artspace: intuitive painting studio

06/11/2023

The baby grew fast 😍

01/14/2020

https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2020/01/11/795010044/feeling-artsy-heres-how-making-art-helps-your-brain

Making art is fun. But there's a lot more to it. It might serve an evolutionary purpose — and emerging research shows that it can help us process difficult emotions and tap into joy.

03/30/2016

Live, Dance, Paint, Breathe!

By: Martha Medeiros.

03/22/2016

“I based this picture off my lifestyle," said Akilah Johnson, the first 'Doodle 4 Google' winner ever from Washington, D.C.

03/09/2016

http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2016/03/07/using-the-arts-to-promote-healthy-aging/?smid=fb-share&_r=0

Music, dance, poetry, painting and other arts are pumping new life into old

03/04/2016

Express Your Brain
Doodling
Once thought to be a waste of time—and an indication that you weren’t paying attention—doodling has gained new respect in recent years. There is now some evidence that people who doodle consolidate ideas and remember more. Here are some ideas to get started with doodling:

Do you have negative associations with doodling, or have you felt guilty for doodling? Get a different perspective by watching expert Sunni Brown’s 6-minute TED talk titled “Doodlers, Unite!” (For a more in-depth discussion, check out her book, The Doodle Revolution.)

The Science of Doodling
Many studies show that trying to do two things at once decreases performance. But doodling may be different. For instance, in one 2009 study, people were asked to listen to a long phone message that mentioned the names of numerous people and places. The people who doodled during the message were able to remember 29% more detail than those who didn’t1.

1Andrade J. What does doodling do? Appl. Cognit. Psychol. 2010. 24:100-106.

03/03/2016

Process, or Intuitive Painting, teaches moment by moment awareness in addition to the creative journey and exploration, .... this study is supportive of the healing properties in Mindfulness practice.....New Understanding of HOW mindfulness improves our health
Feb 7, 20161,425 views39 Likes10 CommentsShare on LinkedInShare on FacebookShare on Twitter
Richard Davidson, a leader of research on the neuroscience of well-being and specifically how meditation can physically change the brain says that the data demonstrates that:

bi-directional brain body highways are clear
A newly published study in Biological Psychiatry explains in part HOW these changes occur - and that the changes are based in reduced inflammation. Chronic inflammation is connected to a host of issues – depression, Alzheimer’s disease, cancer, and obesity, just to name a few.

We think that these brain changes provide a neurobiological marker for improved executive control and stress resilience, such that mindfulness meditation training improves your brain's ability to help you manage stress, and these changes improve a broad range of stress-related health outcomes, such as your inflammatory health
The participants who completed the mindfulness meditation program also had reduced interleukin-6 levels, a biomarker of systemic inflammation. This is consistent with previous research in the field of epigenetics which has demonstrated that mindfulness training has the power to influence gene expression and increase the length of telomeres (telomerase activity is thought to be linked to psychological stress and physical health)

The brain scans showed that mindfulness meditation training increased the functional connectivity of the participants' resting default mode network in areas important to attention and executive control, namely the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex.
We already know that practicing mindfulness increases the areas of our brain that are associated with empathy and compassion and decrease the areas of our brain associated with stress. We know that certain types of meditation improve heat rate variability - a primary health marker. We know that people who are not distracted when they are performing a task are happier.

There is ever increasing evidence that this life skill has transformational potential for our well-being and really the question is not whether we will embrace this in all parts of our lives but when .... and how.

02/29/2016

Hmmmm......sounds good to me!

another reason to DANCE.....

02/24/2016

The struggle is real.

02/03/2016

01/06/2016

Gratitude....

01/03/2016