🍄 What Makes Your Heart Leap?

Art every day keeps the doctor away… Jonas Salk knew what neuroscientists claim today: creative health is vital for physical and mental wellness. Ready for your social prescription?

Jan 31, 2025

🍄 AudioDose Alice on Sonic Mushrooms: Listen to Joy
🎧 Alice podcasts
📘 Alice books

Jonas Salk, the founder of the Salk Institute known for his groundbreaking contributions to the development of the polio vaccine, would begin any intervention with a question…

“Dr. Salk was often approached by people who were feeling distressed or lost or that they weren't getting appropriate care. And his first question was always, what makes your heart leap? Then if he was diagnosing something—which he rarely did—but if he was trying to help someone come to a diagnosis, he would say, describe to me a time when you felt most truly engaged in life and most truly yourself. Describe who shared that. Describe what made that experience feel so unique or special. What do you need to do now to return to that feeling. So he always wanted to know how people had felt at a certain time in a given context. He never thought that our physical health was divorced from the context or separated from the environment and all the things that were going on in our lives. So he always wanted to know, when are you most engaged? How did you feel? What else was going on?”—Heather Wood-Ion, cultural anthropologist, Founder and President at The Epidemic of Health, ALICE 2011 interview

Hello, we’re Alice and we are always in a state of wander. Scientific studies stack up to confirm what human beings across cultures and throughout time have long recognized: we are wired for art. Simply viewing art can stimulate areas of the brain in fascinating ways and neurobiologists now show how deep activation of brain systems through arty behavior can reduce stress and create happiness.

The American Congress of Rehabilitation Medicine says making or even just seeing art can impact the brain. Whether it’s part of a creative arts therapy exercise, or something you experience in your everyday life, art can help increase serotonin levels, increase blood flow to the part of the brain associated with pleasure, foster new ways of thinking and imagine a more hopeful future.

Studies have shown that creative exploration can lead to positive emotions like happiness, less stress, and even post-traumatic growth, all of which can help you lead a longer, better life. “Practicing creativity every day in small ways is good for you across the board, especially supporting mental and emotional health,” explains educational psychologist Danah Henriksen, an associate professor at Arizona State University, who wrote Explaining Creativity: The Science of Human Innovation. Henriksen encourages people to think of inventiveness as another tool in their “health toolkit,” just like movement or therapy.

Social prescription

Make a song and a dance out of it. For thousands of years, people have been using arts like singing, painting and dancing for healing purposes, reports the Mayo Clinic. Creative arts therapy is used in treatment for a variety of conditions spanning mental health, cancer, strokes and more. “The idea behind creative arts therapy is that artistic expression can help people to feel better and motivated to recover and address clinical needs such as reducing anxiety and blood pressure.” Increased serotonin levels and an uptick in feelings of hopefulness are just two of the results healthcare workers notice when patients are exposed to art in treatment areas.

“In ancient Greece and Rome, participation in the arts was ‘prescribed’ for people with depression or anxiety,” writes Marc Moss, Professor of Medicine at the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus, in The Conversation. For centuries, tribal communities have used dance, music and art to facilitate physical and mental healing in individuals.

Moss writes alongside Rafaela Mantelli, Researcher of Pulmonary Sciences and Critical Care Medicine at the University of Colorado. They describe how long before the COVID-19 pandemic, research documented “rampant stress” and “burnout” among health care professionals. ‘‘Doctors and nurses seldom learn in school how to tell a family that their loved one is not going to survive. Though the roles of doctors, nurses and other health care professionals are often glorified through terms such as ‘superheroes’ and ‘guardian angels,’ in reality they are human beings who make mistakes and get exhausted too.”

Spin doctors

Rampant claims of “stress” and “burnout” have sparked a new epidemic in global health. In 2022, surgeons raised concerns about the levels of burnout in the health care community during the pandemic and studies show that if current trends continue, the U.S. will see a shortage of 1.1 million registered nurses, 3 million other health care workers and over 140,000 physicians by 2033.

In attempt to fix this, Rafaela Mantelli, Researcher of Pulmonary Sciences and Critical Care Medicine at the University of Colorado, runs the Colorado Resiliency Arts Lab. From 2020 to 2023, they carried out six cohorts of a 12-week clinical trial of creative arts therapy interventions involving health care professionals working at least half-time. Mantelli explains how participants were assigned to one of four creative arts therapy groups: art, music, dance/movement and writing, with 12 weekly sessions lasting 90 minutes each. Her team measured participants’ levels of anxiety, depression, burnout, PTSD and job satisfaction through questionnaires before and after the intervention. There was also a control group that did not take part in the intervention.

The results were eye-opening, claims Mantelli. “Study participants experienced less burnout and expressed a lower desire to leave their jobs. Burnout scores for anxiety, depression, PTSD and emotional exhaustion decreased by 28%, 36%, 26% and 12%, respectively, in the participants receiving the creative arts therapy intervention. These improvements remained up to one year after the conclusion of the program.”

Neuroarts

In the New York Times bestseller Your Brain on Art, authors Susan Magsamen and Ivy Ross explain how our brains are wired for art and the many ways the creativity and aesthetic experiences can measurably our body, brain and behavior, and how this knowledge can be translated into specific practices that advance our health and wellbeing. They explain the ways that all forms of the arts rewires neural circuitry and creates new pathways through the process of neuroplasticity.

“As sensations of light, sound, smell, taste and touch enter the brain, they set off a complex cascade of neurobiological effects, sculpting and shaping neurological functions and structures. Interacting with the arts, as maker or beholder, sparks a dynamic interplay of neurotransmitters, triggering billions of changes that shape the way we feel, think and behave.”— Susan Magsamen, founder and director of the International Arts + Mind Lab, Center for Applied Neuroaesthetics at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and Ivy Ross, Designer and Vice President of Design hardware product area at Google.

It’s actually very easy to get that neurotransmitter activation going... A study published in the journal The Arts In Psychotherapy found that coloring, doodling and free drawing can activate reward pathways in the brain by engaging the frontal lobe, which is involved in learning. The team from Drexel University, Philadelphia, explained that art additionally engages the default mode network (DMN), which is linked to self-awareness, compassion and emotion. The DMN releases “feel-good hormones” like oxytocin, dopamine, and serotonin, which explains why people can feel a sense of happiness and accomplishment after engaging in artistic endeavors.

Neuroscience of creativity

A German study from the University of Erlangen–Nuremberg in 2014 was first to demonstrate “the neural effects of visual art production on psychological resilience in adulthood.” Researchers used fMRI to study post retirement adults, half of which went through a 10-week art intervention while half did not. The group exposed to the visual art intervention showed more functional connectivity in the frontal and parietal brain cortices, which correlated with increased psychological/stress resistance.

Creative health plan

Investing in creativity could lead to less medical intervention is the message from British creative health charity Artlift. The deep activation of brain systems through art reduces stress and creates happiness, which should mean less doctor visits. Artlift provide arts-on-prescription courses for people living with mental health challenges, long-term chronic pain and other debilitating conditions. In a case study, patients were referred to an eight-week course involving poetry, ceramics, drawing, mosaic or painting. A cost-benefit analysis showed a 37% reduction in GP consultation rates and a 27% reduction in hospital admissions.

While creative health is recognized as part of health care in the UK and being adopted in more than 20 other countries, it is still being advocated in the U.S. as a “social prescription”—prescriptions for social activities, exercise and the arts. One group leading in healthcare-grade social prescribing for the U.S. is Art Pharmacy, providing evidence-based solutions for the dual mental health and loneliness epidemics. Creative expression through arts in medicine programs are increasing in U.S. hospitals too, reports Marlaine Figueroa Gray, a University of Washington medical anthropologist, for The Conversation.

Come dance with me

Co-founded by the Mark Morris Dance Group and Brooklyn Parkinson Group, Dance for PD is an internationally-acclaimed program that offers research-backed dance classes for people with Parkinson’s disease online, in New York City, and through a network of partners and associates in more than 400 other communities in 30 countries. It is not a traditional dance class in any sense, but rather a group artistic experience.

“There is a lot of misconception about the amount of learning and skill and brain work and physical work that somebody has to do to execute a dance,” explains David Leventhal, a former Mark Morris company member who is now Dance for PD’s program director. Published studies have shown that Parkinson’s patients who do some form of dance experience measurable physical and psychological improvements. More than a dozen studies have shown that twice-weekly dance classes improve balance, motor skills, freedom of movement and endurance. The non-profit has an extensive digital research library on dance and Parkinson's, and related areas.

The longer picture

Emerging research shows that being more creative is also linked with greater longevity, reports Well+Good. This is because of the ways in which inventiveness helps us better adapt to our environment and to stress—plus, a few of the same genetic and biological mechanisms may underscore both healthy aging and creativity. There may be brain-related benefits of creativity, due to new neuro-connections that are formed when we get out of the box and try something new, says Katina Bajaj, a clinical psychology researcher and co-founder and chief well-being officer at Daydreamers, a platform for nurturing your creative health. “[When we're being creative], we’re actually increasing cognitive density, so we are literally making our brain stronger [which can help] stave off cognitive decline over the long-term,” she says. Creativity can help us find a sense of purpose and fulfillment, both of which are also core indicators of living a long and full life.

How can we create a society that is addicted to health?

Inspired by Jonas Salk’s view of an epidemic of health, ALICE embarked on a study in 2011 asking leading scientists, technologists, sociologists and entrepreneurs their ideas for making health a social addiction—flipping the negative script to one of agency, control and enjoyment. Dacher Keltner, distinguished professor of psychology at the University of California, Berkeley summed up the physical, emotional and neurological connection of experiencing awe and practicing compassion to boost our health—and the emotions that keep us coming back for more.

“How do you create a society that is addicted to health? Well, it's really interesting, because this new science of emotion and the neuroscience of emotion gives some answers. We have emotions in our bodies: compassion, gratitude, awe, beauty and wonder, that actually are connected up to dopamine circuits of the brain, which are part of reward and help build addictive behavior. We know those emotions are intimately connected to vagal response, vagus nerve, and immune system processing, and positive health profiles. We know when you're in these emotions, like gratitude or compassion, it is almost impossible, physically, to be stressed. They just are antithetical, anatomically. What that says is, those are the emotions that make us addicted to health.”—Dacher Keltner, distinguished professor of psychology at the University of California, Berkeley, director of the Berkeley Social Interaction Lab, co-director Greater Good Science Center and author, Awe: The New Science of Everyday Wonder and How It Can Transform Your Life (Penguin Books 2024), Alice interview 2011.

What else we are wandering…

꠪ Popping poetry?
Following the success of a pop-up poetry shop, the U.K.’s Poetry Pharmacy has launched two permanent shops in London and Shropshire. They stock a specially curated range of books “for all mood and emotional ailments,” jars of “poetry pills” and other literary artefacts for “the restoration of the self.” All served alongside coffee, tisanes, sodas and sherbets to lift the spirits.

🧶 Community as Medicine
Open Source Wellness helps people find health and wellbeing through joyful, trauma-informed, clinically-integrated, and culturally relevant coaching programs. Their coaching model works in clinical and community settings with diverse populations. The experiential approach deepens the value of individual coaching and shines in a group coaching setting where participants connect with each other, in addition to the support they receive from their coach. Their studies have shown a 77% decrease in Emergency Room visits; 43% of participants decreased depression and an average of 19 pts lowered on blood pressure.

🧠 Daydreamers
Started by Creative Health Scientist Katina Bajaj, Daydreamers mission is to redefine creativity into a healthy habit. Daydreamers gives you everything you need—the tools, learnings and accountability—to live a beautiful, creative life in the real world. Learn to be creatively healthy without scrolling, comparing or making stuff for likes. They use cutting-edge personalization to recommend exactly how you can strengthen your Creative Health based on your unique strengths.

Craving more?

📘 Alice in Futureland books
🎧 Alice in Futureland podcasts