Being creative is the new meditation

We all know by now that meditation is good for you. By meditating regularly you reduce stress, you sleep better, you feel less anxious, you can concentrate better, etc. The benefits are clear, but what if you feel too restless to actually meditate?

I notice that I find it difficult to find the time and peace in my body to meditate. While discussing this with a friend during a coffee date, I realized: when I'm creative, I can also clear my head very well! For me, being creative is 'the new meditation'.

Win win!

While researching scientific evidence for my own experience for this blog entry, I came across several studies confirming this, including a study from Drexel University College of Nursing and Health Professions. This shows that the stress hormone cortisol decreases considerably by painting, drawing or modelling, and the test subjects would feel happier and calmer. You don't even need to have experience with the creative hobby, the test subjects without 'creative fingers' also experienced the positive effects. So it's mainly about being creative and not so much about the result.

The nice thing is that by being creative you not only calm your head, it also works the other way around! So because you have peace of mind, there is also more room for creative solutions. So win-win!

Creative flow

But how come you actually relax by being creative? If you are creative, you can forget everything around you. At that moment your attention is completely on the piece of work you are working on, so that all other thoughts are switched off. You enter a creative flow in which you are completely absorbed in your project. This allows your busy head to completely relax.

💡 Want to know more about flow? Also read: Is flow the secret to happiness?

Now some creative hobbies are more suitable for getting into a creative flow than others. Especially hobbies with repetitive actions are very relaxing, such as knitting, crochet, embroidery, wood burning, gouging stamps and dotting crockery. Precisely because you get into a kind of rhythm with these hobbies, you no longer have to think so hard about the next step in the project.

soothing embroidery

I recently discovered embroidery. I find it very relaxing to do. You're not locked into a chart, because once your design is on the background, all you need to do is 'trace' it with embroidery stitches. Because you don't have to count, like with knitting and crochet, you can really relax. By embroidering I enter a kind of meditative state and before I know it it is unnoticed an hour later!