Creativity Improves Health As You Age

Wonder if your body and your spirits will hold up as you're aging? New research shows that expressing yourself through the arts can improve your physical and mental health in your older years.

That's not totally surprising, of course. Anyone who participates in dance and theater activities or who is creative with their hands or their pen knows how good the arts are for the spirits. But good for the immune system? Good for reducing falls, medications, and even doctor visits? These are some of the study results that surprised even researcher Gene Cohen, MD, PhD, of George Washington University. Cohen, author of The Creative Age: Awakening Human Potential in the Second Half of Life told a conference of the Minnesota Creative Arts and Aging Network in March that participation in the arts has "powerful, positive effects in the areas of health promotion and disease prevention." It "reduces the risk factors for health decline."

Are you expressing yourself creatively? If not, consider giving your health and your spirits a boost through taking part in the visual or performing arts.

You may think, "But I'm not an artist" or "I'm not a dancer." But neither were the 150 people in Cohen's study when they started out (and their average age was 80!). The same is true of many of the people who attend arts-based programs I lead. Yet, they come to savor the creative spark they find inside themselves, regardless of age or past skills.

Every Friday morning, women ranging in age from early forties to mid-seventies gather in a large, carpeted room to let their bodies dance in "Free Motion." With minimal guidance, the women explore their innermost longings, playfulness, and creative energy through spontaneous body movements. Even their stretching warm-ups become a dance. Besides feeling free and creative, the women increase their flexibility and balance, lessening their risk of falling and giving them greater ease in performing daily activities.

Although any woman can swirl freely to music on music in her own living room, something magical and mystical happens when women come together to share in communal movement. As I write in Body Odyssey: Lessons from the Bones and Belly, "We bend, leap, and roll among each other, becoming, as one member put it, 'bodies cooperating.' The choreography is collaborative. Each of us creates forms from our internal impetus--the brushing, intertwining, and cradling of each other's heads, arms and hands, torsos, legs and feet. We can spend anywhere from a few minutes to an hour playing with a hundred ways of letting our hands be in conversation or folding ourselves over and around each other with childlike ease. We lose ourselves in getting to know the beauty and touch of our bodies in motion."

Dancing in this meditative, unhindered way is "replenishing and rejuvenating," as one woman recently described it. Another woman exclaimed after her first visit, "I feel like I finally got permission!"

Lola Wheeler, age 92, had a similar response when participating in a writing course I teach, in which body awareness activities and personal writing are combined. Learning to listen to the body becomes a source of freedom, and according to Wheeler, "When I'm writing, my pain goes away."

In the class, called Writing Your Own Permission Slip, participants get involved in dramatic play, acting out their wildest dreams and physically exploring their most heroic qualities. Wheeler's creative writing in the class culminated in these comments: "Because I came from a history of abuse, I always looked at myself as a survivor. After the class, instead of looking at myself as a survivor, I think of my self as a hero. It has really made a big self-concept change for me. I have lived with the identity I was given, and I couldn't seem to let it go because I was afraid then I would be nothing. But being a hero has a definiteness -- a self to give myself instead of a nothing. A hero has real strength to help people. Now I feel the stuff I have to offer is coming out." She summed up her experience in a haiku: "I am a hero/ replaces dull surviving/ fear has left my door."

If you're concerned about staying healthy and vibrant as the years go by, consider getting involved in the arts. Like Wheeler, you'll find it "replaces dull surviving." And it may even allow you to throw away your pills.