Tag: exercise

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Exercise and creativity

Early Morning at Moon Lake, 6X8, oil on archival canvasboard, $348 includes shipping and handling in continental US.

I have never once gotten up in the morning and said, “gee, I can’t wait to get outside and climb Beech Hill.” That goes double for winter, but I still do it every day.

I’ve been doing serious daily exercise (and, yes, I mean seven days a week) as long as I can remember. Even during chemo, I’d push my drip bag along on a pole and keep walking. In fact, I turned down a port because it would mess with my running schedule.

On the Hard, 8X10, oil on archival canvasboard, $522 includes shipping and handling in continental US.

I’m not telling you this to be a twit; I believe exercise is an important daily habit, no different from brushing my teeth or making my bed. Although I’ve had two serious cancers, I’m still here. I’ve also avoided the typical diseases of aging like diabetes and heart disease.

The physical benefits of exercise are well-documented. Exercise improves brain health, including memory and learning, executive function, processing speed and attention span. It helps us manage weight, reduces the risk of disease, and strengthens bones and muscles.

Equally documented are exercise’s mental health benefits. Exercise reduces anxiety, depression, social withdrawal and negative mood. And exercise slows down the physical and mental decline of old age. I’m not going down without a fight.

Coal Seam, 6X8, oil on archival canvasboard, $348 includes shipping and handling in continental US.

Exercise and creativity go hand in hand

There’s a demonstrated link between exercise and creativity. “Even a single, brief bout of aerobic exercise can ignite creative thinking,” wrote Dr. Chong Chen, author of a narrative review on the topic. He looked at 21 studies exploring the link between exercise and creativity.

Both the type of exercise and its duration affect its impact on creativity. For example, strength training doesn’t seem to do much for brain plasticity. Too much exercise and we stop benefiting (and may even decline).

What is creative thinking, anyway?

Mid-century psychologist Dr. J. P. Guilford identified two types of creative thinking: divergent and convergent. Convergent thinking is arriving at the single best answer to a question. Divergent thinking is the process of exploring many possible solutions. Divergent thinking is associative and flexible, while convergent thinking relies on working memory and fluid intelligence.

You might think that divergent thinking is all we need as artists, but in fact we need both. First, we come up with our ideas; then we winnow and execute them.

Peace, 8X16, $903 framed includes shipping and handling in continental US.

How does this work, physiologically?

Regular aerobic activity can trigger structural changes in the brain, including increased brain volume, particularly in the hippocampus, according to Amir-Homayoun Javadi, author of Joggin’ the Noggin. But these adaptations occur over time. What happens in the short run?

Javadi suggests that acute exercise temporarily improves our blood flow, bringing fresh oxygen to the brain. Furthermore, exercise that doesn’t demand much thought (like my daily walk) actually dampens activity within the prefrontal cortex, allowing the mind to roam free, without constraints. That may be why walking shows better promise for creativity than yoga, which requires mindfulness.

The biggest bang for your buck

Activities like treadmill running and dance help with convergent thinking. Meanwhile, walking helps with divergent thinking and is the only form of exercise associated with heightened originality. However, it’s apparently useless at enhancing convergent thinking. On the other hand, if you have a hill or mountain nearby, the uphill slog can benefit your convergent thinking and the downhill amble will help your divergent thinking. Presto! Beautiful, balanced brain!

One more thing

If you know a school administrator, policy-setter, school board member, or parent, wave this post in front of him or her and suggest-strongly-that school policy allow kids lots more time untethered from their desks. Immobilizing our children, whether in school or in front of the television, is surely one of the great injustices of our current age.

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Exercise and the artist

Bracken Fern, 12X9, oil on canvasboard, $869 framed includes shipping in the continental US

Once upon a time, I was a serious runner. I got up extremely early to get in my miles before packing the kids off to school and heading to my studio. My kids remember that I always touted the value of exercise. They claim that I once told them: “if your head was cut off, it would grow back because you were a runner.” They are, of course, full of malarkey, but I certainly believed that running had healing properties.

Then at age 40 I had a miserable bout with cancer. My fitness stood me in great stead, but a year of chemo, radiation and surgery put paid to my running forever. Instead, I started to walk miles every day. Among my happiest memories are the hours my pal Mary and I walked in our suburban neighborhood, working through the issues of our lives.

Mountain Path (the susseration of dried leaves), 11X14, oil on archival canvasboard, $1087 framed, includes shipping in continental US

It turns out that I have a cancer gene. It reappeared in a different form several years later. As with the first time, I had barely recovered from the anesthesia before I was struggling back into my sneakers. But repeated insults to your body take their toll.

My friend Jane, who’s going through a terrible health problem, told me, “I keep wondering if I’ll ever have a stretch of time to regain strength.”

I’ve been there, sister. It takes longer than you hope, but if you persevere, you’ll recover.

We’ve had a stretch of miserable weather here in the northeast. I gauge its impact by the number of people I see along the trail. Recently, it’s been as empty as it was in the dead of winter. Rain, fog, cold, and more rain are disheartening in the pre-dawn hours. The urge to go back to sleep is almost overwhelming.

Yet I don’t. Part of that is habit, and part of that is fear. My aunt, two of my uncles and my grandfather were all dead of heart attacks before they reached my age.

Blueberry barrens, Clary Hill, oil on canvas, 24X36, $3985 framed includes shipping in continental US

Exercise can reverse physical decline

Last week I wrote about reversing cognitive decline by learning a new skill like drawing. The corollary to that is that you can reverse physical decline with regular exercise. Many studies bear that out. It’s not that exercise is a miracle cure; it’s that our sedentary lifestyle ages us before our time.

At the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, when the effects of modernity were just beginning to be felt, physician William Buchan wrote, “Of all the causes which conspire to render the life of a man short and miserable, none have greater influence than the want of proper exercise.”

Mountain Fog, 11X14, $1087, includes shipping in continental US

Most of us have no idea how sedentary we are compared to how we were designed, because our whole world has been one of inactivity, generation after generation. We artists spend hours in front of our easels; that’s really no better than spending them in front of a computer.

There’s another good reason to spend time hiking or walking, and that is how it changes your perception of nature and landscape. If you only look at a place from the window of your car, you’re seeing only a fraction of it. This week, I’m watching the ferns slowly unfurl. I know where they are because I walk these same woods every day. Later today, if the skies clear, I’ll go paint near them. I probably won’t paint the ferns themselves, but I will paint the green blush that is starting to-finally!-overtake my world.

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