Art in all forms has a power that we have yet to fully tap in to. We know from scientistic studies that practicing art has a positive impact on the mind, improving our brain function. A study from scientists at the University Hospital Erlangen in Germany found that producing art had a significant improvement in our psychological resilience (you can see the results of the study published in the journal PLOS ONE here). Yet, we still only use art as a means to process trauma that has already occurred, or use it as an outlet to further fuel our pain.
What if we used art as way to develop the mind, using it as a processing tool early on to teach us HOW to cope with our lives? I believe that there’s knowledge in accessing our higher thinking brains that we can develop early on in children – giving children the ability to reflect and grow. We can’t stop trauma from occurring and we really shouldn’t be trying to create a ‘perfect’ society, I think we should instead be looking at how to develop our resilience and authenticity. It’s how we respond and learn from the difficult situations that life presents us with that really matters.
I’m not talking about pure art lessons, or the manufactured art world. I’m looking at something more developed than that, similar to therapy but more evolved to place in our education systems. As children, we’re still networking and it’s an essential time to install what will become a template for our subconscious decision making.
Art and creativity is more than just a form – it’s another way to communicate, without the limitation of words. In Japanese language, there are words to describe feelings that in the Western world we don’t have the linguistics for, such as:
‘Yugen’ in Japanese roughly translates to ‘A profound, mysterious sense of the beauty of the universe and the sad beauty of human suffering’.
Imagine being able to take that further – after all, most of our communication is actually non-verbal!
I’m not entirely sure what the answer is right now, but I am committed to following the journey of this idea. I believe the only way we can develop as a society is if we make some fundamental changes, and that includes developing our communication and processing methods early on in childhood.
I’ll keep you posted.
Anya
