ABSTRACT
The arts have historic relevance in all societies in relational aspects, healing, and community building roles while holding the stories and histories of communities. Their common ground in movement, music, artmaking, and performance is brought back into attention by findings from neuroscience, linking physical neurological changes to participation in the arts therapies, within basic therapy principles around safety, relationship, and respecting a variety of modes of communication. Arts and embodiment can connect all the senses and all parts of the central and peripheral nervous systems, and significantly with the polyvagal system. Developments in neuroscience, particularly over the past 20 years, illuminate the value the arts therapies offer in the potential engagement of the whole person in the therapeutic encounter.
