Clear Your Mind And Calm Anxiety With This Artistic Alternative To Meditation

It’s normal to have a hard time meditating in this ever-engaging world.

We don’t need research to know that the demands on our attention are greater now than ever before, and that our capacity to remain attentive to a single phenomenon for longer than say, eight seconds, is dwindling.

Quests for increased focus, concentration, and productivity often point to a similar destination: a steadfast recommendation to meditate. But for the person who tries and loathes it, can’t sit long enough, already has a practice, or intends to meditate and can’t quite get there, how is attention cultivated?

Kimi Mongello, illustrator, musician, and teaching artist at Usdan Summer Camp for the Arts, is one such example. She left a desk job in tech and design to pursue art as a vocation, making mixed media two-dimensional art, playing music, and teaching kids. Upon reflecting on whether the sacrifice of being an artist ultimately increases her feeling of well-being, she said, "I didn't realize the amount of stress I was used to being under because I was in a routine. And I was a creative! Leaving my job turned my health around in the most basic of ways. Waking up, walking outside, and not staring at a computer for eight-plus hours a day made me feel so healthy."

Jennifer Waverek, owner of BKLYN Clay, a ceramics studio in Brooklyn, shares that a renewed interest in ceramics over the last four years could be due in part to the well-being benefits of working with clay. "The physical act of wedging, throwing, and hand-building helps absorb and release emotional energy. Working with clay, whether hand-building or throwing on the wheel, seems to offer a grounding and recalibrating experience for many people," she said.

This trend started in large part because of prolific social media sharing. There’s a fine line between accessing Instagram and other social media platforms as inspiration to make art, as it can quickly become a siphon to our attention resources. Or so it seems.

"You cannot blame the current state of affairs on social media because there's a lot of positivity coming from it," said Mongello. "We get down on ourselves a lot for the screen use, but it helps people get out of the structure that they are forced into. It gives you the opportunity to see things that you never would otherwise."

She’s right: As it turns out, introducing novelty to a practice is one of the keys to accessing flow state. The truth is that it’s our relationship to social media and our devices—not just the devices themselves—that are to blame for impaired attention. Overuse and constant engagement with a device speaks to our own boundary issues and inability to be quiet, alone, and content, for instance.

Social media also breaks down barriers, connecting like-minded souls and creating community. "I know for me social media has been an amazing tool for my own self-expression. I am not a particularly confident person, neither do I have a network before social media whom I could channel my own art to, said Alexandria Coe, a young artist who has used Instagram as a tool to share her work with the world. "Social media opened up an audience and community that I would not have known otherwise."

It’s true, artistry is an Instagram trend, but it’s how we build upon it that matters. Using social media as a way to connect with others is smart, especially if those connections are intentional and lead to real, tangible, positive differences in the lives of those connecting.

For Cohen, Instagram is an integral part of her artist community because it’s the glue that binds them. She changes the location of figure drawing often and uses Instagram to share drawings from the previous meet as well as the location of the next one. Her website is intentionally minimal, a smart strategy that directs people to the in-person event.

Like any consistent practice, another reason art is being considered a wellness practice is because it leads to clarity of ideas and brings you closer to yourself. When life is fast and reactive, it’s therapeutic to work at your own pace, work with your hands, get in touch with yourself, and connect to others.

"An artistic practice really connects you to the patterns within your own emotional cycles and offers a way to express that healthily," said Coe. "It offers a way to let ‘stuff' out, both consciously and unconsciously. My own practice also aids another level of my own identity, which feels very authentic, in an increasingly inauthentic culture."

Plus, it can give us a sense of accomplishment and renewed confidence. "It only takes a few words of encouragement and one finished project as proof that [the kids I teach] could do it. It's a combo of making something that's theirs, and then seeing a finished product of something that was an exploration," said Mongello.