The Healthy Palette

By Deirdre Shevlin BellIn

In 1888, painter Vincent Van Gogh, in a manic rage, tried to attack his friend with a razor blade. Later in the day, he severed a piece of his own ear. That landed him in a hospital, and then a mental institution. Shortly after his release, Van Gogh shot himself dead. Although the last two years of his life were nothing if not troubled, during that period he produced some of his most brilliant artwork.
Van Gogh represents the quintessential mad genius. Since pen first touched paper and brush canvas, people have associated his type of tragic figure with creativity. Even Aristotle weighed in, saying, “Those who become eminent in philosophy, politics, poetry, and the arts have all tendencies towards melancholia.” Recently, however, the notion of creativity’s effects on health has changed.
Once seen strictly as deleterious to health—or at least a sign of unhealthy tendencies, particularly in the psychological realm—creative pursuits now appear to be beneficial to mind, body, and psyche. New research suggests creativity can improve memory by strengthening brain cell connections, boost morale and coping skills by changing the way we respond to problems, and even bolster immunity by increasing the body’s levels of natural killer cells and T lymphocytes. And for those with special needs, creative outlets can be particularly helpful. Caretakers and therapists now use art activities to encourage the development of children with disabilities, to heal those with eating disorders, and to give a voice to older folks. As research in the field continues, the definitions of creativity and its many potential uses in healthcare expand almost endlessly.

Kids get creative
Because children tend naturally toward uninhibited, creative expression, artistic therapies can help them work through problems when more traditional therapies fail. Janet Tubbs, author of Creative Therapy for Children With Autism, ADHD, and Asperger’s: Using Artistic Creativity to Reach, Teach, and Touch Our Children (Square One Publishers, 2007) has used creativity to help children reach their full potential for more than 20 years. It didn’t take her long to see how music, art, and puppetry could help children with developmental disorders, too. That led her to develop a program for bringing creativity into the lives of children with autism, attention-deficit–hyperactivity disorder, and Asperger’s Syndrome.
These disorders—and many others—affect children physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually, according to Tubbs, and art can help them integrate all those aspects of their being. “There really is nothing that brings all of them together more rapidly or effectively than the creative arts,” she says.
By combining simple games recast with a focus on building social skills—for instance, a game of pick-up sticks in which she encourages team-building by giving the child the power to choose who goes first and praising him when he acts selflessly—with creative expression through drawing, painting, or sculpting, Tubbs has seen remarkable shifts in her clients. Within weeks, she says, the children experience physical improvements in refined fine and gross motor skills, increased coordination, and decreased tactile defensiveness. In addition, the activities help develop cognitive and social skills. “Memory improves. They’re able to articulate their needs, have an increased attention span, and stay on task much longer,” she says. “Emotionally, self-esteem improves from knowing they can participate in artist activity.”

It has worked for Lucas Andersson, a 9-year-old boy with Asperger’s who has been meeting with Janet for about a year at his Loveland, Ohio, home. “Since we started working with Janet, he expresses himself better because he’s been able to express himself through different creative therapies,” says Lucas’ mother, Tamara. “He’s just a happier child.”
But the transition has taken time. When Tubbs first started visiting, Lucas wouldn’t even look at her. He had recently been diagnosed with Asperger’s and had trouble interacting at school and at home. In the classroom, teachers brushed off his eccentricities as bad behavior; at home, he fought with his younger sister constantly. His parents and teachers were at a loss for how to deal with him. “Traditional therapies don’t work with nontraditional children,” says Tubbs. Creative expression through drawing, painting, and puppetry, on the other hand, taps into the child’s inner world by allowing the child to express his or her unique perspective, by celebrating problem solving and curiosity, and by encouraging working with others.
Tubbs began her efforts with Lucas by building trust. She would meet him where he was by playing games with him. Whether Lucas knew it or not, the time spent playing was part of the lesson. “Games were tools for the real lessons,” Tubbs says. “All the games taught a lesson, such as patience, good sportsmanship, or honesty.”

After the games, Tubbs would bring out creative tools like paint, clay, or pastels and encourage Lucas to express himself through art. “The real creativity and the real improvements came because we talked continually while we were doing these things,” recalls Tubbs. “We had some interesting conversations, but they were learning experiences too. If there was a behavior problem I’d say, ‘I notice you’re approaching it this way. What if you approached it this way, instead?’”
When Lucas first started doing creative play with Janet, his inner world started to pour out. Initially, it wasn’t very pretty. Lucas was angry and had a hard time connecting with others. According to his mother, his drawings used a lot of black and always portrayed violence. But since working with Tubbs to build confidence and develop positive communication skills, his drawings have become much happier. “They were definitely a direct reflection of how he was feeling about his life and himself,” says Tamara. “Now he’s drawing things like bugs. There are still some creatures, but they look like they’re having more fun rather than warring each other. You see more of his sense of humor coming out instead of all the anger.”
According to Tubbs, this results from art’s ability to touch us on a spiritual level. “I really think these children are tapping into their souls, their spiritual nature,” she says. “They begin to appreciate a sunset; they begin to see the changing colors.”

Moving through eating disorders
Jill Tarpey danced all her life, but until she went professional at the age of 18 she didn’t have a body image issue. Over the course of two years of constant scrutiny and a never-ending quest for physical perfection, Tarpey developed an eating disorder so severe that it landed her in the hospital. “I cut out dance completely because I thought it would be unhealthy,” says the now 23-year-old. “But it didn’t help my recovery. I wasn’t moving my body or being creative, and I got really depressed.” That depression resulted in a relapse, and after another year of suffering with her eating disorder, she decided to enter a residential treatment facility.
At the Renfew Center of Florida, in Coconut Creek, Tarpey met Susan Kleinman, MA, ADTR, NCC, who has been a dance-movement therapist for more than 30 years. “I didn’t know what dance therapy was and didn’t want to consider it until I went to a session with Susan,” Tarpey recalls. “She explained that dance and movement were my emotions, a place where I could expel my emotions. I hadn’t thought about movement and dance being that in such a long time.”
Kleinman runs group and private sessions with patients at Renfrew, all with the purpose of encouraging creative movement as a form of expression. “People with eating disorders tend to detach from their bodies,” Kleinman says. “They tend to move through life without connecting with their feelings.”
By observing patients’ movement patterns, Kleinman can tell a lot about how they process their emotions. “All the eating disorders have behavior patterns that go along with them. I identify through movement what those behaviors are and the emotional issues. I’m able to understand how they’re repeating patterns and trying to deal with issues without addressing them.”

For instance, according to Kleinman, people with eating disorders often move rigidly and stay within a small space. “If they have a tendency to restrict food, they might also have behavioral patterns of restricting feelings, thoughts, the space they take up in world, their voice,” she says. Using dance, Kleinman helps people with eating disorders experience feelings, reconnect to their bodies, and use movement to begin to express themselves.
For Tarpey, Kleinman’s sessions offered an opportunity to develop a new and rich relationship with dance and with her body. “It was extremely liberating to learn that movement was emotion; movement didn’t have to be necessarily what the eye saw, but what the heart felt,” Tarpey says. That’s a far cry from the instruction she learned as a ballet dancer. “Not only is the movement rigid and precise, the body has to be too,” she remembers. “I got a lot of comments and suggestions [about my body] from my teachers—even just saying I could finish out the line in my legs if I could lose weight<>. It didn’t matter if you were the best in your class. There was always something to improve on, and I didn’t feel like I’d ever be what they wanted me to be.”
At first, Tarpey was very hesitant in her movements, but as she became more confident—through free dancing, followed by discussions about how it made her feel—she began to move more creatively. “As I allowed myself to become more confident in my body, I became more creative and learned to let my inhibitions go. There was no judgment of what I was doing, which was very liberating because everything had always been so black and white.”
The transition in movements reflects a transition in feelings. “Some people are very wooden in their movements, so when I see them moving in larger movements in their torso, I know that it’s helping them express themselves,” she says. “People are often able to cry and show feeling, which until then had been deadened by their disorder.”

Tarpey began to feel how this freedom of movement would affect her life outside the studio, too. “I learned I could make choices not only in my movement, but in any part of my life,” she says. “It reminded me that my life didn’t have to be any cookie-cutter way; it could be however I wanted it to be.”
Two years after leaving Renfrew, Tarpey again has a healthy relationship with her body and with dance. She still feels insecure around other ballet dancers, she says, but she has embraced the freeing movements of jazz, modern dance, and neuromuscular integrative action (NIA). She now teaches NIA to 8- to 12-year-old girls, where she emphasizes the message of creative movement. “I tell the girls, ‘Make your movement be your own, not like your neighbor.’ Seeing them embrace that has been a huge blessing in my life.”

Keeping stories alive
The last quarter of the 20th century saw a dramatic change in the way society viewed aging. Experts started to look at mental and physical decline, which had, until then, been considered an inevitable part of aging, as modifiable disorders. In addition, researchers started to consider the possibility that older age might be a time of increased potential. This sea change led the national Institute of Mental Health to establish the first aging-focused federal research program in the world. Around the same time, the Institute on Aging appointed its first director, Gene D. Cohen, MD, PhD.

As it turns out, the second half of life is uniquely suited to creativity. According Cohen, now director of the Center on Aging, Health & Humanities at George Washington University, each of the developmental stages of older age creates a new “inner climate” during which self-expression and creativity can gain a foothold. For instance, Cohen calls the period beginning in one’s 50s and lasting through the 70s the “summing up” phase. “There’s a tremendous desire to tell your story and give back,” he notes. “You see a surge in genealogy and memoirs during this period.” In fact, research has shown that people are more in touch with their own psychology in older age than at any other point in their lives, and that gives people the desire and ability to tap into creative expression.
On the other hand, this newfound psychological awareness, when combined with the isolation and lack of meaningful activity that can accompany aging, often lead to depression—the No. 1 mental illness among the elderly, according to Susan Perlstein, executive director of the National Center for Creative Aging in Brooklyn, New York. That’s why her center focuses on the best ways to integrate creativity into the lives of older adults. “We’re looking at how we can develop our strengths until the day we die,” she says. “Those strengths are the stories we have to tell; they’re who we are. When you’re connected to your creativity, to what you wish to express, you’re alive and vital. When you lose that connection you become depressed and isolate yourself.”
One of the programs funded by the National Center for Creative Aging, Pearls of Wisdom, seeks to connect elders with their communities through storytelling. It’s a win-win situation: Older adults stay healthy by staying creative and keeping their stories alive, and communities are enriched by living history.
Juliette D. Holmes, of Cambria Heights, New York, has been a “Pearl” for several years. Sharing her stories with audiences in her community and elsewhere in the country about growing up a black girl in segregated Savannah, Georgia, in the mid-20th century allows her to stay engaged in her community and in her own life. “It has opened up another creative side in me,” she says. “It has put voice and beauty into my life. Sometimes you don’t really see what you have contributed or what you have lived until you write it and tell it.

According to Cohen, who is currently wrapping up the first national long-term study on the effects of arts-based programs on aging, science backs up some of the benefits people like Holmes reap from storytelling. He describes four mechanisms that join together to make creativity a healthy endeavor in later life. First, the self-direction and independence involved in creating art offers a person a sense of control that leads to feelings of empowerment and improved health outcomes. That sense of control leads to the second outcome, the influence of the mind on the body—the positive feelings produced by being in control signal the body to increase production of immune system cells. Also, creative activities often offer an outlet for social engagement, the third factor Cohen identifies, which has a positive influence on general health and reduces mortality. The final mechanism, brain plasticity, refers to the brain’s ability to adapt and maintain vitality. Creative thought challenges the brain, allowing it to form new synapses, or contact points between cells, thereby increasing communication among brain cells.

Additionally, many of the Pearls of Wisdom members are in the summing-up phase of their lives, making storytelling a tremendously satisfying activity. “It’s in part a developmental phenomenon,” says Cohen. “There’s a wonderful sense of synchrony with where you are developmentally.”
Holmes doesn’t focus on all that while she tells her story, though. She does it because of the purpose it gives her life. She recalls a piece of advice she once heard: Don’t die with your song still in you. “I’m not letting my song die,” she says. “I am singing my song through words and through stories.”

Creating the future
Researchers like Cohen find a lot of promise in the therapeutic uses of art. “One of the reasons we chose art is it’s replicable in any community in the country,” Cohen says. As an integral part of us, we’re naturally driven to create it. “Art is in the soul of the species; it goes back to cave people,” says Cohen. “It’s not just an activity that is good for you, but one that you want to stay with.”

As research continues into the field of creativity and health, one thing seems clear: Finding outlets for creative expression can improve your well-being. Whether that’s through writing, dancing, or even creating new board games (that’s Cohen’s activity of choice), as long as you’re using your imagination and expressing yourself, you can’t go wrong.Contributing Editor Deirdre Shevlin Bell works creativity into her life by writing, knitting, and singing off-key.

Create!
We can all benefit from the health effects of creativity, even if we don’t feel very creative. “Creativity is built into the species,” says Gene D. Cohen, MD, PhD, the first director of the Center on Aging. “Sometimes you don’t realize the potential you have in a certain area until you start exploring it and giving yourself a chance.” Don’t wait for that big idea to surface; everyday creativity—what Cohen calls “little C” creativity—can confer just as many health benefits as writing the next great American novel. Plus, as Cohen points out, “sometimes that ‘little C’ takes a leap to ‘big C.’”

1. Write your story. Everyone has a story (or a hundred) to tell. Put pen to paper and start writing about what happened during the day and how you felt about the events. Just let the words flow for now; you can go back and edit later. Self-expression through writing can be cathartic, as it helps you work through emotions, nagging thoughts, and questions about your life, without judgment, explanation, or editorializing.

2. Sing! Yes, it’s another outlet for blocked emotions or mild depression. Forget whether you can carry a tune. Make up a song by putting new lyrics to a tune you love, or start humming, and see what you come up with. Think of this as your own private karaoke moment. Or better yet, get together with friends, and have a jam session—guitars, flutes, kazoos, drums, bells, and voices all welcome!

3. Get cooking. If you rely too much on your tried-and-true recipes, you may be missing out on key nutrients essential to health. Most nutritionists recommend eating a varied diet. To come up with new recipes, start by improvising. Instead of oatmeal for breakfast, try quinoa or amaranth flakes. A recipe calls for pomegranate seeds and you have raspberries? Throw those in instead. Then branch out: Pick up a few ingredients you don’t normally use—maybe kumquats, fresh figs, or goat cheese—and plan a menu highlighting them. Want more challenge? Have someone else pick five ingredients at the store and surprise you. Create a meal around those and invite friends to share the results of your creative expression.

4. Picture yourself. Do you have a dream or life goal? Create a visual representation of your aspirations in the form of a dream board. In the center of a poster board, put a picture of yourself that you enjoy viewing. Then take photos or cut out images from magazines that represent your dreams. Or draw the pictures if you like. They don’t have to be perfect. Go for it, and have fun. As your dreams grow, you can add more images, and see how you evolve.

5. Start moving. Sometimes you just gotta dance. So, close the curtains (if you’re shy), turn on the music, and move your body. Don’t judge or hold back; just do what comes naturally. It may feel awkward at first, but soon enough you’ll find your groove. Need a little more structure? Sign up for a tap class or an adult jazz class. The neuromuscular integrative action (NIA) technique combines martial arts, dance, and yoga for an energizing workout—and you don’t need to be an expert in any of those disciplines to have fun in a NIA class (www.nianow.com).

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