnamed thing a place to land.
Formless colour. Choose colours based on what feels right, not what looks right. Put them on paper without a plan. Let shapes emerge or not. When you’re done, don’t interpret. Just sit with it. Sometimes the image will make sense later. Sometimes it won’t, and that’s fine. The body got to say something, even if the mind doesn’t have a translation yet.
Write without sentences. Open a notebook and write words. Not sentences. Not paragraphs. Just the words that come. They don’t need to connect. They don’t need to make sense. If the same word comes three times, write it three times. This is closer to free association than journaling. You’re not telling a story. You’re seeing what floats to the surface when you stop organizing.
Mark the body. Draw a simple outline of a body (a stick figure is fine). Mark where you feel something. Use colour, pressure, symbols, words, whatever. Don’t diagnose it. Just mark it. This creates a map of your somatic experience that can be incredibly useful to bring to your next session, particularly if you’re doing work that incorporates somatic therapy alongside expressive arts.
Practices for When You Need to Feel Your Own Presence
For people who spend most of their energy managing, performing, or tending to others, the challenge isn’t accessing emotion. It’s accessing yourself. These practices are about taking up space.
Fill the page. Take the biggest piece of paper you have. Use colour, mark, gesture, anything. The only rule is that you fill the entire surface. Corners included. This is a practice in not making yourself small. In letting your marks be big, messy, imprecise. If you notice yourself staying in one corner, notice it. Then keep going.
Self-portrait without looking. Put your pen on paper and draw your own face without looking down at the page. The result will be strange and imperfect and sometimes surprisingly honest. This practice asks you to pay attention to how you actually experience your own face: the shape of your jaw, the weight of your eyes, the lines you carry. It’s presence through attention, not appearance.
Sound and mark. Put on a piece of music that feels like something to you. While it plays, make marks on paper. Let the marks respond to the sound. Fast music, fast marks. Something that swells, something that expands on the page. This is about letting your body respond to stimulus without filtering it through your mind first.
These are especially relevant for people navigating identity and personal growth or relationship patterns that have required chronic self-editing. Taking up space on a page is sometimes the first step toward taking up space in your life.
What to Do With What You Make
You have three good options, and all of them are right.
Bring it to your next session. This can be incredibly useful. Not because your therapist will “read” it, but because it gives you both a starting point. Instead of trying to remember what you felt at 2am last Tuesday, you can show it. The image holds what your memory might have already edited. If you’re working with an expressive therapist who integrates art reflection into the therapeutic process, this becomes part of the ongoing work.
Keep it for yourself. Some things you make between sessions are private. They belong to your process and nobody else’s. Keeping a folder or a box of between-session work creates a personal archive of your healing that can be powerful to look back on over time.
Let it go. Throw it away. Recycle it. Leave it on a park bench. The making was the practice. The object doesn’t have to persist. Sometimes the most healing thing you can do is create something and release it.
What matters is that you don’t skip the noticing. Before you decide what to do with it, spend thirty seconds looking at what you made. Not analyzing. Just looking. Let whatever’s there register.
Next Steps: Bringing It Into the Room
If any of these practices sparked something, or if you tried one and something unexpected surfaced, that’s worth exploring with a therapist who knows how to hold creative material.
Art therapy exercises between sessions work best when they’re part of a larger therapeutic relationship, when there’s someone trained to help you make sense of what shows up and to hold the complexity with you.
Here are three ways to connect with Venturous Counselling:
Take our 3-minute therapist matching quiz to get personalized recommendations based on what you’re navigating and how you like to work.
Book a free 15-minute counselling consultation to talk directly with one of our expressive arts therapists about what you’re looking for.
Explore expressive art therapy at Venturous Counselling to learn more about how we approach creative healing in Vancouver and Port Moody.
We offer in-person sessions in Vancouver and Port Moody, and virtual sessions across BC.
Related reading in this series: – Finding an Expressive Therapist When Words Aren’t Enough – Art Reflection in Therapy: What Your Creation Reveals (That Talk Therapy Might Miss) – Creative Healing: Why Making Art Isn’t Just a Distraction from Pain – What an Expressive Therapist Does (No, You Don’t Need to Be ‘Good at Art’)
You might also explore: – Somatic therapy for trauma and anxiety in Vancouver – Nature-based walk and talk therapy in Vancouver and Burnaby – EMDR therapy for trauma processing in Vancouver – Burnout counselling start here guide – What Resilience Therapy Actually Means in Systems Not Built for You
About Sarada
Sarada Bhagavatula (she/her) brings warmth, playfulness, and a belief in creative practice as a form of care to her work with adults navigating anxiety, grief, chronic pain, relational dynamics, and transitions. She often explores with clients what creative practices might support them between sessions, always at the pace that fits. Sarada practises in Vancouver and Port Moody, and virtually across BC.
Frequently Asked Questions About Art Therapy Exercises Between Sessions
Do I need art supplies to try these exercises?
No. You can work with whatever you have: a pen and scrap paper, a magazine you can tear up, objects around your home with different textures. The practices in this guide are designed to be accessible with minimal materials. The therapeutic value comes from the process of engaging your hands and your nervous system, not from the quality or specialization of the supplies.
What if I try an exercise and nothing happens?
That’s completely fine and actually worth noticing. “Nothing happening” is information your nervous system is giving you. Maybe it’s shutdown. Maybe you’re more numb than you realized. Maybe today isn’t the day. There’s no failure in creative practice. The practice is the point. If you scribbled for two minutes and your breathing shifted even slightly, something happened, even if your mind didn’t register a revelation.
Should I show what I make to my therapist?
That’s entirely up to you. Bringing creative work from between sessions can give you and your therapist a starting point that doesn’t depend on verbal memory. The image holds what your mind might have already edited. But you can also keep it private, or throw it away immediately after making it. Some people find that the making was the practice, and the object doesn’t need to persist.
How often should I do these exercises between sessions?
There’s no prescribed frequency. These are practices you reach for when something is moving inside you and words aren’t the right container. For some people that’s daily. For others it’s once between sessions. For some it’s only when things feel intense. If you’re navigating burnout and exhaustion, adding another “should” to your list defeats the purpose. These are invitations, not obligations. The ones that land are the ones that feel like relief rather than another task.
Can these exercises replace therapy?
No. Art therapy exercises between sessions are most effective as part of a larger therapeutic relationship. They help you stay connected to your process between appointments, but they don’t replace the relational safety, guided reflection, and therapeutic framework that a trained expressive arts therapist provides. The practices create material. The therapy helps you make sense of it.
What if making art brings up overwhelming feelings?
If something overwhelming surfaces during a between-session practice, you can stop at any time. You’re in control of the pace. You can put the materials down, look away from what you made, engage a grounding practice like pressing your feet into the floor, or simply move to a different activity. Make a note of what came up and bring it to your next session. Your therapist can help you process it in a relational container. If you’re navigating trauma or intense emotional material, you may want to discuss with your therapist first which practices feel safe to explore on your own.
Which exercise should I start with?
Start with whatever matches your nervous system state right now. If you’re activated and anxious, try the scribble release or the tear-and-arrange practice. If you’re numb or shut down, try the one-colour-one-page or slow trace. If something unnamed is surfacing, try the formless colour or write-without-sentences practice. If you need to feel your own presence, try filling the page. There’s no right order and no progression. Each practice meets a different need.