Contributor: “Dr. J”Dr. J offers his irreverent, slightly irrelevant, but possibly useful opinions on health and fitness. A Florida surgeon and fitness freak with a black belt in karate, he runs 50 miles a week and flies a Cherokee Arrow 200.
Stress has become all too common in the fast-paced world that we live in! Most of us can remember a less frantic time. I’m not referring to Mayberry now, just a time when only doctors had pagers and fax machines, let alone cell phones and Blackberries, which were still on some engineer’s drawing table.
I remember one day when my pager went off while I was riding my horse on a nearby prairie chasing some cattle. That initiated a mile run on Zalul at full gallop to reach the closest phone! Now, everyone is in constant communication, and everything has to be there yesterday!
Destressing a must
Finding ways to decrease and manage the stress in our lives, that shelter from the storm, can be a valuable weapon in everyone’s survival kit.
I mentioned in a recent column how going to the Art Institute of Chicago had a large influence on my interest in art and becoming an artist. Something else that I really liked about the Art Institute was the tranquility I found there.
Walking through those beautiful galleries, surrounded by the wonderful, timeless, artistic creations of history was a soft voyage down a quiet river that always left me in a more peaceful place. There is something about art displayed in the gallery setting that is very different from outdoor art shows that have become commonplace. The focus of the gallery is on the art and the rich enjoyment of that experience, not on the selling of a product, with food and continuous frantic entertainment as often the major reasons people attend the event.
Here is a video, “Got Stress?“ that I made comparing the experience of two recent art viewings. The first part was our local outdoor Fall Festival, and the second from the recent University Faculty exhibit held at our museum of art.
Art heals
It seems the idle wanderings among art of my formative years have been supported by the scientific method!
Professor Angela Clow of the University of Westminster studied the effects of viewing art on stress. Her study involved 28 participants who had their saliva cortisol levels measured before and after spending 40 minutes of their lunch hour either meandering through an art gallery or watching an audio-visual art tour.
Clow found that the salivary cortisol levels were reduced by 32 percent. She also noted that “usually it would take about five hours for the cortisol level to fall to this extent.”
Make it a resolution for yourself this winter: find a local art museum and take some time for yourself to wander through their displays, soaking in the richness of the experience.
Your stress levels will thank you!
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