Your Brain on Art: How the Arts Transform Us

“I cannot say exactly how nature exerts its calming and organizing effects on our brains,” the poetic neurologist Oliver Sacks wrote in the dawning years of the twenty-first century, “but I have seen in my patients the restorative and healing powers of nature and gardens, even for those who are deeply disabled neurologically.”

Whether we are aware of it or not, we step into any situation tuned in to some mood, a tone or frequency . When I act from contraction in my body – a clenched heart or a dense heaviness in my belly – I am often caught up in webs of stories (“I am scared, I feel resentful”) that limit the arena of my choice-making. Harmonizing the energy body is to ... See more