Art for Healing
How Arts Create Healthier Communities Click Here to View 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: 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. 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, Definitely consider the Live Well Lived sketch journal offered with this post. Increase arts funding. Succeed and Soar! Sandra Gould FordPresenting arts experiences to encourage, refresh, enrich creative thinking and inspire. This post’s resources: