How to Work Around Making Games and Not Being Good at Art
A lot of my free fourth dimension is spent doodling. I'm a journalist on NPR's scientific discipline desk past day. But all the time in betwixt, I am an creative person — specifically, a cartoonist.
I draw in betwixt tasks. I sketch at the coffee shop before work. And I like challenging myself to complete a zine — a little magazine — on my 20-infinitesimal jitney commute.
I do these things partly because it'due south fun and entertaining. Just I doubtable at that place's something deeper going on. Because when I create, I experience like it clears my head. It helps me brand sense of my emotions. And it somehow, information technology makes me feel calmer and more than relaxed.
That made me wonder: What is going on in my brain when I draw? Why does it feel so nice? And how tin can I get other people — even if they don't consider themselves artists — on the creativity train?
It turns out there's a lot happening in our minds and bodies when nosotros make art.
"Inventiveness in and of itself is important for remaining salubrious, remaining connected to yourself and connected to the earth," says Christianne Strang, a professor of neuroscience at the University of Alabama Birmingham and the former president of the American Art Therapy Clan.
This idea extends to any blazon of visual creative expression: drawing, painting, collaging, sculpting clay, writing poetry, block decorating, knitting, scrapbooking — the sky's the limit.
"Anything that engages your creative mind — the ability to make connections between unrelated things and imagine new ways to communicate — is healthy," says Girija Kaimal. She is a professor at Drexel Academy and a researcher in art therapy, leading fine art sessions with members of the military suffering from traumatic brain injury and caregivers of cancer patients.
But she'southward a big laic that art is for everybody — and no matter what your skill level, it's something y'all should try to practise on a regular ground. Here'due south why:
Information technology helps you imagine a more hopeful future
Art'south ability to flex our imaginations may exist 1 of the reasons why we've been making art since we were cave-dwellers, says Kaimal. Information technology might serve an evolutionary purpose. She has a theory that fine art-making helps us navigate problems that might arise in the futurity. She wrote about this in October in the Journal of the American Fine art Therapy Association.
Her theory builds off of an thought developed in the last few years — that our brain is a predictive machine. The encephalon uses "information to make predictions nigh we might do next — and more importantly what we need to practise next to survive and thrive," says Kaimal.
When you lot make art, you lot're making a series of decisions — what kind of drawing utensil to utilise, what color, how to interpret what you're seeing onto the paper. And ultimately, interpreting the images — figuring out what it means.
Make This: "How To Start An Art Habit" Zine
"Then what our brain is doing every mean solar day, every moment, consciously and unconsciously, is trying to imagine what is going to come up and preparing yourself to face that," she says.
Kaimal has seen this play out at her clinical practise as an fine art therapist with a student who was severely depressed. "She was despairing. Her grades were actually poor and she had a sense of hopelessness," she recalls.
The student took out a piece of newspaper and colored the whole sheet with thick black mark. Kaimal didn't say anything.
"She looked at that blackness canvass of paper and stared at information technology for some fourth dimension," says Kaimal. "And so she said, 'Wow. That looks really dark and bleak.' "
And so something amazing happened, says Kaimal. The student looked around and grabbed some pink sculpting clay. And she started making ... flowers: "She said, you know what? I think maybe this reminds me of spring."
Through that session and through creating art, says Kaimal, the student was able to imagine possibilities and see a future beyond the nowadays moment in which she was despairing and depressed.
"This act of imagination is actually an act of survival," she says. "It is preparing us to imagine possibilities and hopefully survive those possibilities."
It activates the reward center of our brain
For a lot of people, making fine art can be nerve-wracking. What are you going to brand? What kind of materials should you use? What if you lot tin't execute it? What if it ... sucks?
Studies bear witness that despite those fears, "engaging in any sort of visual expression results in the advantage pathway in the brain being activated," says Kaimal. "Which ways that yous feel good and it'due south perceived equally a pleasurable experience."
She and a team of researchers discovered this in a 2017 paper published in the journal The Arts in Psychotherapy. They measured blood flow to the brain's reward centre, the medial prefrontal cortex, in 26 participants as they completed three art activities: coloring in a mandala, doodling and drawing freely on a blank sail of paper. And indeed — the researchers constitute an increase in blood flow to this office of the brain when the participants were making art.
This inquiry suggests making fine art may have benefit for people dealing with health weather condition that activate the reward pathways in the encephalon, like addictive behaviors, eating disorders or mood disorders, the researchers wrote.
It lowers stress
Although the research in the field of fine art therapy is emerging, there's evidence that making fine art tin can lower stress and anxiety. In a 2016 paper in the Periodical of the American Art Therapy Clan, Kaimal and a group of researchers measured cortisol levels of 39 healthy adults. Cortisol is a hormone that helps the body reply to stress.
They found that 45 minutes of creating art in a studio setting with an art therapist significant lowered cortisol levels.
The paper also showed that there were no differences in health outcomes between people who identify every bit experienced artists and people who don't. And so that means that no matter your skill level, you'll exist able to feel all the good things that come with making art.
It lets you lot focus deeply
Ultimately, says Kaimal, making art should induce what the scientific community calls "flow" — the wonderful matter that happens when you lot're in the zone. "Information technology's that sense of losing yourself, losing all awareness. You're and so in the moment and fully present that you forget all sense of time and infinite," she says.
And what'due south happening in your brain when y'all're in menstruum country? "It activates several networks including relaxed reflective state, focused attention to job and sense of pleasance," she says. Kaimal points to a 2018 study published in the journal Frontiers in Psychology, which found that flow was characterized past increased theta wave activity in the frontal areas of the brain — and moderate alpha wave activities in the frontal and central areas.
And so what kind of art should you try?
Some types of art appear to yield greater health benefits than others.
Kaimal says modeling clay, for example, is wonderful to play around with. "It engages both your hands and many parts of your brain in sensory experiences," she says. "Your sense of affect, your sense of three-dimensional infinite, sight, maybe a piffling fleck of sound — all of these are engaged in using several parts of yourself for cocky-expression, and likely to be more beneficial."
A number of studies take shown that coloring inside a shape — specifically a pre-drawn geometric mandala design — is more effective in boosting mood than coloring on a blank paper or even coloring inside a square shape. And i 2012 study published in Periodical of the American Fine art Therapy Association showed that coloring inside a mandala reduces anxiety to a greater degree compared to coloring in a plaid design or a plainly canvas of paper.
Strang says there's no one medium or art action that's "better" than another. "Some days you lot desire to may get home and paint. Other days you might want to sketch," she says. "Do what's most benign to you at any given fourth dimension."
Procedure your emotions
It's of import to note: if you're going through serious mental health distress, you should seek the guidance of a professional fine art therapist, says Strang.
However, if you're making art to connect with your own creativity, subtract anxiety and hone your coping skills, "by all means, figure out how to let yourself to do that," she says.
Just let those "lines, shapes and colors interpret your emotional experience into something visual," she says. "Use the feelings that you experience in your body, your memories. Because words don't often get it."
Her words made me reflect on all those moments when I reached into my handbag for my pen and sketchbook. A lot of the time, I was using my drawings and little musings to communicate how I was feeling. What I was doing was helping myself deal. It was cathartic. And that catharsis gave me a sense of relief.
A few months agone, I got into an argument with someone. On my motorbus ride to work the next twenty-four hours, I was still stewing over information technology. In frustration, I pulled out my notebook and wrote out the old aphorism, "Do not let the world make you hard."
I carefully ripped the bulletin off the page and affixed it to the seat in front of me on the double-decker. I thought, allow this be a reminder to anyone who reads it!
I took a photo of the note and posted information technology to my Instagram. Looking back at the image after that night, I realized who the message was really for. Myself.
Malaka Gharib is a writer and editor on NPR'due south science desk and the author of I Was Their American Dream: A Graphic Memoir.
Source: https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2020/01/11/795010044/feeling-artsy-heres-how-making-art-helps-your-brain
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