By Tia Richardson

 Have you ever noticed when you’re out in nature, or having gone for a run, or connected meaningfully with friends – you feel more rejuvenated, more alive? It’s hard to define or even get to at times, especially when we’re feeling threatened or isolated, but when we feel moved, we all know that feeling – of caring, of compassion, of belonging.

The more we’re in touch with what we feel and sense the better we can promote our individual and collective health and well-being. We all deserve to live in a happy, healthy society. Thankfully, our natural senses know what that’s about, if only we tune into them! Despite our struggles, there is a fascinating movement underway bridging arts, public health, and healing that I want to share. Music and the arts help people tune into their natural sensitivities and better relate to themselves and others.

Recently I went to an arts and medicine conference in New York (Manhattan) where artists, administrators, health professionals and academics talked about the effects of art on well-being. Research showed the positive social effects of participating as part of something bigger than oneself, the need for belonging – and isolation being the number one cause of mental health issues.

Psychologically, health and well-being are about connecting or relating in a healthy way. Art is about relating – to ideas, self, others or something bigger. These ideas promote better self-esteem. They lower suicide, depression, addiction, loneliness, distrust and fear. A lot of mental health issues are connected to our sense of belonging, how we value ourselves and others; which in turn affects our sense of agency (a can-do attitude).

Arts help people by encouraging sharing and conversation with mutual respect. People need to know that they are part of a bigger world. It helps with serving other people, engaging with nature. It builds kindness, trust, respect, community. There were a lot of examples of this in practice at the conference.

One showed community repair (in a museum, people being led in conversation around a difficult issue using a piece of art as a neutral object). Another is something called ‘social prescribing’ prescribing experiences for people they enjoy of their choosing (like going to a park, zoo or museum). There were people there who work as bedside therapeutic arts specialists in hospitals; art therapists, musicians, or even bedside poets or storytellers! I even experienced a group sing-along in a room where healthier patients were wheeled into. And, NYC hospitals have the largest program that partners with artists to do community murals in the U.S.

Creative expression, or even just the experience of art or music, is about being in the moment, free to express or appreciate the part of our nature that simply is, without limitation. I think all this is an example of a flip in the Aquarian age.

Here are some more interesting examples I found online ways people are choosing health and well-being. There is a movement where young people are forming clubs letting go of their smartphones in favor of ‘dumb’ phones; using old cameras for photography; returning to board games; crafting and other ‘analog’ activities.

You can find a ‘stick club’ for adults who go into the woods looking for a cool stick they each can share and talk about with each other. Another example highlights the last video rental store in San Francisco, where people are flocking because they like the ‘feel’ of the physical media in their hands.

In the book ‘What it takes to Heal’ author and somatics practitioner Prentis Hemphill talks about the body as an important part of healing, getting us back in touch with our own nature. We are part-animal, part sentient being, part Thinker, creative beings. We make choices.

If you’re reading this thinking – feelings are weird, they can’t be trusted; they lead us down the wrong path – you’re not alone, a lot of people can relate. Some of it’s true based on experience. As a very passionate person and artist myself I know what it’s like to get caught up in them; but what I want to talk about here goes beyond getting into our feelings too much so they overwhelm us; to getting back in touch with our basic nature, that first instrument of feeling – that being our nervous system.

Our nervous system channels electrical impulses or energy. Everything is energy – our thoughts, our mind, even our bodies and everything that physically exists. (I highly recommend watching the series called The Electric Bridge on YouTube done by Monadic Media). We are beginning to understand in our science today that humans are electrical-based organisms, not a carbon-based as previously thought. Our whole universe is electrical in nature.

When you pick up a pencil or paintbrush or garden tool or piece of equipment to make something – do you ever notice what feelings comes through you as you go with intent to create? Next time, see if you can feel any sensation moving through your body, like a surge – or maybe a sense of dread if you don’t want to fix that broken stool!

We move energy when we create, because our thoughts and intentions have energy behind them. The Ageless Wisdom tells us when we connect to our soul, it inhabits our nervous system, and we can connect to it through our heart. Our soul is a higher grade of electrical energy. Imagine that moving through you! Whether you want to create something, or just feel pure joy of living, that is the part of you that is alive and well, just waiting for you to give it a chance to express itself.

So, the next time you’re out in nature or with a bunch of people, imagine thin threads of light extending out from your nervous system into the environment, connecting to the plants, trees and nature around you, and to others. And when you do, notice what you feel!

Resources: Monadic Media, The Electric Bridge: https://www.youtube.com/ playlist?list=PLLLLrOpI2lE2byk9D7_laW6xyGgonUbZ4

Yale: Justice Collaboratory, The Notebook: https://www.justicehappenshere. yale.edu/the-notebook

Prentis Hemphill, ‘What it Takes to Heal’ (book available); YouTube interview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M3SXdXyC3AM