Natural Ways to Release Happiness Chemicals

These are some good ways to access the four "happiness" neurochemicals through natural means.  Perhaps you might find them helpful!

Strategies for Stress Management

I came across this chart that has a nice snapshot of ways you can manage stress in different areas of your life.  I hope it is helpful for you, not just with this last year in mind, but for now and the future as well.

Guest Blog: Calming Color Inspiration From Famous Serene Paintings

As some of you may have read before on my blog about color therapy and the psychology of color, I am excited to bring a guest blog post from Hana Rehman at Siege Media who writes about the importance of color in your environment, especially in your home décor.  She pairs them with famous paintings with the calming palettes of color that may help soothe your home.  

Calming Color Inspiration From

Famous Serene Paintings

Since we have all been spending more time at home in the past year, many of us have taken to redecorating our spaces. Interior decorating leaves so much room for creativity and self-expression, and it allows us to curate our homes with artful colors and décor pieces that inspire us. 

It can be difficult to choose the best colors for your furniture, home décor, and accent pieces. However, if you’re interested in calming interior design palettes, you can learn more about some of the most soothing colors below through famous paintings that incorporate them. Then, take a look at the décor ideas paired with each painting to envision how each palette can benefit your environment. 

1. Blue

Blue is thought to be one of the most calming colors. Soft blues evoke feelings of contemplation, depth, and gentleness. They bring to mind both water and sky. Blues make for beautifully serene spaces, and are great options for paint colors and furniture pieces.

Hokusai’s famous woodblock painting The Great Wave off Kanagawa is an example of a painting with a pleasing palette thanks to its interplay of Prussian blue and indigo. It also incorporates a both pale yellow and a soft peach, serving as lovely compliments to the deep blue of the wave. Below you can find color and décor inspiration for incorporating the blues of this painting into your space.

Van Gogh’s The Starry Night is another example of an iconic painting that incorporates blue. Van Gogh’s blue color palette is more lively and cosmic, broken up by specks of white and the bright yellow moon and stars. 

2.  Green

Green is often a calming color that reminds us of the peace found in nature. Imagining lush plants and dense forests can boost your mood and leave you feeling refreshed and relaxed.

Monet painted hundreds of versions of the water lilies in his garden in Giverny, France. Like many of them, this one includes not only the blue of the water, but the deep greens of the vegetation in and around it. The painting’s color palette pairs this forest green with light pinks and purples. If you’d like to incorporate more green into your space, take inspiration from this masterpiece. 

3. Yellow

Yellow is commonly associated with happiness, brightness, and warmth. It can be the perfect color to include if you would like to insert some energy into your space.

Mary Cassatt’s Impressionist painting In the Lodge weaves lovely golden-yellows with other warm-toned pigments, such as red and brown. Depicting a Parisian opera, the painting has an elegant and inviting atmosphere, one which you can capture at home by choosing traditional décor with a similar palette. 

Observing art history’s iconic works can help you learn what kinds of calming color relationships speak to you most and choose which ones will best suit your living space. However, color inspiration is all around us—if you come across any scene that moves you, take note of the colors so you can recreate them at home or in your own works.

Blogger Recounts Mental Health Journey and Creativity

 I was contacted a while back from a blogger to check out her site called "Creating My Odyssey" as she started to rebuild her creativity and talk about her mental health experiences.  She gave me permission to share one of her entries...and perhaps we will see more of her in the future with collaborative blogs!

Dried Up

 

When I was depressed, I didn't want to create art, and I felt really disappointed as an adult when I felt that way. As a moody teen and early twenties at home, my mother would say: 'When you feel like that, you should paint.' I appreciate her sentiment now, but I just didn't want to paint, or do anything artistic. She couldn't possibly understand because she wasn't made that way, and she never would. At least she tried, bless her.

But, as an adult, although, when depressed, I didn't have the inner spark to want to create art. I was happy to write though. That was easy. I had had light hearted anecdotal articles published too. And I could write exactly how I felt, particularly if I felt embarrassed and couldn't verbalise what I was thinking, especially if the thought concerned Husband.

For instance, I felt sad about my hobby, the wild west. What? You may well ask. (See what I mean about embarrassment?) I wanted to be a cowgirl, a rough 'n tough, smokin', cursin', drinkin', sharp shootin' frontierswoman. Not stuck at home, looking after family. And I couldn't indulge that hobby much because I didn't have the energy and also I felt out of it because of anxiety among the more intense living history re-enactors who I was anxious may judge (some did, because I was portraying an unconventional female character).

Husband, insightfully, had said long ago when I began to head into depressions, that he could see my hobby rearing its head and being the subject of my depression. I'd be obsessed with something (I was good at being obsessed with things) and the wild west was it. I was writing my novel (about a cowgirl, naturally...) and that did help, although, of course, I wanted my book to be perfect. So, yes – that was a subject I had to write about to make sense of it.

I had considered art therapy. To paint, draw or collage how I felt. That didn't work either. I didn't want to do any of that. In order to express how I felt, I wrote. If I did do anything artistic, the subject would be anything I would normally do, nothing to do with depression or anxiety. That was what writing did for me.

But I did, so much, want to be artistic. And I wanted to be happy working in my 'creative space' (I was too embarrassed – that word again – to call it an art studio) in our conservatory. But I wasn't, for a long time, happy working there. I'd be okay for a short time, then depression would gradually swallow me up. So I wrote a lot, about lots, and not in my creative space. It wasn't until really recently that I began to feel good about being there and being creative. It's taken this long.

And I'm delving into dark, dusty corners and discovering artwork that I'd done in the dark and distant past and forgotten about. 'Wow! That's good!' I've thought, occasionally. No time for modesty, thank you. Anyway, shoving modesty aside, I'm uploading them onto Facebook and my blog and getting lovely responses to them. I'm also on the verge of recreating and organising my art area. And I'm beginning to get quite excited about it. A plant or flowers here, a water feature there, paints here, pencils there, sketchbooks here, boxed canvases there...

Yay! Artistic me is coming back!

Website Shares Bright Illustrations for Mental Health Awareness and Self-care

There is a website that I recently discovered, Blessing Manifesting.com, out of my home state that I find very helpful as a therapist.  I enjoy using her brightly-colored artistic snapshots for mental health awareness, well-being, and self-care with patients and love that she makes them available to everyone.  I just wanted to share a few of her latest offerings and encourage you to check out her website and FB page.