Taming the Tiger

About the Program
Taming the Tiger is a creative arts program designed in collaboration with Pathway Ready to support Indigenous women’s mental health and wellbeing. Rooted in cultural respect and healing practices, the program blends art, movement, storytelling, and connection to Country to create safe, empowering spaces for release, reflection, and growth.

A Safe and Supportive Circle
The program begins with grounding practices such as Acknowledgement of Country and the welcoming of participants into a women’s circle. This circle becomes a place where women are reminded that healing is about expression and release, not performance or judgement. Trauma is not re-lived but transformed through creative activity and shared experience.

Creative and Healing Practices
Across a series of guided sessions, participants explore a wide range of expressive activities:

• Body Mapping & Painting: reconnecting with the self and exploring emotions through colours, shapes, and textures.
• Eco-Art: working with natural materials to strengthen the connection between inner experiences and Country.
• Creative Activations: using movement, percussion, and playful artmaking to release what has been carried.

These sessions invite women to take emotional risks in safe ways, gently replacing old coping mechanisms with new expressions of agency, strength, and care.

Balance and Integration
While the program creates space for powerful release, it also includes moments of softness and reflection. Shared meals, rest periods, and open process time allow participants to integrate what arises. Visualisations, mentoring, and group connection help embed new perspectives of self-compassion, resilience, and belonging.

Lasting Outcomes
Taming the Tiger concludes with a circle of reflection and affirmation, ensuring each participant leaves feeling supported, seen, and connected. The program is not about creating art pieces but about opening pathways to healing, building resilience, and strengthening wellbeing for Indigenous women and their communities.

 

Creative Arts Therapy Process – Body Mapping

What It Is

A trauma-informed, creative process that helps participants reconnect with their bodies, process emotions, and build self-awareness through guided visualisation and expressive painting.

Why It Matters

• Safe & accessible
• Supports nervous system regulation
• Builds emotional insight through embodied expression

Ideal for community wellness, recovery programs, and mental health settings.

 

Creative Activation: The Circle Dump Example

A creative arts therapy intervention for emotional release and transformation

The Circle Dump is a trauma-informed, body-based creative process designed to help participants safely release emotional overwhelm. It uses fragile, everyday materials to symbolise and support nervous system regulation, emotional expression, and psychological relief.

This process is ideal for individuals experiencing disempowerment or distress. It is cost-effective, portable, culturally adaptable, and deeply somatic. Some participants draw over it again. Some sit with it. Some throw it away.

 

Eco-Art Process: “Belly-Button Window”

An Embodied Connection to Self, Country, and Community

What is it?

This eco-art process invites participants to reconnect with both the land and their inner world through a guided creative ritual in nature.

The “Belly-Button Window” is a symbolic outdoor installation created using natural materials such as bark, sticks, flowers, leaves, and earth. The installation reflects each participant’s inner landscape, offering a gentle, embodied expression of emotion, memory, or need.

 

How it Works

1. Connection to Country

Participants are invited to find and gently connect with a tree. They place a hand on its bark, exchange breath, and silently offer a story, secret, or a request for support.

2. Creating the Installation

Using found natural materials, participants create a circular eco-installation, with a small central structure—like a belly button—that symbolises a portal between the inner self and the wider world.

3. Witnessing in Community

After 20 minutes of creation time, participants are called back to the group. Together, the group walks to each installation. Each artist shares only the title of their work. Group members respond using only “I” statements:

• “I feel… when I see this.”
• “I notice… in myself when I witness this.”

No one interprets or comments on another person’s work. The process fosters respectful witnessing and emotional safety.

Why it Matters

“Nature reminds us we are part of something bigger. That connection can hold us when our own systems feel shaky.”

This process supports emotional grounding, nervous system regulation, and self-awareness. It is especially powerful for groups working through grief, trauma, or transition. Engaging with natural materials offers a non-verbal, culturally safe way to reconnect with strength, identity, and presence.