Take Yourself to an Art Exhibit, or Museum

You may have had a mind-stretching, body tingling experience where you were looking at a painting, sculpture or other artwork, you know what I’m talking about.  Perhaps you are unsure about art, or have the idea that art is not for you.  Rest assured you don’t have to be all artsy to enjoy art.  You don’t even have to understand it to be able to get something from it.  Just remain curious and allow your body to have it’s natural response to what your experiencing.  If you have just one moment where you can experience wonder, then, that is what counts and is having a positive benefit on you.

Emotions are processed by a special area of the brain and when our pleasure centres are activated by contemplating a painting or other artwork even, when it’s not  immediately clear what the artwork is about. Our brains, bodies and emotions are positively rewarded. Signals to the brain are the same as when we’re daydreaming, or thinking about the future and enhances the pleasure and reward mode even further. There is also an area called, ‘the interior insult’ that is associated with the experience of pain that is activated, and this may be due to our brains trying process and find meaning in the art work. Taking time out to go to an art exhibit, or museum, even taking a painting class can be very rewarding as a result and will often change your brain’s neuroplasticity by activating and enhancing the reward centres through repetitive positive signals.

Why Not Start Writing a Daily Journal? 

Are you stressed out? When was the last time you wrote in a journal? Most people are too busy replying to a full inbox each day, a huge to-do list to even consider the benefits of journalling for themselves each day.  But, before you discount it completely there are many health benefits to writing worth considering.  Many people are walking around with a huge amount of stress too big to handle.  The cortisol produced through constant activation of stress hormones is very harmful and taxing to our immune systems leading to serious health problems, if you don’t put a stop to it in time.

The British Journal of Health Psychology published a study that showed how releasing the stress caused by emotional topic through writing or journaling actually lowered people’s cortisol levels.  It is well known that expressive writing of a personal nature is very relieves long term suffering from any kind of psychological trauma. The study showed who wrote in a journal slept better,  and this led to improved mood, as well as the ability to heal faster.

Reading Challenging Literature

Most people love to read, isn’t that what you’re doing right now? Did you know that reading topics that provide a challenge for example, Shakespeare provides many health benefits for brain and your mental health? Scans of the brain have found the more challenging texts, prose and poetry show more electrical activity is sparked off in the brain than, reading easier text, or more conventional and predictable language.

Philip Davis, an English Professor in the Magnetic Resonance Centre, at Liverpool University, UK after a research study on the effects of reading William Shakespeare, William Wordsworth, T.S. Eliot and others has on the brain, says, “When you read literature of a higher level leads to mental shifts in pathways and help to create new thoughts, shapes, and connections whether you’re young or old.

Read More Poetry

The same study found regularly reading poetry, leads to an increase in activity in the right hemisphere of the brain, the area connected to ‘autobiographical memory’. Poetry is very helpful in being able to reflect on our own life experiences and compare them to what we are reading.  It also lights up the part of the brain concerned with language. Professor Davis says, “Poetry is not just a matter of style. It is a matter of deep versions of experience that add the emotional and biographical to the cognitive,”.

There is also evidence poetry affects our brains in the same way music does. Everyone knows the feeling when they hear a song, they really connect with.  This is because the areas of the brain affected by music are the same that are aroused by reading poetry, particularly, the musical resonance of poetry, like rhythm, tone, cadence and word usage.

We are very vulnerable, fragile creatures in desperate need of support and we generally don’t get it. … Art [can be] a source of help with our problems — our innermost problems — the problems of the soul. . . . Art can be a form of self-help and there is nothing demeaning about the concept of self-help — only the way in which some of self-help has been done so far, but there is nothing wrong with it as a concept . . .

 

There is nothing wrong with [art today]. It’s not the art that’s the problem — it’s the frame around the art. We are simply not encouraged to bring ourselves to works of art. . . . The impact of art is often not what it should be because the frame is wrong.

 

[…]I believe that art should be propaganda of something [other than the Christian church] — not theology, but psychology. I believe that art should serve the needs of our psyche as efficiently and as clearly as it served the needs of theology for hundreds of years.

Art as Therapy is an excellent read in its entirety. Take a closer look at de Botton’s argument and his seven psychological functions of art click here by Maria Popova.

From:  http://www.brainpickings.org/2014/01/08/alain-de-botton-art-as-therapy-talk/