The arts and spirituality have been close allies throughout history and across many faith and healing traditions, and acknowledgement of their synergistic healing potential is returning. The arts continue to demonstrate their ability to provide categorical evidence of their impact on spiritual and existential concerns. The arts offer a poignant spiritual language for alternative pathways to being and knowing. Fortifying benefits include transcendent powers, internal work and connections. The arts provide a way to practice spiritual care with a diverse range of careseekers. In this Forest Find, a transdisciplinary approach will be presented to encourage members to reflect on how these approaches to care might serve them. Please note that in the Community Discussions there are multiple spaces dedicated to film and visual arts. Post your thoughts and share your examples there for the community.
Arts-based Feeling and Healing
By offering opportunities to engage in the arts and creative expression, care-seekers can be enabled to mourn, grieve, celebrate life, and find endurance, healing, and meaning.
The arts are now viewed as an integral component of holistic care in chaplaincy. Studies suggest the arts can promote health and psychological well-being and offer a spiritually therapeutic tool for many careseekers. Neuroaesthetics research suggests that aesthetic/artistic pleasure is derived by the interaction between emotion processing that involves reward-related areas in the brain and top-down processes derived from the relationship of the beholder with the cultural artifact. What type of strategies are used by chaplains to engage these emotional moments?
Art and Psychological Well-Being
Consider
Have you used artistic expression in your chaplaincy practice? Visit the Discussions tab and post a story about it, and read others' posts as well.