Creating Calm

To help reduce stress, draw upon the healing powers of art therapy

Soon after becoming an empty nester, Doreen Bell sunk into a nasty depression-or as Bell puts it, "I lost my mojo!"

She'd spent the past 20 years raising an active family in Kildeer, Ill., packing every day to the max, and now she needed to fill a lot of free time. She discovered mosaics. And she began to prolifically create. "When I'm in my artistic place, there's no space in my brain for stress. None. I don't know what time it is. I can't hear the dogs barking. And I really don't care."

What Bell describes so passionately is the healing power of art therapy, a respected field that many people associate with grave illness or posttraumatic stress.

"I wouldn't disagree with that connection, but just like art itself, art therapy covers a wide spectrum," says Amy Lynn, LCPC, ATR, a licensed art therapist and spokeswoman for the American Art Therapy Association. "To put it as simply as possible, art therapy is about having a relationship with your visual world. So there you are, creating, and you have no choice but to be in the present moment. In this way, I think we're closely connected to dance and music therapy … really any expressive therapy."

Being in the moment is key to art therapy, and as Lynn adds, it's an incredibly healthy way to release stress. "When you're fully in the present, your mind can't be wandering around in the past or into the future, which really amps up anxiety."

Draw the Line

In everyday life, art therapy has nothing to do with creating a masterpiece and everything to do with taking a mental vacation from stressful thoughts. "The neat thing," Lynn says, "is that simply picking up a pencil and doodling counts, because it puts you naturally into the present moment." Whether you doodle in a proper sketchbook or in your newspaper's margins while on the train commuting to work, let your imagination swirl.

See the Point

A study published in the Journal of Pain and Symptom Management reports that creating as well as viewing art reduced pain and anxiety in cancer patients. If you don't feel like physically creating art today, take a cue from science and surround yourself with distraction-worthy, stress-reducing art. Walk in the park and study the buds on a tree until you're completely immersed in the present moment. Visit an art exhibit and really see every brush stroke used to create one blossom in an artist's vase. The trick is to let yourself be fully present in and captivated by the moment.

Go with the Flow

When Bell becomes fully absorbed in bits of glass and tile to create a mosaic, she's experiencing what art therapists call flow, a near meditative state that produces many of the same benefits as traditional meditation-like feeling less stressed. To find your flow, Bell suggests starting with an art form that involves no rules, software programs or mechanical equipment. "That's why I picked mosaics. These are cracked pieces of glass I'm working with, and there's no such thing as a mistake." Similarly, you might begin by creating a clay pinch pot and easing yourself into the potter's wheel, or immersing yourself into smudgy, dreamy oil pastel abstracts before moving on to still-life oil paintings.

Color Yourself Happy

"Kids have this natural inclination to be so engaged in the creative process without any cares about the finished product," says Lynn. Most adults, she adds, flip their focus to the end result, and unless they've produced an award-winning masterpiece, all creative joy disappears. The next time you bring home a new box of crayons, pull up a chair and color with the kids. Follow their lead. And when they hang their pictures on the refrigerator door, hang yours, too!

Make It with Love

If you're drawn to crafts, Lynn is quick to note that creating functional handmade items fits very nicely into the definition of art therapy. "To me it's a third-wave feminism thing, with women taking back crafts that we gave up because we didn't want to be the homemaker-knitting or embroidering or sewing," she says. "Now we're rediscovering how meaningful these crafts really are in life-to create with our hands, connect to our visual world, and enjoy being in the moment as we create."
-By Donna Shryer