Five steps to well being from an AIM perspective
Connect with people around you - Mindfulness and the welcome all AiM practioners offer, when running their groups and projects, creates the experience of safety that supports people sharing their personal experience. We actively promote that vital sense of belonging that allows us to connect both to our own inner world and the world around us. This welcome, in turn, encourages the willingness to share personal experiences.
Be active - Whilst some activities involve being in the studio, the home of Art is Medicine is nestled within a beautiful, natural setting overlooking the sea where there are many AIM installations to engage with. Being there, makes it easy and safe for people to explore; play games and be physically engaged in their environment. Singing and dancing often spontaneously happens. Years of experience have proved that being in such a beautiful environment lowers stress levels and makes us receptive to health and healing. Switching off sympathetic arousal and inducing the move into the parasympathetic experience, creates the vital receptivity to positive change and our ability to learn.
Take Notice - The essence of Mindfulness is to develop the ability to notice and be curious about what we are experiencing, in the present moment, both internally and externally. Being more aware of the world and what you are feeling, when combined with the encouragement to express that creativity, is what Art is Medicine is all about. Positive change frequently occurs.
Many of the stress management techniques offered focus on encouraging people to 'seek out the beautiful' surrounding them; in themselves and in others as this is proven to raise the brain' s level of seratonin - its 'feel good' hormone.
Keep Learning - Working with glass, precious metals and healing stones means a medium for creativity which has their own nature offering themselves for your creative expression. Light literally illuminates your creativity - everything looks better. The Wow Factor is almost inevitable.
Science is proving currently that activating pineal gland being possible to us all and the creative imagination supports greater awareness. Raising melatonin levels positively affects our ability to adapt and grow.
Give - What Art is Medicine does is reconnect you to the experience of being inspired, both by your own work and that of others.
Consequently, the next step is to want to share ...... what worked so well for you. A community of support emerges.
Effectively, we are back in the loop of 220 million years of Evolution.