Creativity and Well-being
I have good news! It’s not from the headlines, but from Your Brain on Art: How the Arts Transform Us, which explores the growing field of neuroaesthetics and documents many different ways that engaging in creative practices and encountering art improves our well-being. Much of what I learned from this book was how science backs up what I have long felt to be true—that creative projects and processes connect us to ourselves, to one another, and to the natural world.
Some-highlights:
Children and adolescents in art-rich environments learn more and develop great emotional resilience. Older adults who engage with art show slower rates of cognitive decline—and may increase their lifespan by 10 years.
Spending just 45 minutes engaged in some form of artmaking (knitting a scarf, sketching a landscape, drafting a poem) decreases cortisol (stress-hormone) levels. This holds true whether or not the art produced is “good”—so you can get the same physiological benefits whether you the poem you draft is destined to win a contest or headed for the recycling bin. What’s important is stepping away from a “pleasing and producing” mindset and into an “exploring and expressing” mindset.
The news about poetry is particularly exciting for both readers and writers. Because images often engage the five senses, poetry helps us foster mind-body connections and verbalize emotions and experiences (whether we are the poet discovering/drafting the lines or the reader identifying with them). Poetry stimulates multiple areas of the brain linked to introspection, self-awareness, and calm; metaphors help us integrate new ideas and spot connections between them. Whether we are reading or writing, poetry activates neuroplasticity processes in the brain, helping us become more adaptive and resilient problem-solvers (when I read this I thought immediately of all the poets I watched responding to the events of 2020—and 2025—with calm and humanity—and by writing new poems).
On the one hand, this makes the recent decimation of arts funding in the United States look even more cruel and short-sighted; on the other hand, it’s empowering to know that we support one another’s well-being when we make and share art—and to believe that maybe we can write/draw/dance/sculpt/craft/collaborate our way out of our current muddle and towards a more harmonious world.
