How drawing and mindfulness support mental health

Here we introduce techniques to reduce stress.

The most exciting, impactful, and innovative science occurs when experts from different fields collaborate. This post describes one of his collaborations that is changing the way we think about mindfulness-based stress reduction. If you’re like me, you may find it difficult to practice traditional mindfulness because you can’t stop your mind from wandering to intrusive thoughts like “What should I have for dinner?” Or you feel terrible for yelling at your child this morning.

We know that practicing mindfulness is effective (Keng et al., 2011), but how can we make it easier to use? One answer is that Penn State theater professor William William It starts with an email I received from Doan. His words here are the beginning of this collaboration.

Doan: I love to draw, in fact, I need to draw. Painting is one of the essential tools for maintaining my mental health and well-being. Many people living with anxiety or depression feel that words are inadequate to express what their daily experience is like. I find that drawing helps me capture that experience in lines, colors, textures, and shapes, making it easier to share it with others. At the beginning of my life, I didn’t know why I liked painting. I didn’t think much of it. Eventually, I realized that I needed to paint. It took me decades to develop a relationship where drawing calms me down, eases my fears, helps me control my breathing, slows down my racing thoughts, and calms me down. Painting keeps me grounded in the here and now.

I draw it so that you don’t feel overwhelmed, so you can think without getting stuck in a loop of negative chatter. I draw to process information in a way that is meaningful to me. The quality of the picture is not important. It is an embodied drawing process that orchestrates a harmonious connection between my body, mind, and spirit.

I use painting as a tool to find freedom from the dehumanizing ways in which living with anxiety and depression can often lead to dehumanization.

For me, painting begins with breathing. Mindful breathing and painting involve sustained awareness and presence.

Connecting breathing to painting is the core of my creative work. This practice led me to think that my approach could provide evidence of the value of drawing in maintaining the mental health of others. I was fortunate to find colleagues at Penn State’s Emotional Development Lab who were also interested in the effectiveness of such practices.

The motivation behind us was Doan’s question whether the effect of adding breath to drawings could be tested as an intervention. A study of drawing and anxiety. Sarah Myruski is leading the way, offering some of our initial findings in her own words.

Mirsky: Based on research from arts-based research (e.g. de Witte et al., 2021) and mindfulness-based interventions (Keng et al., 2011), our interdisciplinary project brings artists and psychological science together. bring together researchers to provide evidence for a new guided intervention. Portraying the intervention as an accessible anxiety reduction tool. We integrate drawing with elements of mindfulness such as focused breathing, embodiment, and an emphasis on process over product. In other words, the experience of drawing is most important, such as finding time to breathe and create in your daily life, but the actual tangible results are less important. This means that anyone, regardless of their level of artistic skill or experience, has the potential to benefit from the drawing exercises we are developing.

Using a pilot sample of 18- to 25-year-olds, we recently found that both subjective anxiety and physiological markers of arousal were significantly reduced compared to before the guided drawing activity. Did. They also found that those who reported having difficulty managing their emotional experiences experienced the greatest reductions in anxiety. These results provide the first evidence that this guided drawing intervention may help reduce anxiety, with more vulnerable populations potentially reaping the greatest benefits.

We are just beginning to examine the power of drawing using this paradigm. We have ongoing research in adults and adolescents and plan to add additional physiological markers and investigate how long the positive effects of guided drawing last.

William Doan is a professor of theater and director of the Arts and Design Research Incubator at Pennsylvania State University. He is a solo performer who uses drawings to create performances and animations. Sarah Myruski is an assistant professor in the Department of Psychology and associate research director of the Emotional Development Laboratory at Penn State University.

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