Do you feel like you are constantly drained and fatigued? Feeling unfulfilled and uninspired? These conditions may lead you to think you need more sleep or a change of career; what if the answer was actually taking time to create art? Creative expression is incredibly important for the overall health of your body, mind and spirit. Engaging in the arts can help individuals feel rejuvenated and passionate about life again. Included here are a few ways that creating art can help increase your overall health.

Allows Artist to Vent Emotions

Pent-up emotions are definitely a danger to the overall health of humans. Finding a way to release your emotions can increase your happiness and health. Studies have shown that individuals who hold in their emotions have a higher risk of cancer and are more likely to die young. Finding creative outlets, rather than unleashing on your boss, can help you avoid carrying unnecessary anger and allow you to move forward.

Park West Gallery artist, Tim Yanke, recently donated his time to create art with children. His goal was to allow the kids to think freely and create without limits. Learning how to express one’s self from an early age can offer children healthy lifelong habits. Because freedom of expression is critical to good health, but is often stifled in adults, Yanke worked to draw that out in children and allow them to feel comfortable with their ideas and efforts.

Decrease Stress

Stress is a silent killer and a plague on modern-society. There are countless illnesses and ailments created or exacerbated by long-term stress. Unfortunately, many people are too busy and stressed out to deal with their stress and so it becomes a compounding problem.

Stress relief can be as simple as getting out a coloring book and coloring for a few hours. You do not have to go to great lengths or cost to relieve daily stress. By integrating a creative outlet in your everyday habits you can reduce your overall stress and, in doing so, become a healthier individual.

Alters Focus From Personal Pain

Many patients in a hospital were recently studied while given the options of drawing, coloring, or journaling on a daily basis. On average, those patients had fewer complaints of pain and were able to focus externally rather than internally. Creating art was also shown to decrease the risk of depression and increase mental positivity in the artist. It certainly is a great way in helping people distract themselves from their everyday monotony and problems of life. Of course, there tend to be more ways of distracting and relieving stress that many people adopt, but art seems one of the safest and easiest to go with.

Creativity Can Actually Fight Illness

In one study published in the Journal of Psychosomatic Medicine, researchers discovered that journaling could boost the health of ailing patients. Simply using writing as a daily treatment for HIV patients boosted their CD4+ lymphocyte counts. This means that simply taking pen to paper and jotting down thoughts can allow your overall health to improve, even when suffering from a life-threatening illness!