East Bay Art Therapy, 55 Santa Clara Avenue Suite 220, Oakland, CA (2025)

12/11/2025

🖌️🍎 The Art of Nourishment: How Art Therapy Supports Eating Disorder Recovery

Eating disorders can profoundly impact a person’s relationship with food, their body, & their emotional well-being.

👉 In our latest blog post, EBAT Art Therapist Zaina Berger, MA, ATR-P, AMFT, shares her clinical insight into how art therapy can support individuals navigating these complex challenges.

Zaina specializes in working with clients with eating disorders, bringing both therapeutic skill & a trauma-informed, compassionate approach to her work.

The article explores how guided art directives encourage clients to externalize their experiences, examine difficult emotions, & build self-awareness in a safe & supportive therapeutic environment.

Zaina highlights an art directive that invites clients to paint core emotions to reconnect with internal states that may feel overwhelming or difficult to name.

🖍️ This directive is especially supportive for folx with eating disorders, helping reduce emotional avoidance, increase emotional awareness, & provide a visual vocabulary for feelings, offering an alternative to relying on eating disorder behaviors to express distress.

Through creative practices such as life-size body outlines or sculpting representations of food & nourishment, clients can begin to recognize distorted self-perceptions & cultivate greater self-compassion.

This blog provides an accessible introduction to how art therapy can complement eating disorder treatment and help clients reconnect with themselves through creative expression.

📖 Read the full blog on our website (link in bio) to learn more about how Art Therapy supports healing for individuals with eating disorders.

https://eastbayarttherapy.com/blog

💗 Follow us for Art Therapy awareness, creative mental health resources, and information about our clinical services.

📱Want to work with Zaina? Schedule a Therapist Matching Call to explore Art Therapy for Eating Disorder Recovery.

12/09/2025

Need Motivation? 🫩Let’s Create it together!

👉What Holds Me Back & What Inspires Me?

This art activity we are highlighting supports motivation by helping you explore what holds you back & what inspires you to move forward.

🎨Creative activities like this offer a expressive outlet to process challenges, discover what drives you, and reconnect with your strengths.

This kind of exploration can awaken playfulness, problem solving, and self-expression helping you build confidence, clarity, and a renewed sense of direction. 🙌

In this art activity, start by creating a simple accordion-style book:

• One side lists or illustrates the things that what holds you back
• The other side represents what supports & inspires you in life

For example, if you’re feeling anxious or emotionally dysregulated, your “inspiration” side might include stepping outside for fresh air or taking a moment of self-compassion.

Try this out! You don’t have to be an artist to do this.

🔖Save this when you need motivation or a creative way to support yourself.

💗Follow us for Art Therapy awareness, creative mental health resources, & information about our clinical services.

12/04/2025

🎨 Art Therapist Spotlight! Meet Aurora

Aurora Daigle is an Art Therapist who was born and raised in New Orleans. Aurora first moved to the Bay Area in 2013 and graduated from San Francisco Art Institute in 2018.

While living in Oakland, she stumbled across Creative Growth Art Center & the open studio model of art therapy inspired her to go on to pursue her master's degree. In 2022, she graduated with her Master's in Art Therapy from Pratt Institute. Aurora is a Provisional Art Therapist working towards full professional credentialing in art therapy.

Aurora has a holistic approach to both life and art making and is passionate about being of service to people and the planet. She believes that through the art process one can deepen their relationship with themself and restore connections to the world around them.

Aurora specializes in working with new parents, youth struggling with anxiety and depression, grief, folx with substance use, learning and developmental disabilities, and those navigating life transitions and searching for purpose.

Aurora is committed to helping guide and hold space for people so that they may find their way to healing through creation and self-expression.

Aurora’s therapeutic approach draws on nature-based expressive arts therapy, mindfulness, somatic, & internal family systems frameworks.

Aurora has worked with various populations including systems-involved children, adolescents, and young adults in Brooklyn, NY. Aurora has also worked with adults in an inpatient substance use treatment facility in New Orleans.

Aurora is also an interdisciplinary visual artist whose focus is ceramic sculpture. In her free time, Aurora enjoys dancing, cooking, and going for hikes with loved ones.

Aurora is available to see clients ages 4+ at EBAT's Oakland Office on Mondays and Tuesdays (or virtually). Aurora also works off-site for EBAT providing art therapy groups at Oakland Technical High School in Oakland Unified School District.

ATR-P #24-045 National
Supervised by Tonia Herrero, MPS, ATR-BC, LCAT, ATCS

➡️ If you are interested in working with Aurora, visit eastbayarttherapy.com (link in bio) for a Therapist Matching Call.

12/02/2025

Playful Learning, Serious Skills for our Clinicians 🧸🎨

Child-Centered Play Therapy Training with !

This month, our clinical team participated in an immersive Child-Centered Play Therapy training led by Karen Wolfe, LMFT, owner of SF Bay Play Therapy.

🧸 It was an energizing, hands-on experience exploring non-directive, child-led approaches for children ages 3–10. Karen’s expertise made learning both meaningful & fun!

At East Bay Art Therapy, our clinicians integrate play-based therapeutic interventions and art therapy to support young clients with a wide range of needs, including:

• neurodivergence
• behavioral + emotional regulation challenges
• anxiety + grief
• complex or shifting family dynamics
• trauma support
• self-esteem building
• academic stress
• peer relationships + bullying

Investing in this training helps our team continue delivering developmentally responsive, trauma-informed care to the families we serve.

👉 If you’re seeking therapeutic support for your child, the first step is a therapist-matching call with us!

Click the link in our bio to get started.

https://eastbayarttherapy.com

11/27/2025

🩷 Get to Know the Heart Behind East Bay Art Therapy!

We’re excited to share a new feature article highlighting EBAT Founder & Art Therapist, Tonia Herrero, her story, her values, and the legacy she’s building through creative arts therapy.

In this interview, Tonia opens up about:
• Reconnecting with her own identity as an artist
• The joy of her new backyard art studio
• The purpose & passion behind East Bay Art Therapy
• Building a diverse, decolonial, trauma-informed team
• Her lifelong relationship with art and creative expression for healing
• Embracing authenticity & releasing old patterns
• What motivates her work with adolescents, adults, & families

Tonia’s story is a reminder of why Art Therapy matters, it is personal, transformative, & deeply human. 🩷

EBAT offers:
Individual Art Therapy
Art Therapy Groups for Children, Teens, and Adults
Family and Couples Art Therapy
Workplace wellness + Professional trainings
Creative Arts Therapy services in schools, hospitals, & community agencies
Regional Center vendor services
Virtual sessions + In-person in Oakland & San Jose, CA.

🖌️If Tonia’s story resonates with you and you’re curious about experiencing Art Therapy for yourself, or bringing our services to your organization, we’d love to support you!

➡️ Read the full "Bold Journey" article:

https://boldjourney.com/life-values-legacy-our-chat-with-tonia-herrero-highlight/

➡️ Explore our services & Schedule a Therapist Matching Call to get started!

https://eastbayarttherapy.com

We’re here to provide creative, authentic, and culturally responsive healing for individuals, families, & communities.

11/25/2025

Yutian (Rain) Liu, MA, MT-BC (she/her), Board-Certified Music Therapist

Yutian holds a B.A. in Applied Psychology from the Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shenzhen, and an M.A. in Music Therapy from New York University.

Her musical journey includes many years of choral singing, a ca****la, and orchestral ensemble performance, as well as training in Erhu, piano, handpan, and guitar—experiences that shaped her belief in music as a source of identity, belonging, expression, & community.

Clinically, Yutian practices from a client-centered, humanistic, and resource-oriented psychotherapy framework, integrating music therapy with principles of relational work, embodiment, & emotional attunement.

She views music as a medium through which individuals can reconnect with strengths, identity, & agency. Her work reflects the therapeutic frameworks she has engaged with across settings—Nordoff-Robbins improvisation, DIR/Floortime.

Yutian has provided music therapy across MT community centers, hospitals, and special education schools, working with adolescents and adults experiencing emotional dysregulation, neurodivergent children and teens with developmental needs, infants in the NICU, adults in outpatient care, & older adults in medical settings.

She integrates playfulness, creative exploration, & music as a health resource to support empowerment, agency, and authentic expression. She is passionate about supporting clients experiencing emotional dysregulation, anxiety, cross-cultural stressors, periods of significant change, offering a therapeutic space in which individuals can explore their sense of self, reconnect with strengths, & feel genuinely seen within a supportive therapeutic relationship.

Outside of her clinical work, Yutian enjoys playing music, cooking with friends, experiencing different forms of creative arts, spending time in nature, and discovering new cities. She values authenticity, curiosity, mutual connection, & she strives to create warm, collaborative, & empowering spaces.

Yutian works off-site for EBAT, providing music therapy groups at Sutter Health Mills Peninsula Medical Center (Adult & Adolescent Psychiatric Units) in San Mateo, CA.

Sutter Health Mills-Peninsula Medical Center Sutter Health

11/20/2025

At EBAT, our mission is grounded in values that guide every session, training, and community offering. 🩷

These principles shape how we show up for our clients, our clinicians, and the communities we serve.

We’re highlighting our core values, which we call C-IDEA!

It’s the foundation of our work in Mental Health and Art Therapy.

🎨 Creativity
We believe creativity is inherent in every person. Our team brings innovation, imagination, and a creative lens into all that we do. We help clients reconnect with their own creative potential as a pathway to healing, expression, and growth.

🤝 Integrity
We are committed to strong ethical practices and to representing the field of art therapy with professionalism and care. Integrity informs how we make decisions, maintain boundaries, and support the well-being of every client and clinician.

🏳️🌈 Diversity & Decolonization
EBAT is intentional about building a diverse clinical team that reflects the identities and lived experiences of the communities we serve. We actively work to dismantle oppressive systems and embrace a decolonized approach to therapy, one that honors culture, identity, and community wisdom.

💪 Empowerment
We empower clients by centering their agency, voice, and choice in the therapeutic process. We also believe in empowering our staff, creating an environment where clinicians feel valued, supported, and confident in their expertise.

🪻Authenticity
We model authenticity as therapists so clients feel safe to express who they truly are.

We honor lived experience just as much as education and clinical training, recognizing that authenticity strengthens connection, trust, and the therapeutic relationship.

These values are not just words; they are the heart of our purpose and the compass for how we practice, collaborate, and serve.

💜 Drop a “heart emoji” in the comments if you agree with these values too!

Follow us for Art Therapy awareness, resources, and services!

Visit our website to learn more!
https://eastbayarttherapy.com

11/18/2025

🖌️Creating Art Can Be a Powerful Way to Reflect & Gain Insight

EBAT Owner and Art Therapist Tonia Herrero recently facilitated an Arts-Based Clinical Group Supervision for the clinicians of Peralta Colleges at Laney College in Oakland, CA.

🫟Through hands-on art making, clinicians explored both their clients’ experiences and their own internal responses in the therapeutic relationship, including moments of countertransference.

🎨Creativity opened a space for deeper understanding, reflection, and professional growth.

🖼️During this supervision, clinicians engaged in two powerful directives:

1. Sculpting a character that represents themselves and their strengths as clinicians, a process that helped them embody their roles, values, and inner resources.

2. Processing a difficult work day through deconstruction + reconstruction, using oil pastels to create a drawing, tearing or cutting it apart, and transforming it into something new on fresh paper.

This art therapy directive offered a new lens on challenging moments, encouraging flexibility, resilience, and perspective-shifting.

Arts-Based Clinical Supervision allows clinicians to process the emotional weight of the work in a safe, creative, and grounding way.

When clinicians feel supported, their clients benefit too.

👉 If your team or organization is interested in experiential, Arts-Based Clinical Supervision or training, EBAT offers tailored professional development for mental health providers.

Link in bio or contact us to hire us to facilitate this for your team!!

https://eastbayarttherapy.com

11/13/2025

“Art is my cure to all this madness, sadness, & loss of belonging in the world & through it I’ll walk myself home.” - Nikki Rowe, Author

In art therapy, creativity becomes a bridge back to the self. When words can’t hold what you feel, the canvas can.

🎨 Through color, movement, and reflection, art invites you to release what’s been carried, make meaning from the chaos, and rediscover your inner belonging.

We work with adults, adolescents, children, and families, creating a safe space for expression, healing, and growth at every stage of life.

Whether you’re navigating stress, anxiety, grief, burnout, or disconnection, art therapy helps you reconnect to your emotions and inner truth. ✨

In-person sessions available in San Jose and Oakland, CA
Virtual sessions available

Your healing begins the moment you pick up the brush with an EBAT Art Therapist. 🧑🎨

🩷 Book a Free consultation {Link in bio] to explore how art therapy can support your journey back to balance and inner peace.

https://eastbayarttherapy.com

11/11/2025

A Creative Workshop at Stanford Medicine 🏥🖍️

EBAT Owner & Art Therapist Tonia Herrero recently guided Stanford University School of Medicine Mental Health clinicians through her Therapeutic Art Making in Clinical Practice for Non-Art Therapists training in Palo Alto, CA.

It was an inspiring day of creativity, connection, and learning as Mental Health clinicians explored how art can deepen emotional expression and support somatic awareness in their clients.

🎨 About the Training:

If you are a mental health clinician seeking to bring ethical, intentional Therapeutic Art into your sessions, this training is for you.

Creative expression can open pathways that talk therapy alone may not reach, offering clients a safer and more embodied way to communicate.

You will:
🖌 Learn key art therapy history and the psychology behind creativity
🖌 Explore case examples showing the impact of art-based interventions
🖌 Engage in guided therapeutic art making to experience the process yourself

This training will not certify you as an Art Therapist, but it will equip you with creative interventions and session-ready activities that strengthen rapport & support client well-being.

Next Training is January 24th, 11 am-3 pm Pacific. Attend in person in Oakland, CA, with materials provided, or join virtually with a supply list.

If your agency is seeking experiential creative professional development, we are now booking trainings for organizations in 2026.

➡️ Reserve your spot {link in bio} or email tonia@eastbayarttherapy.com

If your agency is seeking experiential creative professional development, we are now booking trainings for organizations in 2026.

📥Send Tonia an email to learn more and schedule with your organization/agency.

med

11/07/2025

Art Therapy for Tech Burnout! 🤖

In tech, burnout doesn’t always look like crashing.

It looks like over-delivering while feeling under-connected.

🎨 Art Therapy gives high-performing professionals space to recalibrate to thrive!

Through art therapy, you’ll learn to:

• Reconnect with your body’s natural rhythm (so focus feels effortless again)

• Build emotional and energetic boundaries to prevent “always-on” fatigue

• Transform perfectionism into curiosity and rediscover creativity without pressure

• Rebuild intrinsic motivation (beyond metrics or performance reviews)

• Reconnect with your purpose and emotional clarity

Because clarity fuels performance, and creativity keeps it alive. So that you are not only high-performing but also feeling satisfied and content with your professional role.

💡 Burnout isn’t a weakness; it’s a signal for recalibration.

🖌️ Work with an EBAT Art Therapist helping Silicon Valley professionals restore focus, performance, and emotional balance.

Tap on the link in bio to begin your Art Therapy journey by scheduling a free consultation.

In-person sessions available in San Jose and Oakland. Plus, Virtual sessions are available.

11/04/2025

🎨 Destress with a touch of creative mystery mindfulness!

EBAT Owner and Art Therapist Tonia Herrero was invited to lead a mindful art therapy session for college students, offering a moment to pause, reflect, and de-stress through creativity.

The directive, called “Mystery Mixed Media,” guided students in a mixed media drawing using white oil pastel on watercolor paper then revealing their hidden designs with vibrant watercolor washes.

🎨This process activated the reward center of the brain, sparked joyful surprise, and created a truly rewarding and fun experience for everyone involved.

At East Bay Art Therapy, we’re passionate about bringing art therapy to schools, campuses, and organizations to promote emotional wellbeing and creative connection.

✨Hire us to share the powerful effects of art therapy.

💗Send a message to get in touch with Tonia to learn more of how you can bring this experience to your organization.

East Bay Art Therapy

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