About Yael Livne

Married and mother to four boys and a professional player in the Israeli National Catch-ball League. I grew up in Haifa on a mountain by the sea. My role models as a child were Pippi Longstocking, the most powerful girl in the world, and Dr. Goodall, the world’s foremost expert on chimpanzees, who conducted her research in Africa. I believed that one day I become  that kind of woman: daring and wild animals’ saving. After high school, I served in the military as a Physical Training Instructor, and almost right after I was discharged, I decided to study Theater Directing in Seminar Hakibutzim (an Israeli Academy.

During my studies I was especially mesmerized by the mental process which is happens through acting ,so I study psychodrama. In the course of my internship, in the psychiatric hospital Lev-Hasharon, a feeling that I would like to work with children had started to form within me, a feeling that grew stronger and stronger every day. I felt that that is where the key to true help and healing lies. I continued my studies in Switzerland and specialized  inter- modality art expressive therapy.

I started my career as expressive therapist in Hillel Yaffe Hospital, introduce any type of art therapy in the Child Development Institution. I was also treating youth at-risk and former drug addicts along with my work at the hospital.

I opened my private clinic in 1998, and am still operating in that same unique and special clinic till this day. Water entered the therapy room after long field work with children, where the concept had evolved. I could see and follow the deep influence water had when it was integrated with the emotional therapy.

In one of my lectures, an art therapist, who was hearing about water therapy for the first time from me, asked where she could read about the subject. After a long search I realized there was not any professional literature on the subject, so I started writing it myself. I wrote about the therapy method and about the power water had in emotional processes. “Rising on Water” is the name of the book I published in 2015, which include researchers I did on the role of water in emotional therapy, in addition to case studies of successful treatments from around the world.

As part of various humanitarian aid delegations. I develop community intervention programs that are aimed to advance the field of identification and treatment of children and youth who have experienced trauma in developing countries. I participated in delegations to Kenya, Congo, and Nepal, where I used artistic tools and water therapy as a way to help communities.

For the past few years I have been teaching in Oranim Academic College, in the Play Therapy program, supervising therapists, and giving water play training courses for educators and therapists in Israel and around the world.

I see in my chosen profession a purpose: to abate our world’s suffering.

my belief

All human bodies are 70% water, so if you think about it, we are all the same, to an extent, the only difference being our exterior appearance. What makes us who we are, our memories and our creative imagination, which create our strengths and obstacles, and through them, humanity can be cured.

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