Michael Franklin

Michael A. Franklin, PhD, ATR-BC, is the past chair of the graduate Transpersonal Art Therapy program and the founder and director of the Naropa Community Art Studio (NCAS) at Naropa University in Boulder, Colorado. Throughout his career, Michael has worked as a clinician, educator, and practitioner-researcher. Prior to his position at Naropa University, he directed the art therapy programs at the College of St. Teresa and Bowling Green State University.

Michael lectures and leads workshops nationally and internationally on art and yoga, art and meditation, and art as imaginal intelligence. He has published over 30 papers on subjects including aesthetics, self-esteem, AIDS iconography, interpretive strategies, transpersonal art therapy, community-based art therapy, art-based empathic interventions, and contemplative approaches including yoga and meditation. He is the author of 'Art as Contemplative Practice: Expressive Pathways to the Self' (SUNY Press), which positions art-making as a discipline of inner knowing comparable to meditation.

His orientation as a socially engaged artist, contemplative practitioner, teacher, and therapist blends the perspectives of Yoga traditions, depth psychologies, and expressive therapies with the humanistic principles of transpersonal, imaginal, and client-centered therapy. His goal is to support and guide art therapy and counseling students and private practice clients into transformational processes utilizing the arts and contemplative methods.

Franklin has received numerous honors including the Distinguished Service Award (2018) and Distinguished Educator Award (2016) from the American Art Therapy Association, and an award for best paper in the 'Arts as Medicine' category at the 1992 International World Congress on Arts and Medicine.