Regular exercise and a healthy diet are known characteristics of healthy lifestyle, but also having a creative hobby, like painting, keeps your mind engaged and may improve your overall quality of life. Here are six great benefits of painting that may improve your mental and physical health:
1. Promotes Stress Relief
General fatigue and stress often go together. Finding activity that releases negative emotions like painting allows a person to become present and let go of all the problems that contribute to a high stress level.
When people create something beautiful through painting, they stimulate the creative mind while relieving mental strain. A reduce in stress level leads to a happier, healthier lifestyle and helps improve overall mental health.
2. Bolsters Memory
Painting sharpens the mind through conceptual visualization and implementation, plus, boosts memory skills. People using creative outlets such as painting, writing and drawing have less chance of developing memory loss illnesses when they get older.
3. Enhances Motor Skills
Motor skills like handling a paintbrush increases mobility in the hands and fingers. The fine motor skills that a painter develops helps create mental shortcuts that the brain implements in everyday life.
4. Cultivates Mindfulness
Painting is a meditative act – it takes you out of yourself, freeing yourself from your physical limitations. This means you are only focusing on the present and on the artwork in front of you as you paint, freeing your mind from worries and intrusive thoughts.
5. Heals Your Body And Spirit
Art can be a healing act, a balm for the soul and the mind. There’s also cases where art has helped with physical rehabilitation as well. For instance, Renoir and Gauguin are two famous examples of artists, who through painting’s transcendental bliss, were able to move atrophied hands, experiencing a remarkable temporary healing.
6. Increases Self-Esteem
Finishing a painting creates a sense of achievement; this will strengthen painters individuality and self-esteem. This is especially significant for people with codependency, traumatic conditions and elderly people who need activities that can strengthen their autonomy.
