TPREx Panel 2025: The Aftermath – Reflections on Medicine, Creativity, and Care
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This past Saturday, I had the privilege of participating in the TPREx Conference 2025 on Medicine and Care: How creativity and care converge to reimagine the future of health and healing. It was an honour to sit alongside distinguished colleagues from medicine and psychiatry, each of us bringing a unique perspective on how health care can evolve.
Meeting the other panelists and hearing their experiences affirmed for me that we are living at an important crossroads. Across disciplines, there is growing recognition that health is not only about symptom management, but about supporting the whole person—their body, mind, relationships, and creativity.
During the panel, the conversation was rich and fast-moving, and I didn’t have the opportunity to share all that I had prepared. I would like to use this space to reflect on some of the key questions we discussed and offer my responses more fully.
What drew me to integrate creative practice into clinical work?
From a young age, creativity was my way of engaging with the world. After studying Fine Arts and working in fashion and television in France, I moved to Canada, where I carried that foundation into clinical practice. Alongside my Buddhist meditation practice, I discovered Dharma and contemplative arts, which became a path of healing in parallel with my own psychotherapy. This inspired me to study further and explore how contemplative arts could be integrated into art therapy—especially as North America had already been bridging Buddhist philosophy, psychology, and Western mental health. Through research on MBSR, MBCT, DBT, and CFT, I saw how naturally creative practices could complement these approaches. For me, creativity is not only about expression—it is about awareness, presence, and healing.
How do creative methods help clinicians, patients, and caregivers connect in new ways?
Creative methods work on two levels: they engage the conscious mind through reflection and communication, while also reaching unconscious processes through symbolic forms that go beyond language. This dual process—what I call symbolic embodiment—allows patients to work through experiences that are otherwise difficult to access in talk therapy alone. For clinicians and caregivers, creative work can bypass defences, open space for empathy, and create shared ground for connection in ways traditional methods sometimes cannot.
What challenges exist in bringing creative practice into clinical or academic settings?
One of the main challenges is the tendency to minimize creativity in health care—dismissing it as “arts and crafts” rather than recognizing it as a therapeutic process. A second challenge is limited awareness of the evidence base for art therapy and expressive therapies, which can lead to skepticism about whether this work qualifies as psychotherapy. I see these challenges as opportunities for dialogue: by presenting both research and lived outcomes, we can show how creativity expands—not replaces—traditional care, and contributes meaningfully to the circle of care.
The importance of interprofessional circles of care
Where I see the greatest potential is in interprofessional collaboration—creating circles of care where medicine, psychiatry, psychotherapy, and creative practices come together to customize care for patients. Within this framework, creativity is not only therapeutic in itself but also helps us design new referral pathways and collaborative models that connect patients to the holistic supports they need.
Looking ahead
Although I wasn’t able to share all of this during the panel, I left inspired by the convergence I witnessed: medicine and art-based healing are increasingly recognized as partners. As we move forward, I believe integrative, cross-disciplinary approaches—like Contemplative Creative Therapy, which bridges contemplative science, Buddhist and Western psychology, creative arts, and somatic practice—can play a central role in shaping the future of health and healing.
For me, the panel was both an affirmation and a beginning: a reminder that progress in health care often comes from bringing together fields that once seemed separate.
Closing Contemplation:
As I reflect on the panel, I’m reminded that you don’t need to be an artist to bring creativity into care—we are all creators. What matters is cultivating openness, presence, and imagination. Systems may set limits, but curiosity and creativity can always open new possibilities.
Progress in health care often begins by bringing together what once seemed separate. If we remain curious, collaborative, and willing to imagine differently, we can shape a future of care that is more connected, more human, and more healing.
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