Creative Wellness Education

When deciding what to include on this site, I knew that in addition to discussing nature's role in wellness, I also wanted to discuss various ways being creative can have a positive impact on one's health as well. I have a background in psychology and health education and have learned various stress reduction techniques throughout my lifetime. I learned such techniques not only professionally but for personal reasons also to help cope with chronic illnesses. Although there are tons of natural stress reduction techniques that our great - I can think of many from deep breathing, meditation and yoga to listening to soothing music and nature walking, to name a few -  this section will specifically focus on creative, artistic ways to reduce stress.

Don't worry, you don't have to be an artist to use creative methods to reduce stress. The goal isn't to paint a masterpiece, but to let yourself go and be as creative as possible. Techniques like adult coloring and gel printing, which I will discuss further soon, can be as simple or as complex as you like. I believe that one way being creative can help in reducing stress is that one focuses intently on the task at hand and when so focused, it is usually too difficult to think about other more pressing, negative and nagging thoughts.

So why not try investing some time in finding out what kind of creative activity helps you reduce your stress? No harm in that! Remember, though not every kind of creative endeavor will be effective for everyone. If you find you're beating yourself up because you aren't able to color in the lines as well as you would like or your final products aren't to your liking, then move on to something else. Not everyone finds coloring or crafting relaxing, for sure. But if you don't give these things a try, you'll never know. You may even find out that you enjoy several things you never knew existed and your first creative endeavor snowballs into much more, like it did for me.

I started coloring various things years ago during the adult coloring book phase. I realized soon that I particularly liked using gel pens and inks to color and create mandala designs. From there, my creative juices kept flowing and I soon went onto making abstract art with gel plates that I still use in paper-crafting and decorating glass gems and gift bags. Only a little over a year later and I now have a full-blown hobby of creating stamped and die-cut designs to make beautiful cards and gifts that I sell at craft fairs. And soon I'll be teaching a class in and adult education community school on the creative process using mixed media techniques.

If anyone told me all that would end up happening and I'd be writing on this website about it right now when I bought my first adult coloring book, I wouldn't have believed them. I would have said what the heck are you talking about and what the heck do you mean by the term Creative Wellness Education?

Read onto the next sections and learn some fun creative techniques that might just end up becoming your next new hobby! And improve your health along the way!