Embarking on a colorful journey, Jamie Lynn McCoppin shares her trajectory from a creative artist and hospital clown to a licensed creative arts therapist. Unveiling her diverse healing techniques, which include drama therapy, energy healing, and trauma-centered psychotherapy, Jamie discusses her wide array of services—from coaching and sexual education to premarital counseling. Throughout her decade-long career, Jamie has evolved her perspective on healing, emphasizing its nuanced, layered nature and the continuous evolution that shapes our lifelong journey toward well-being. MysticMag has the pleasure.
What can you tell me about your professional journey?
My journey has been a colorful one. I was originally a pure creative. I wrote plays, I acted, I did comedy, mostly in New York, and then I became a hospital clown engaging sick children with magic.
In the beginning, I was very new to clowning and magic. I had to learn how to do a full magic show, balloon animals, face painting, etc., but most importantly, I had to learn how to be around kids and their families who were in a very sad position. I worked with kids who were dying and kids who were living in the hospital for a long time and usually were in need of some entertainment, attention, or some kind of escape from the scary stuff that they were going through.
One day when I was doing the hospital work as a clown, I was approached by an art therapist who said, “You really remind me of this drama therapist that I know.” I had never heard of drama therapy before, so I was really blown away and curious about this profession. So I focused on learning more about drama therapy and even attended a drama therapy group at a different hospital. Then it hit me, and I thought, “Ok, this is my purpose.” So, I shifted gears, and I went to graduate school where I received my Master’s in drama therapy in 2013. I’ve been doing drama therapy ever since. On top of that, I have added energy healing work. To me, it all goes together, and I’m still trying to discover the best ways to integrate the creative arts therapies and energy healing for those working with me.
As a healer, what healing techniques do you use?
First of all, I use my creative arts interventions and techniques. That mostly includes drama therapy: storytelling, imagination, role play, etc., wrapped up into various methods in drama therapy. However, occasionally I also use some art therapy, some music therapy techniques, and some dance movement therapy techniques, as well.
I’m also a licensed creative arts therapist in the state of New York, so I only work in a clinical way with folks who live in New York, even though it’s all remote now. Outside of that, I still have my coaching practice called ‘Spark of Play’, where I can work with anyone in the world. In coaching, I use some drama therapy techniques for more personal growth goals as opposed to clinical goals. People might come to see me if they feel creatively stuck or if they feel they’ve lost their spark. They typically want to reconnect with their child-like wonder, their creativity, and their imagination, and we might work on that in different ways.
Furthermore, I used to do a lot of in-person workshops in New York City, but I took a break during the pandemic. However, now I’m bringing those back, and willing to travel to other parts of the country, so I’m excited about that.
What can people expect from your workshops?
People can expect to feel very welcome in feeling safe to play and even be silly with me. I model that for folks, and the feedback I’ve gotten from people who have taken workshops with me is that they feel like it’s easy to tap into that with me. The drama therapy techniques that I bring and the structure of the workshops make it a safe place to play, be silly, and look at things in different ways, which is what really draws me to drama therapy.
In a nutshell, I would say that people can expect to have fun, learn new things about themselves and other people, and, hopefully, take away this “key” to accessing their internal play resources.
What ideas do you base your coaching on?
I would say, first of all, that I like to impart the value of play and to help people understand what that actually could mean for them, because “play” is such a big word. I have a particular play style and play activities that I gravitate towards and in which I enjoy helping people find out what their own play style is. Then we look at how and why that is missing from their life and how they can bring it back. We aim for them to maintain the play that they are finding in their lives and to determine why that’s meaningful for each person. I would say that that’s the foundation of my coaching, but there are a lot of branches to that tree, too. Metaphorically speaking.
What other services do you offer?
I would say that the other branches on the “Play Tree” include a lot of other areas of focus that I’ve had as a healer. One of the areas is trauma. I worked at a post-traumatic stress center in New Haven, Connecticut, for a few years. That center is run by a drama therapist who’s also a psychologist, with his wife who’s a psychiatrist. They have pretty incredible programs there that they offer. However, they also train many drama therapists in a certain method that combines drama therapy and a form of psychotherapy, which is called trauma-centered psychotherapy. I’m well-versed in that, as well as DvT – developmental transformations, which is a drama therapy method they also teach there that was originated by the co-owner of the center, Dr. David Johnson.
DvT is a really edgy drama therapy method because it puts the therapist in a playspace with the participant. You are almost playing in a way where you’re walking through a dream. It’s almost like lucid dreaming for the participant. The therapist is there to take on, in a dramatic and embodied way, any projections that might arise to the surface. So, there’s no linear shape to it. It can jump from one thing to the next, and it’s very physical, too. I really love that aspect.
Another branch of my experience is sexual education. At one point, I took a break from doing clinical work for about a year, and I worked at a center for sex education that opened in New York called the V. Club.
In those classes, I was a teacher and a coach, and it was a lot of fun. It also opened my eyes to the fact that most American mental health professionals, are not trained in sexuality, sexual pleasure, sexual dysfunction, etc. This is an area where you really have to find your focus. You have to go and train outside of your graduate program to really understand that part of being a human. It really opened my eyes, and I bring that training into my work a lot. In fact, a lot of my clients that I work with are also dealing with what they might think is sexual dysfunction. I might not call it a dysfunction, though, so I try to normalize and educate as much as possible. A lot of folks are dealing with relationship issues, and sex is a big part of that. So, I have expanded my practice into working with couples, as well. I have a certification from The Couples Institute, so I’m excited about that work.
Something I’ve been really passionate about lately is working with couples who are getting ready to be married or getting ready to commit to each other in long-term scenarios such as living together. This work is a part of a program that is not therapy but is considered a premarital program called, “Prepare/Enrich,” and it’s national in the U.S. So, I’m a facilitator of this program. A couple can go online, take an assessment about their relationship, the results are sent to me, and then they can work with me for 4 to 8 sessions on specific skills that they, as a unique couple, need to work on, according to the results of the assessment.
It’s really fun because we’re not doing the tough work of looking back at their childhoods and trying to figure out where these challenges are coming from. We’re just looking at how they can improve their communication skills, how they can work on their empathy, on division of labor tasks, and things of that nature. We work on all of these things that I wish I had a class on when I was younger, before I got married. I’m really excited to work with couples in this way.
The last branch I want to mention is my energy healing branch.
What can you tell me about that branch?
A few years ago, I became a Reiki Master. More recently, however, I became more interested in a newer energy healing method called the Ataana Method. I see it as Reiki 2.0. It’s calling in healing energies and lights that are more specific. In Reiki, you call in universal energy, which is wonderful. However, in this method, you call in very specific healing lights, as well as unconditional love.
It works similarly to Reiki in that you’re working with the chakras and with clearing someone’s energy system, but there’s a facet of it that I really love, which is seeing myself as a channel of these healing lights to support someone else’s higher self with the idea that their higher self is the expert on their healing. Their higher self will then take the energies that I’m helping to provide and boost and will direct those energies to wherever they need to go for that person. I really like that a lot.
There are certain concepts of energy work that I do bring into my psychotherapy sessions. If someone is open to it, we might talk about what their situation looks like from an energetic point of view. I am just starting to offer my remote healing sessions using the Ataana method, which is exciting. That’s the latest update about my work.
Is there anything else you’d like to add?
I truly believe in each person’s unique ability to heal themselves. While I see myself as a healer, I think of myself more so as someone who supports the healing in others. I think that’s a point of view that I have adopted more and more over the last few years, which is a relief. I think it removes the ego as much as possible while removing the pressure to have a certain outcome. I’ve also come to learn that healing is a very layered process. Even when we feel like, “I’ve already worked on this stuff, and I should be done with that,” it can usually come up again in a different way. It’s a lifelong process, and I see it as a spiral. So, we work at the top layer, and then we keep going deeper and deeper when we are ready to do so. I think, being in this profession as a “healer” for the last 10 years, I would say that I have changed my point of view on what that means. After all, we are ever-evolving beings, aren’t we?
To learn more about Jamie and her work, you can visit www.mysparkofplay.com
