The Challenge: We all have moments when we feel overwhelmed by our emotions.
The Science: Creating art leads to surprising benefits for body and mind.
The Solution: Make time for creativity to significantly improve your life!
Why Art is a Guarantee to Sanity
Many of us have heard about the benefits of meditation but sometimes find it hard to do so! Fewer of us know about the profound benefits of artistic expression. Creating art, however, is another way to access a meditative state of mind and the profound healing it brings.
“Art is a guarantee to sanity,” said Louise Bourgeois, a French-American artist who died in 2010 at the age of 98. She even went on to add, “(…) this is the most important thing I have said.” For Bourgeois, Art — making Art — was a tool for coping with overwhelming emotion. She says she remembers making small sculptures out of bread crumbs at the dinner table when she was a little girl – as a way of dealing with her dominating father. Art was more than an escape – it kept her sane.
Art therapy has a healing effect for a variety of ailments (depression, trauma, illness, etc.) and is effective across age, gender, or ethnicity. In a recent study performed on cancer patients, an art therapy intervention — in conjunction with conventional treatments —(chemotherapy, radiation, surgery, etc.) not only diminished symptoms typically associated with cancer such as pain, fatigue, and anxiety, but also enhanced life expectancy. The study was based on the belief that “the creative process involved in the making of art is healing and life-enhancing. It is used to help patients, or their families, increase awareness of self, cope with symptoms, and adapt to stressful and traumatic experiences.”
Art is not only healing for individuals suffering from severe illness. Here are 3 reasons why creative activity is such a potent recipe for psychological well-being:
1. Art is a vehicle for meditation and self-connection
Most of us can understand that art provides an escape from a sometimes harsh reality, but where does art’s healing potential come from? It impacts the state of our mind: enjoying emotional stability is largely about taking responsibility for how we feel.
Research has shown the power of meditation and the science behind it. One of the reasons it is so powerful is that it fosters acceptance: “meditation is an active training of the mind to increase awareness (…) it emphasizes acceptance of feelings and thoughts without judgment and relaxation of body and mind”. Creating art is a type of meditation. It allows you to free yourself from daily worries and tensions and connect with deeper parts of yourself.
Moreover, art, like meditation, allows you to create space between ‘the thoughts’ and allows us to connect with our true selves – as opposed to the fleeting/or false sense of identity we can get when we are caught up in thoughts and emotions. Eckhart Tolle, spiritual teacher, writes, “Identification with thoughts and the emotions that go with those thoughts creates a false mind-made sense of self, conditioned by the past… This false self is never happy or fulfilled for long. Its normal state is one of unease, fear, insufficiency, and nonfulfillment”. Creating art is about reaching a state of consciousness and breaking free from the constant debilitating chatter of the mind.
2. Art provides a feeling of flow & freedom
Similarly to meditation, art can help us tap into a deeper and more quiet part of ourselves, and we enter into a state of flow and present-moment awareness. “All true artists, whether they know it or not, create from a place of no mind, from inner stillness.” Artists experience that creative activity has the potential to tap into a space of true consciousness of being, void of interpretation. In this space, there can be a sense of having no physical parameters, no body, or form to separate one from the other.
3. Art allows for true self-expression
The process of making art overrides the need for verbal communication; creativity is its own language and enables humans to connect with one another — and themselves — on a parallel level than that occupied by the mind, the intellect, and words. In therapy, it can be an effective way of saying the unspeakable as is shown through the use of creative therapies with children. This also explains how we can be moved to the core when looking at a work of art or even listening to music without necessarily knowing specifics about its origin. Art exists within its own non-verbal parameters and thus frees us up for unadulterated self-expression.
4. Art helps us become steady & centered
As a plus, it is interesting to note that Bourgeois, when asked to comment on her extensive body of work spanning her entire lifetime, says what impresses her most “is how constant [I] have been.” Perhaps we need to redefine what we consider to be a storybook happy ending. Happiness may be less a matter of experiencing sharp highs (often followed by deep lows) and more a matter of nurturing a space that provides a constant connection to our true selves. An article published this year by the University of Hertfordshire finds a direct link between self-acceptance and a happier life. It quotes Dr. Mark Williamson — Director of Action for Happiness — who reminds us how “our society puts huge pressure on us to be successful and to constantly compare ourselves with others [and how] this causes a great deal of unhappiness and anxiety.” Why not use Art and art-making as a way to “spend some quiet time by yourself. Tune in to how you’re feeling inside and try to be at peace with who you are.” It’s about instilling good habits in our day-to-day!
