There is something wonderfully appropriate about making works of art to heal - an individual, an environment, a family, a company or yourself for personal healing.

Dr Silvia Hartmann explains, "The trouble with spiritual & environmental energy healing is that you can't see it. As you can't see it, it is too easy to think it isn't even there. I love the way these large, colourful energy channelling devices say, Look! Here I am! I am energy and I am absolutely REAL!"

Behind the material facade of everything, there lie the realms upon realms of "invisible existence" or to use a shorthand term, "the energy of a thing".

The energy of a thing and no matter how simple it may be is made up of many different frequencies, many different planes. For example, a simple wooden chair would have original energetic frequencies of the wood it was made from, which remembers in its very structure what the summers and winters were like all through its long journey of life.

Moreover, the chair also retains what happened to the wood after the tree was felled, the wood processed. The lacquers used, the workmen who handled it all changed its energetic structure just as much as they changed a log to a rough cut plank, to a filed and sanded shape, and to the final painted, coated object.

A great many problems which individuals face today, and groups collectively, and societies beyond this right out to all of humanity is the central lack of understanding of the basic principles of energy - those cause-and-effect absolutely real occurrences that are not seen.

People can suffer from energy allergies, from energetic forms of malnutrition (even though they take vitamin supplements in the Hard!), from energetic poisoning because they are forced to live in environments which are not beneficial or matching to their own personal resonance bandwidths, and all they know of it is that they feel unhappy and out of sorts, yet there seems to "visible" or "hard" reason for this.

That's when we turn to energy healing.

Silvia Hartmann PhD has been campaigning for a greater awareness of the absolutely real and very powerful influences of energetic occurrences to be taken more seriously ever since she discovered in 1993, during a study on high end behavioural disorders in dogs, that these were directly related to and caused by the "invisible energies" traded and exchanged in mammals.

She says, "It was just like Sherlock Holmes said - when you have excluded everything possible, then the impossible must be the answer. It wasn't a question of nutrition or genetics - energy exchanges were at work."

For the next 11 years, Dr Hartmann began to study and research these "invisible effects".

As a side effect of these studies, she was able to create a great range of very practical and highly acclaimed breakthrough techniques for explaining and solving psychological puzzles in human thought and behaviour, including "The Harmony Programme" (1994), "Project Sanctuary" (1996), "Powerfields" (1999), "Guiding Stars" (2000) and the EmoTrance energy awareness/energy healing applications (Oceans of Energy 2003, Living Energy 2004, Energy Magic 2005).

Dr Hartmann says, "What surprised me most of all was that when you bring in the energy realms, things begin to work with such lightness and with ease, it is just extraordinary. And the important thing to understand is that what we are doing is NOT the usual move by which we separate out the energy work from the day-to-day living, but bring it back together, have it be present ALL and at the same time. That's when methods and techniques really start to work like the proverbial charm."

In this way, there is no difference between art and science - both are simply aspects of the same underlying true and composite reality which have become detached from one another, much in the same way as the secular and the sacred became detached when neither can work without the other or have any hope of making any kind of sense.

"I have been working with and studying especially human emotions for a very, very long time indeed. It is a huge, a really HUGE mistake to think that a fully functional human being can even successfully exist without emotions. What you get if you try is once again, a useless thing, devoid of practical performance, that can do nothing particularly well at all.

"Of course, that's exactly the same the other way around. If you make emotions into a God and turn your back on logic, you become driftwood in your own rivers.

"The real truth is that the universe is incredibly logical, AND it is full of powerful energies AS WELL - those powerful energies are what are causing the side effect of human emotions. You can't understand energy without the feedback device of emotion."

One of the major breakthroughs in 2004 was the concept of "Art Solutions". Struck by the intensity of negativity coming from a reproduction print of Edvard Munch's "The Scream" which was hanging over the fire place, dominating a depressed person's living room, Dr Hartmann set to work to try out the theories of energy-hard re-unification through the medium of visual art.

"I wondered," she said, "how many people who committed suicide had that print on their walls. I wondered how many would have been able to find a way out of their states of depression and hopelessness if there simply had been a different picture on the wall."

However, there is the question of rapport.

It is well known that someone who is themselves very depressed will choose something like "The Scream" because this feels familiar, it matches their own states of energetic resonance.

"You just can't go round depressed people's houses, take their "Screams" off the walls and put happy flying ducks there instead," says Dr Hartmann. "But the world of energy once more can give us a solution to the problem of getting stuck in a rapport with extremely angry or miserable artists - namely, the artist makes sure that instead of remaining stuck in the place where you just tell everyone how sad you are, you START THERE but then go on to move towards a SOLUTION - the healing art solution.

"The "Scream" paintings, and of course, scream-style music, drama, theatre, sculptures and so on, are so beloved because they are true and they are authentic. They are a description of the artist's true emotions, or their energies if you will, and that makes them highly desirable to those who resonate at a similar level.

"Energy doesn't stay still, and all that we need to do as artists to NOT leave such a legacy of pain and misery oozing from a million unhappy teenager's walls all around the World, is simply to take one further step, namely, to give the solution to the problems and pains through healing art."

Ananga Sivyer, composer and Ayurvedic Medicine researcher, explains how she uses the Healing Art Solutions principle in her music to create Sound Healing in actuality.

"Before I was fortunate enough to be one of the first people to get to try Dr Hartmann's concept, I would then take that exact energy and make it into a composition. It is absolutely true that even thought they were very powerful and very artistic compositions, I recognise that I must have known that these statements of pain in artistic form are not what I want to contribute.

"Now I contemplate the problem, the sadness or the strongest emotion that seeks to be addressed and then, I take the next step and HAVE MY MUSIC BECOME THE HEALING ART SOLUTION.

This is true sound healing!

This profoundly useful movement, namely to start with the reality of the problem, the very real resonance of the emotional energies, and then to take THAT and present the HEALING ART SOLUTION instead, answers the problem of "rapport mismatch" in sound healing.

Someone who might have been drawn to The Scream will still be able to absolutely recognise the starting point but instead of getting stuck there, will be drawn forward, and towards a solution.

Dr Hartmann says, "As a painter, I must admit that this has been the most freeing, soaring artistic experience of my life. To state the problem honestly and have my art become the solution is nothing less than wonderful. There is such an immediate sense of flow - of ideas, of excitement, of energy and inspiration, it is really incredible that this hasn't been done before.

"All the old injuries, all the old screams - they can get a chance at resolution and release. They don't have to be hidden away anymore, and you DON'T HAVE TO ENDLESSLY REPEAT THE SAME OLD SCREAM but you can have them come forward and then resolve them. I'm very aware of my own energy shifts as I am working in this way with the paintings, the grids and the images and it is the most extraordinary and delightful healing I've ever felt.

"It is by me, through me and the results as well, the finished artwork, is so alive, it dances!"

Ananga Sivyer, who has just completed her first album of the sound healing Sonic Solutions, entitled, "Here And Now", agrees.

"It was such a rush being able to go towards the solutions than endlessly having to restate the questions, endlessly re-experiencing the same old feelings. These compositions are amazing to myself. I've broken through all kinds of barriers, all kinds of boundaries in the production and creation of the "Here And Now" album - and this is only the beginning!"

What effects do the results of this art healing, the finished paintings by Dr Hartmann and the compositions by Ananga Sivyer have on those who see them, hear them and most importantly, feel them?

The first reaction is always one of surprise and intrigue. Questions are asked. The more energy conscious someone is, the more delighted they are by the levels and depths of these works of healing art, because form and function are aligned with intent, and with truth in every way.

These are not illusionary "happy" works of healing art. They are real and yet entirely inspiring, lifting without once denying the truth of their origins, namely what is really like for a human being to live here, how difficult that is when one feels disconnected from the Universe and those around us, and how one may turn it around and seek solutions.

Dr Hartmann says, "I think some people will find our solutions to be their solutions also. But that's not so important to me. I think for many more, many, many more our ATTEMPTS at finding the healing solutions are the true and powerful transformational inspiration.

"Yes, we get unhappy. Yes, we have very traumatic memories and things that we find so difficult, we too want to "scream" sometimes. And we admit that to ourselves, enter that in honesty and then seek the art healing solution. I think that's the role model I'm happy to be as the artist, that's the effect I want to have and be remembered for.

"The Healing Art Solutions are a complete merger of truth, hard reality, experience, science, healing and art. And wonderfully, what seems to happen when you bring art and science back together, is that you get is REAL HEALING MAGIC."

• More about Dr Hartmann's Healing Art - http://SilviaHartmann.com/23/
• Ananga Sivyer's Energy Healing Website & Sound Healing resources - http://ananga.net
• Art Healing Solutions based HypnoSolutions
• Art Healing Solutions based Healing Star Essences