Yes, And! Using Improvisational Comedy and Expressive Arts for Healing

How does improvisational comedy help with the healing process? Improv exercises and games connect with core therapeutic principles, such as unconditional positive regard, mindfulness, and acceptance. They also build community and the capacity for social engagement, which can be important to recovery in group therapy and a residential treatment setting.

At Sierra Tucson, Dr. Danvers has been leading an “Improv for Healing” class among trauma patients for over two years. This talk presents science and theory behind the use of improv for healing, and connects it with other artistic and expressive modalities. Modalities such as expressive writing, art therapy, and psychodrama share an emphasis on embodiment and sensory engagement, symbolic expression, and making meaning. We will discuss how these principles helps with healing, and provide several easy-to-implement improv exercises for use in a therapeutic context.

Learning Objectives

· Learn about evidence for the therapeutic properties of improv and related artistic modalities.

· Understand the way tenets of improvisational performance match therapeutic principles.

· Identify trauma-informed principles for implementing expressive arts in therapy.

Presenter Bio:

Alexander Danvers, Ph.D., is a psychologist with expertise in mobile sensing, machine learning, and psychophysiology. At Sierra Tucson, Dr. Danvers oversees the Measurement-Based Care and Applied Neuroscience programs. His work on Measurement-Based Care involves providing customized reports on patient functioning to residents and treatment providers at Sierra Tucson, evaluating outcomes across Sierra Tucson’s various programs, and developing algorithms for predicting key treatment outcomes. Dr. Danvers has been performing improvisational comedy for over 15 years, and has been teaching an “Improv for Healing” class at Sierra Tucson for over two years. He is also passionate about science communication, and has maintained an active blog on new psychology research at Psychology Today since 2018.