Tag Archives: Art For Recovery

Is Painting a Form of Meditation?

Is Painting a Form of Meditation?

Painting can be a fantastic way to help yourself develop an inner focus—in fact, people often find they lose track of time because they become completely immersed in the painting process.

Painting as a Form of Meditation

Meditating through art is a real and powerful method of practicing meditation. In fact, meditation through artistic endeavors can come in a variety of forms, and painting is just one of them. Painting in and of itself is a process that slows down the mind and body, helping you transport yourself to a place of peace and stability. It takes your mind away from the anxious, repetitive thoughts that you might have and focuses your energy into something much more calming.

If you’re like many people in recovery, it can feel impossible to turn off your anxious and repetitive thoughts. While painting, many people find that the mind slowly quiets as they lose themselves in the calming process. This inspires a state of relaxation and meditation, often without the painter realizing what’s occurring.

How Do You Meditate While Painting?

Meditative painting can be achieved.

To get started:

Focus Your Energy

One of the most important aspects of meditation involves focusing your energy into one area, so that you can then release it and achieve a clear mind. Consider how stressful life can be on a daily basis. It can be all too easy to let your mind run wild with anxious thoughts without becoming aware of how stressed you truly are.

With painting, you can focus your energy and anxious thoughts on the piece in front of you and use it as an outlet for those feelings. This helps to keep away stray intrusive thoughts and allows you to take a moment to calm down and be at peace with yourself. By focusing your energy into one place and working through obstacles through painting, you are meditating.

Slow Down and Find Peace

Slowing down can be difficult for anyone in our busy society. Whether it’s your busy schedule or the pressure that feeling unproductive can put on you, it can be hard to take time to relax. Painting can not only help you take some much-needed time for yourself, but it is an affordable, easy, and fun hobby.

It’s also a practice that helps people with restless minds finally find some peace and slow down enough to reach a meditative state. This ability to slow down and stop overthinking during meditation is a crucial tool to have while you recover. It’s one of many mindfulness techniques.

Clear Your Mind

Painting allows people to clear their minds, many times without even realizing it. This occurs because people often get into what is known as a “flow.” “Flowing” is a term used to describe becoming fully immersed in an activity, to the point where you feel almost mesmerized. This flow is what helps make painting a form of meditation, as some people really struggle to fully immerse themselves and clear their minds from their current thoughts. Actively clearing your mind before beginning can help ensure you find your flow.

The Benefits of Meditation During Recovery

Meditation is a frequently cited recovery tool for a reason—it can not only help you work your way through SUD treatment, but it can also help reduce your risk of relapse. In fact, meditation has many benefits for those in recovery.

Painting Provides a Healthy Coping Mechanism

Building healthy coping mechanisms is an essential aspect of recovery. When you get overwhelmed, it can seem far too easy to resort back to old methods that may have led to your substance use in the first place. Developing healthy coping mechanisms instead, including meditation through painting, can help you fight urges to relapse as well as help you calm down during anxious times.

Painting is Both a Hobby and a Form of Self Care

Painting for Self Care

Self-care is another vital part of your journey to recovery. Simple things like eating healthy, getting enough sleep, and investing time in activities that make you happy are all forms of self-care that can help you heal. Painting is something anyone can do, which is why it makes such a great form of self-care for anyone who needs to spend more time on themselves, including those in recovery.

Hobbies are important too, not only because they are a form of self-care, but because they can take your focus away from stressors and put it into something you care about. Painting and meditating are just a few of the ways you can take care of yourself during recovery.

Painting Can Help Increase Self-Awareness

Building self-awareness can be a difficult skill to master. This is because it involves recognizing various aspects of your thoughts, feelings, behaviors, and other features of the self. Self-awareness is important during recovery because it helps you to evaluate how you’re feeling and why you’re feeling that way. By being self-aware, you take the time to process your feelings and thoughts instead of acting on them immediately. Painting can help you meditate and spend time with yourself, and as a result, you can strengthen your self-awareness skills.

Painting Is a Stress and Anxiety Reliever

Painting is also an amazing stress and anxiety reliever. It’s a hobby that requires no skill and allows you to build a flow with the paint and the canvas or paper. As mentioned, flowing is what makes painting such a great stress and anxiety reliever—this feeling of being in flow with your work can help take you away from even the most stressful of thoughts. Painting is also an activity that doesn’t require a great deal of physical or mental work unless you really want it to, so you can easily paint at times when you’re feeling stressed or anxious.

Painting Reduces Burnout

Burnout is the result of feeling overwhelmed, overworked, and stressed. Burnout can happen both before and during recovery, which is why it’s so important to practice self-care. Whether you’re overwhelmed from work, recovery, or life in general, having an outlet to relieve your stress, utilize a healthy coping strategy, and deal with your feelings can help you immensely.

This is why so many people are turning to painting. Sometimes, to prevent burnout, all you need is some time to let your mind become free. Painting helps you focus your energy and calm you down without tiring you out or making you feel worse.

Embrace Art as a Form of Meditation in Recovery

Art and Meditation in Recovery

Recovery can be difficult to say the least, and finding healthy coping mechanisms, activities, and stress-relievers is essential throughout the process. Art is an incredible tool that can help you in many ways. Whether you just began your journey to recovery or you have been in recovery for years, painting can serve as a form of self-care and an outlet for meditation. Show your support of the arts and recovery by reading our Art in Recovery series.


Sources:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6247953/

Discover How Performing Arts Helps With Mental Health

Discover How Performing Arts Helps With Mental Health: An Interview With Dr. Bob

Meet Robert “Bob” Willenbrink, Ph.D. We met Bob online through our connections in the local arts. Bob is the Executive Director for The Maryland Center for the Arts and first contacted us when he learned about our Art Corner and plans for future Art Events in the Baltimore, Maryland area.

His friends call him Dr. Bob and, since we’re all friends, we invite you to call him Dr. Bob too!

Dr. Bob is a storyteller. He loves telling stories because they allow you to share your thoughts and your feelings and they bring you joy! And, he thinks one of the best ways to bring joy to stories is to add music to them. So, he wrote a song to share his own story with you.

You might not know him yet, but after the song we think you’ll know him a little better.

Listen to Dr. Bob joyfully share his story with you through music in his video:

More About Dr. Bob and Performing Arts

As you can see (hear!), Dr. Bob has been on quite the journey! He holds his Ph.D. from Bowling Green (Ohio) State University.

He was the Founding Dean of the School of Fine Arts at Missouri Western State University. Most recently he was the Department Head and Producer/Director for Missouri State’s Equity Tent Theatre, before moving to Maryland and joining The Maryland Center for the Arts.

Dr. Bob began his career in the arts back at Hazard (Kentucky) Community where he founded the Hazard Summer Playhouse and served for many years as Chair and Director of Theatre at the University of Central Arkansas. During his time there he also created the Youth Theatre of Central Arkansas, was the national director of the ARC Performing Arts Institute for disabled artists, and founded ACTS, a theatre performance troupe for disabled performers.

Additionally, he served as chair of Kennedy Center American College Theatre Festival Region VI, the Kentucky Humanities Council board, a director and first vice-president of the Jenny Wiley Theatre, and as the artistic director for the Kincaid Regional Theatre.

He has directed over 85 different live productions of various styles at a number of venues in the United States.

He received the Kennedy Center Bronze Medallion for Service and the Distinguished Creative Production Award at Morehead State University.

He’s had a pretty amazing career, right?

How the Performing Arts Helps With Mental Health

Dr.BobWe sat with Dr. Bob to learn more about his amazing life and career, hear his thoughts on how performing arts can help with mental health and how we can work together to help more people discover the healing benefits of the arts.

Here is our interview with Dr. Bob.

Enjoy!

ECHO: Thanks for doing this interview with us Dr. Bob!

Dr. Bob: You are more than welcome. I feel like it is a privilege to work with ECHO, a dedicated, caring group and it is an honor to contribute

ECHO: We loved your story. What inspired you to create and share the video?

Dr. Bob: Actually I wrote the first version of the song several years ago. I used to introduce myself to the students in the classes that I taught. Of course it has evolved as I have grown and changed. The tune is similar but the words and thoughts have changed as the audience changed and my life has changed. It remains a great way to tell my story.

ECHO: Can you tell us more about The Maryland Center for the Arts and what you do there?

Dr. Bob: The Maryland center for the Arts is an organization whose  mission is to provide a broad range of creative and collaborative experiences in quality education, presentations, and exhibits in all disciplines of the arts; and to build and operate a visual and performing arts center for the region to have greater access to quality spaces to exhibit, present, and participate in the arts.

ECHO: When you heard about the ECHO Foundation and our mission to help artists in recovery, what made you want to get involved?

Dr. Bob: I have worked with other groups and was co-founder of a group calle ACTS or Acting Creates Therapeutic Success. When I heard about ECHO, their goals and mission seemed similar to ACTS and my vision, so I thought I might be able to contribute in some way.

ECHO: In your experience, how does art help with mental health?

Dr. Bob: Absolutely. The arts are a way to open the mind and the heart. To think, to feel, to express your thoughts and ideas. It opens doors to communication with others. One of my favorite thoughts is that the arts lead us to discovering truths about ourselves.

ECHO: Do you feel performing art is therapeutic?

Dr. Bob: Without a doubt. The arts have the power to transform us. Art enables you to explore yourself and your feelings and understand the world around you. Expressing yourself through performing is a way to forget about your troubles and share with others. It speaks from the heart to the heart and helps us understand what it means to be alive and more importantly what it means to be human.

ECHO: Have you seen a change in our community through art programs?

Dr. Bob: The arts change all communities by engaging the people around us, friends. They educate and inspire all of us. It is a way for diverse communities to be inclusive and celebrate creativity and motivate each other to become better people and stronger communities.

ECHO: What’s coming up next for Maryland Center for the Arts?

Dr. Bob: We are working on several Projects including a Bluegrass Festival, TREES a camp for young people to learn about Trees and flora and turn that knowledge into a performance and art work, the Bayside dance Festival in August and then the Plein Air painting festival in September, the Step out dance party in October, and the Rejoice Choral Festival in December. So, as you can see, we are very busy at the Center.

Here is a link to the Maryland Center for the Arts website where you can view up and coming events: http://www.mdcenterforthearts.org

ECHO: How can the ECHO Foundation partner with Maryland Center for the Arts to bring more events and awareness of the arts to the community?

Dr. Bob: The ECHO Foundation can encourage people to attend events and participate as an audience member. If ECHO wants to form a performing troupe, we should partner and develop a first class experience for performer and audience. I am ready and willing.

ECHO: Is there anything else you want us to know about your story and how the arts have helped you in your own life?

Dr. Bob: I have always been interested in the arts. They are my release when I am stressed, my comfort when I am sad. Most importantly, it helps me celebrate the good things and people in my life. The arts are important to me leading a happy and productive life. They inspire and motivate me every day.

ECHO: Thanks again for sharing your story with us, Dr. Bob. We appreciate you and all you do!

Art Allows Us To Be In The Moment

As Susan Cook, Director of UW-Madison’s Mead Witter School of Music said:

“Engaging with the arts… provides solace, awakens curiosity and allows us to be in the moment with our thoughts and feelings. It reminds us of our essential humanity and so often brings us the kinds of beauty so necessary in times of struggle.”

If you want to share your story with us or get involved in some way, please reach out! We rely on donors, volunteers and community support to keep our cause going. Every little bit helps!