insideKENT Magazine Issue 62 - May 2017 | Page 137

mentally clearer and calmer because you’ll be
giving your brain a well-earned break from
the production line of more practical thoughts
that pass through it every day.
Try adult colouring. A fast-growing craze
that looked at one point as though it may have
been a flash in the pan, art therapists first
popularised the idea of adult colouring books
in France – a country that often tops the ranks
in per capita consumption of antidepressants,
sedatives and sleeping pills. Created with stress
relief in mind and to focus the ‘artist’s’ brain
on the details before them and their immediate
environment, adult colouring books have
become an entirely acceptable form of artistic
expression and have been widely used to
transition patients suffering from post-
traumatic stress disorder into art therapy.
Art to encourage creative thinking. Mental
decline, as characterised by things like
memory loss and fogginess of thought, is
caused by a lack of communication between
brain cells and not by a general decline in the
sharpness of brain cells over time as many
would assume. As there’s no right or wrong
answers in art and you can take whatever
you’re working on in whichever direction your
creativity chooses, it exercises your brain by
using your senses in new ways; a bit like
problem solving, but with no pressure. Creative
thinking stimulates both sides of your brain
to communicate with each other and it’s this
‘whole-brain thinking’ that encourages the
growth of new neurons and strengthens the
presence of existing ones.
Art to boost self-esteem. Why do we praise
the often hard-to-decipher scribbles of our
young children? To make them feel better
about themselves. Displaying your latest
artistic creation to your nearest and dearest
will have the same effect on you, boosting
your self-belief and your sense of
achievement. What’s more, the sense of
accomplishment you will feel at the end of a
particular project will be rewarded with a huge
hit of dopamine, the brain’s handy motivation
molecule that increases both drive and
concentration and will enable you to plan
ahead to your next artistic foray and resist any
niggling doubts that may sit on your shoulder.
Remember, you don’t need to be producing
works that the National Gallery would be
proud to display. It’s more about stretching
your brain, so that you can get as much mood-
improving goodness out of it as possible. A
recent study of over 10,000 students
determined that those who had spent an hour
in an art museum came out displaying a
greater sense of empathy, tolerance and overall
contentedness than those that hadn’t; perhaps
make your first foray into the art world a trip
to a museum or two, so you come out feeling
happier overall and brimming with ideas about
how you’ll apply your newfound zest for
creativity.
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