Many people are quick to distance themselves from art because they can’t draw more than a stick figure, but creative expression is more essential to our well-being than we realize.

According to the Mayo Clinic Press, even simply appreciating or experiencing art has a host of health benefits, including reducing blood pressure and anxiety and increasing levels of serotonin, a neurotransmitter that influences our happiness and pleasure.

This connection isn’t arbitrary, either. It’s deeply rooted in our humanity.

“Anthropology has shown that in early human history, art, religion and healing evolved in the same social space,” the World Health Organization’s website says. “Artistic expression grew in lockstep with human cultural development and has long played an integral part in how we teach, learn, communicate and heal.”

Today, students use art to cope with the stress of academia and express the myriad emotions of young adulthood, especially those that can’t be put into words.

Ingrid Balciunas, a fourth-year family and social sciences major, aspires to help people process trauma and repressed emotions as a therapist, and they think art therapy is equipped to do just that.

“Sometimes you can’t talk or think out a feeling,” Balciunas, who also minors in art, said. “When I’m in the zone making art, my thinking brain isn’t driving me as much. I think that’s a good way to let things come out as they need to.”

Balciunas said art therapy can be more exploratory than talk therapy, though they said talk therapy was still beneficial to them.

“(Talk therapy) can get to be too cerebral,” they said. “If somebody has trouble talking about a specific incident or even remembering a specific incident, just creating space to see what things flow out through art is a good way of approaching that.”

Art of Counseling, PLLC, a psychotherapy group based in St. Paul, offers art therapy and traditional talk therapy among other services to “(provide) a holistic blend of art, relational, and trauma informed therapies,” according to their website.

One of their services is the Expressive Arts Trauma Processing Group, a 10-week program of “engaging with expressive media and supported reflection” for female-identifying people with previous trauma processing experience in individual therapy.

Though there is some exclusivity with Expressive Arts (payment and registration are both required), there are more casual ways to practice creativity for your well-being.

One upcoming opportunity is the Arts and Wellbeing Club, a new program offered by the Earl E. Bakken Center for Spirituality and Healing. 

The group is open to undergraduate and graduate students of all artistic media and experiences looking for a safe, non-judgmental space to make art in community with others.

“What I want for people to get out of the club is some unlearning about who is an artist and what it means to be creative,” said Maria Arriola, the club’s student facilitator and a graduate student studying music composition. “It’s not something that we have to try very hard at. The impulse to create is a sign of being alive.”

Those interested in joining the Arts and Wellbeing Club are welcome at either of their introductory meetings on Tuesday, March 4 and Wednesday, March 5. Additional information can be found here.

Balciunas said that though it’s sometimes difficult without the structure of a class, making art on their own is rewarding, and even just thinking of concepts for projects can be fun.

“The stuff I draw tends to be more abstract, but if there is realistic it tends to be faces, people, figures,” they said. “If I’m not good at drawing something or I kind of f-ck up I’m just gonna make it all really abstract and surreal.”

Swiping through their art folder on their phone, Balciunas revealed a theme of violence in their art. One drawing showed them eating their fingers, and multiple others were heads with axes in them, but Balciunas’ doodly, surreal style made the sketches more comical than gory. 

Balciunas said art has been an essential part of processing emotional turmoil, given their habit of overthinking.

“I feel like a lot of really great art comes out of feeling,” Balciunas said. “There’s no standard or expectation. You don’t have to be an artist to feel something.”