Nashville woman opens space combining therapy with paint throwing
TheraPaint offers a Zen room and four throwing rooms to release your feelings for 45 minutes.
NASHVILLE, Tenn. (WSMV) - There’s a new space in Nashville that focuses on a cathartic and physical way of expressing emotions with paint.
Jackie Laurian Long officially opened TheraPaint in September.
Long said the idea sparked in 2018 after her own traumatic events. She said she needed a way to release her feelings that was different from typical therapy.
She said she started throwing paint in her garage and then invited friends over to allow them to release their emotions. It was then she said she knew more people needed to experience it.
“We knew that if we ever found the right space for it, that it would be something we might be able to bring to a larger audience.”
Long and her husband found that space a few years later at a home along Music Row.
TheraPaint offers a Zen room and four throwing rooms to release your feelings for 45 minutes.
“We invite all of our clients to focus on whatever it is that isn’t serving them. Whatever energy that is feeling blocked. Whatever is causing them any anguish and to really focus on that feeling and then just dip your paintbrush into the paint and just throw it at the wall,” said Long.
It was the outlet Kristin Ward said she needed when she was diagnosed with breast cancer in May. Ward said she chose her paint, suited up and threw out all her feelings before her double mastectomy.
“I cried. I laughed. We don’t live in a world where it’s okay to make a mess and it was okay to make a mess. It really gave me a sense of empowerment, control over something I have…or had, no control over.”
Ward said she recently completed her final radiation treatment but has one final surgery.
Long said children as young as five can throw paint as long as they have a therapist’s referral. Children who are 10 and older can schedule a time to come in.
Once you’re done throwing the paint clients leave everything inside the studio.
The canvas, the paints, the cups and the lids are all composted into the garden where Long said those feelings are released and given a new life in a beautiful way.
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