About Anshuma Kshetrapal

Anshuma Kshetrapal is a practicing Drama, Movement and Visual Art psychotherapist. Her qualifications include an M.A. in Drama and Movement Therapy from the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama, London, UK, a certification of completion of a Foundation Course in Creative Arts Therapy from SMART Bangalore, which is recognized by the International Dance Council, Paris and a Masters in Psycho-social Clinical Studies from Ambedkar University, Delhi.

Anshuma has been a trauma counselor and worked within that capacity with adult mental health clients with a range of presenting difficulties in hospitals, hospices and nursing homes in Delhi, Bangalore and London, since the last 8 years.

Currently, she is one of the five national advisory board members for Creativei Movement Therapy Association of India, looking to expand and strengthen the creative arts therapy community. She is responsible for heading the committee for introducing standardization and professionalism in the field by making a code of ethics for CMTAI, for which she is running panels and gathering data about the cultural ethical nuances of working as an arts therapist in India.

She is also running groups and conducting workshops to introduce the therapeutic aspect of the arts to fellow therapists, artists and educators. She is a core faculty member for the certificate course from CMTAI, in Delhi, Bangalore and Pune, involved in teaching and designing the course. She also has a private practice in which she sees individual clients and supervises the work of junior arts therapists in two clinics located in Delhi and Bangalore. Last year, she organized and completed a pan India tour, over three months, in which she gave several talks and experiential workshops along with her colleagues from the UK throughout the country.

 Previously, she was working with MIND, a nationwide mental health charity in London, UK as a consulting Dramatherapist seeing individual clients and running specialized groups for clients with Schizophrenia and Bipolar Disorder.

She also worked as a drama and movement therapist in Ashiana, a refuge for south Asian women who have suffered from domestic abuse, in London which helped her conduct research that focused on the cultural aspects of domestic violence and how drama and movement therapy can work with the body and trauma in such cases, which is a subject close to her heart.

Since 2010 Anshuma has also consistently worked with children, working with the Dil Se Campaign Delhi, Shishu Mandir and Winds of Change, Bangalore and The Oakleigh School and TCE Schools, London wherein she has worked with movement with touch and sound to do non verbal work with children with Profound and Multiple Learning Disabilities or those on the autism spectrum with behavioral difficulties.

Anshuma has always been passionate about the arts. She began her dance training at the age of five and uses her training in Jazz, contemporary, Bharatnatyam and Kathak within her work as a movement therapist. It was this passion and her love for psychology that drove Anshuma to Drama and Movement Therapy.  Now, having been trained in psychoanalytic, CBT, humanistic and Jungian analytical psychology, she has an eclectic approach to therapy in which she uses talk therapy, drama techniques, movement exercises, dream work, symbolism, myths, stories as well as visual art to work with the nexus of the body and psyche.