Managing the Art Room: Art-making as Wellness

Our lives are busy, complicated, and, at times, overwhelming. Often, we find ourselves in moments of heightened stress, anxiety, or frustration. These feelings can be triggered by specific circumstances or events, but they can also be triggered by an accumulation of stressors or poor habits. So, what can we do to manage this?

Mindfulness through Art
Mindfulness practices teach us how to engage in healthy coping strategies that, when done as part of a routine, can help prevent the occurrence of stress and anxiety in “trigger” moments. Breathing, meditation, and yoga are the practices most commonly associated with mindfulness, but theyʼre not the only ways to engage our brain. Art is another way we can train ourselves to react to triggers differently.

Mindfulness is aimed at engaging ourselves in intentional and thoughtful behaviors to disrupt our brain’s fight or flight response to stressors. By consistently participating in mindful exercises, we rewire the way our brain responds, shifting from stress and anxiety to examination, reflection, and thoughtful action. Art-making is a tool that can be used to train our brains to slow down and analyze while also providing a physical outlet for our thoughts and feelings.

Creating Your Own Practice
You don’t need to be a practicing artist or even consider yourself “good at art” to utilize art-making as a wellness tool. The focus in this context is on being present in the moment, experiencing the art media, and using the media to represent thoughts, feelings, and ideas. Keeping a visual journal is a great way to start your art-making as wellness practice. Begin by setting aside twenty minutes a week to create in your visual journal. You can follow journaling prompts, choose a specific art material to experiment with, or just make marks on a page.

Take some time before you start your journaling to notice and take notes on how you feel emotionally, spiritually, and physically. Then choose how you want to engage with your journal that day. After your art-making, take some time to revisit your notes or to reflect on the same feelings. Did they change? Over time, youʼll start to notice that your overall mood and outlook on your day will change—this is your brain being retrained!

Mindful Art-Making in the Curriculum
Art educators can help students build wellness habits, too. Students can experience the benefits of mindful art-making and meet curricular objectives at the same time. But for some students, the pressure of assessment or comparison can override the benefits of getting into the art-making flow. Therefore, it is important for art educators to include mindful art-making into their classroom routines. In the same way that educators carve out time in their lives for their own personal art practices, they need to ensure that students have time to engage in mindful art-making.

This could be accomplished by using a visual journal where students choose prompts from a list, participating in dedicated mindful art-making activities, or with a choice board of mindful prompts incorporated as early finishing options or as a resource for students in crisis.

Reflection
When introducing a mindful art-making activity, take time to engage students in reflection about their day, how they feel, and what is stressful for them. Introduce the activity, emphasizing process over product.

At the end of their art-making time, lead students through some reflection, again focused on how their body and mind feel after the art-making experience. Point out art as a strategy or tool that can be used when they feel stress and anxiety increase. Regular mindful art-making teaches students to notice their thoughts and feelings and come up with coping strategies when they are experiencing stress and anxiety. Practicing mindfulness can help students prevent and manage moments of crisis.

No matter what kind of art we create, our brains respond to it in a similar way to when we meditate. You may even find that your breathing naturally slows down while youʼre creating. So grab some paper and something to make marks with and start creating!