How artistic expression can bring good health

Saturday, September 17, 2011 by: Angelika (Angie) Stehle
Tags: artistic expression, health, health news

(NewsTarget) What kind of artistic expression is good for your mind, body, cells, even your future? Just as only healthy nutritious food is good for you, only art that you find beautiful is good for you. Use your imagination to understand the reasons.

Please contrast:

positive, optimistic, friendly, peaceful, gentle, right, chaste, lovable, well-spoken of, virtuous, meaningful, praiseworthy, charming, interesting, reasonable, balanced, calm, safe, yes-to-life, invigorating, amusing, nature-oriented, wonderful, heartfelt, beautiful, delightful, giving-a-lift, refreshing, green, rejuvenating, letting-sunshine-in, happy, fascinating, stimulating pictures

with

negative, pessimistic, unhappy, discontent, hate-culture, violent, rough, immoral, unreasonable, wrong, death-oriented, dangerous, unacceptable, selfish, me-first, rebellious, angry, brutal, afraid, disgusting, ugly, gory, panic-creating, shrill, dark, irritating, exhausting, unnerving, drug-scene-related, frustrated, depressing, somber, dark, artificial, upsetting, trapped, deadening, desensitising imagery.

The kind of art that is good for you can be compared to being on a refreshing holiday. Everybody needs a pleasant break. Mind and body yearn for interesting activities in a paradise-like, tranquil atmosphere and for meaningful time spent with kind, friendly people. Can you see the picture in your mind? This creates positive emotions helping you to relax. That is recreation, the real meaning of which is to restore, recover, recondition, retrieve a previously happy state of emotions and quality of life.

Negative images are only useful in a protective capacity while they make you aware of sad facts temporarily (for example pictures on the world news can inform and warn you). Ongoing relentless exposure tears you down. The healthy reaction to what is bad is to reject it in order to protect your own sanity and health, and indeed to protect human society from degradation.

As an experiment, you are invited to turn the above brain-storming of positive and negative ideas into pictures, one by one. You could draw them, paint them, or simply find them on the Internet and look at the related images. Then observe how your emotions change.

You have a choice. You are not just what you eat but also what you take in otherwise. You are what you dwell on, deal with, and spend time with. What you consistently think becomes you; it becomes real within yourself, and thus it becomes very much your reality, not just mentally but also physically within all your cells. And ultimately you will live what you think about, and thus it becomes the reality to your surroundings including other people. Therefore it is wise to continually and consistently choose thoughts and images that create in you feelings of love, compassion and harmony.

Detoxing your mind, your heart, and your emotions includes also not to poison yourself further. In psychology you would commit negative feelings, qualities, and imaginations to paper by writing, and then destroy the paper. Via art therapy you can put the same negative ideas onto paper by drawing or painting them and then destroying the picture - don't hang it up.

Studies have shown that every thought, emotion, desire, picture, sound, smell, taste, and internal dialogue are observed by your immune system, which will mirror the positivity or negativity and respond by being strengthened or weakened respectively. This happens because neurotransmitters are released in response to thoughts, beliefs and feelings which have a direct impact on cell functions. Stress and negative emotions will suppress our immune system and can lead to heart diseases, chronic pain, cancer, and other illnesses. On the other hand, positive optimistic thoughts, pictures and sounds empower your immune system and enable your body to heal itself.

You can wallow in negative imagery, or you can enjoy a weekly or even daily refreshing holiday through beautiful artwork, the choice is yours.

Sources:
http://www.cellularwisdom.com/body-mind-heal...
http://www.chopra.com/articles/2010/04/17/se...
http://www.worldwidehealth.com/health-articl...
www.healthyoption.page.tl

About the author

Angelika (Angie) Stehle is a Natural Health author, a Naturopathic Researcher and Practitioner, and a happy cancer survivor, as well as an artist. See also www.naturmedi.de and www.healthyoption.page.TL as well as www.beautifulart.page.TL Her e-book called My Research and her 12-steps Longevity Programme that she uses to treat cancer and other serious diseases can be found on www.healthyoption.page.TL in the Natural Health section.