How Arts Create Healthier Communities
According to thousands of studies, researchers have determined that involvement in the arts can improve public health and promote healing from illness, as well as protect against such problems as cognitive decline, heart disease, anxiety and depression.
Length: 6 Minutes
See Also:
- Art Therapy for anxiety, grounding & mindfulness 03:56 Minutes
- What is Art Therapy and How It Works 06:47 Minutes
- Benefits of Art Therapy 07:52 Minutes
Consider
But the real secret to lifelong good health is …
Let your body take care of you.
– Deepak Chopra
Succeed and Soar‘s Thrive! presents practices that can improve life. This post explores how creative activities [like cooking and gardening or dancing and writing] can help health and wellbeing.
The PsychologyToday post “Creativity,” states,
An act of creativity can be grand and inspiring, such as crafting a beautiful painting or designing an innovative company. But an idea need not be artistic or world-changing to count as creative. Life requires daily acts of ingenuity and novel workarounds; in this sense, almost everyone possesses some amount of creativity.
How does creating art help? The PsychologyToday.com post “How Art Heals” explains that.
- Looking at art can lower anxiety by, “letting the mind stop on one spot while the natural forces and chaos of the world swirl around you.”
- Viewing art can aid problem solving because, “ideas reveal themselves, whether the art is simple or complex.”
- Also, psychologist Cathy Malchiodi found that looking at and creating art “helps you calm distracting, negative, and unhelpful thoughts, and that it gets your hands and body working as opposed to only your mind.”
- Difficult realities are easier to manage because it can let, “light [radiate] out of gathering darkness.”
- Art builds safe, meditative, imaginative spaces that can “break open and free” thoughts from disturbing situations.
To become more creative, first understand three, key brain networks. First is the default mode. It controls when daydreaming, resting, reflecting on the past and future. The second, the executive control network lets people, “plan, monitor, and execute their goals.” Finally, the brain’s large salience network detects, filters then determines, how to respond to events and ideas. “It scans for relevant signals, whether they contain sensory, cognitive, or emotional information.”
“Eureka moments” are those amazing times when exceptional ideas arrive. It’s when a “blockbuster notion breaks through in a flash of insight that’s as unexpected as it is blazingly clear.” Why? While in restful, default mode [perhaps while washing dishes or bathing], the “conscious, methodological, concerted problem solving” brain fit random, ‘puzzle pieces’ together.
To maximize these opportunities, the PsychologyToday “Creativity” post suggests,
- Keep busy. Produce lots.
- Allow solitude and time for quiet reflection.
- Stay open and playful.
- Record ideas as they arise so they are remembered.
- Engage with others to expand awareness.
- Allow the relaxing, unfocussed time that enables “eureka moments.”
Definitely consider the Live Well Lived sketch journal offered with this post.
Increase arts funding.
Succeed and Soar!
Sandra Gould Ford
Presenting arts experiences to encourage, refresh, enrich creative thinking and inspire.
This post’s resources:
Radiant Tree Books
Life Well Lived
A Sketch Journal
Four Seasons of Possibilities
Life Well Lived offers floral photographs, wise words and invitations to see life as a garden of possibilities. This book offers instructions for creating Illustrated Wisdoms and allows lots of space for personal notes, sketches and meditations. Here are opportunities to both enjoy life’s seasons and find enrichment.
- 5×8 Pocket book, 60 Pages, Preview & Purchase $15
- 8×10, 60 Pages, Preview & Purchase $20
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