139. How Beauty Heals: Neuroaesthetics, Art, and Peace

There is enormous variety in the universe of visual art—and in this episode of The Modern Creative Woman, we explore why that matters so deeply to the human brain and nervous system.

Inspired by research from the field of neuroaesthetics, this conversation bridges cognitive science, art therapy, and lived experience to help you understand how beauty, art, and the spaces we inhabit can genuinely support healing and well-being. From moments of awe and wonder to the calming effects of viewing art, we explore how aesthetic experiences influence mood, regulation, perspective, and even physiology.

You’ll hear reflections on:

• Why beauty can create feelings of awe and meaning
• How viewing art supports emotional regulation and mental health
• What neuroaesthetics teaches us about architecture, space, and wellness
• Why art museums, sacred spaces, and expansive environments feel so soothing
• How your personal aesthetic preferences matter more than you think
• Simple ways to bring more beauty and creative intention into daily life

In a time when so much feels uncertain, this episode is an invitation to stay connected to art—not as escape, but as a powerful source of healing, reflection, and restoration. Beauty is not frivolous. Creativity is not optional. They are essential to how we care for ourselves and one another.

And as always, the question remains: now that you know, what will you create?

Transcript

 There is enormous variety in the universe of visual art. This quote from Christensen et al. From a 2022 journal article in British Journal of Psychology starts us off today. As we are talking about neuro aesthetics and the idea of aesthetics, shifting from this academic concept into what artists use to describe their work, and now even how we are describing what we look like in terms of the clothes we put on our body. Welcome in. I'm so glad you're here on the Modern Creative Woman podcast. There is so much happening in the world and in the United States right now, and I'm going to continue to talk about art, because what I understand about art is that it's for healing, and we really are in a space where we need to keep focusing on the healing aspects of our life. I also hope you're following along with the Buddhist monks who are on a peace walk from Texas to Washington, DC, and this practice is thousands of years old, and it's been used by monks to show compassion when there is not peace around them. I will drop the link to one of the Instagrams that's following them, and I hope that you will follow along with the monks and their dog, and be inspired in the same way that I am. For people who are willing to continue consistently moving towards what feels important. And it's not different when they reach Washington, D.C. it is the process of walking that makes it so powerful. Today we will be talking about neuro aesthetics, and it's a cognitive science. I'll get into a little bit of that, and I want you to start to use some of the information from this field of neuropsychology to enhance your life in a really meaningful way and understand how beauty can heal you. Art can heal you. So let's get into this. Let's get this started. I remember so clearly my first trip to Paris when I was 19, and it's a snapshot moment in my head of walking down an empty street and suddenly feeling overcome by awe. I felt so keenly aware of the colours of the building and of the sky, and I just stopped right there on the sidewalk to appreciate that moment. For me, it was beauty. And I still carry this snapshot moment in my mind, you know, over three decades later. Savoring that moment even brings back the wonder for me. And the concept of wonder and awe is widely studied in the field of positive psychology, and how I experienced it lines up with what the neuropsychological research has reported. I am simply unable to explain exactly why that aesthetic was more important than the rest of the sites, or any of the beautiful things that I saw. the river sand, the Louvre Museum, any of the gardens. All of that is just as glorious. And yet, in that moment, I experienced wonder and awe and had this incredible, visceral response to the aesthetics that I was experiencing in that moment. If you pause for just a moment and recall a time when you were moved by the beauty of art or dance, film, architecture, or any other aspects of the built, created environment that we are in. It can be an ordinary moment where you felt just transfixed by wonder and awe. And it does not need to be a vacation or a special place, and it can just be a snapshot that you have in your mind. And when you call that image up, savor it for a moment and contemplate. How did that feel? What's the most pleasurable aspect of that moment for you? If in your memory that recall of the aesthetic experience moved you, you were really exploring what some of the cognitive neuroscientists are completely obsessed with the aesthetic experience that we have, and especially when these aesthetic experiences are involving moments of great pleasure. The concept of aesthetics is a set of principles, and they're focused on the application of beauty, especially in art. And it was largely in the purview of philosophy that we got to understanding aesthetics and the importance of aesthetics, the environment around us, and the beauty that we're observing when looking at a piece of art or architecture. Neuro aesthetics in particular, is that branch of cognitive neuroscience that's examining the neural basis of your aesthetic experience. They're focusing on the experiences that give you feelings of great pleasure and how that is processed in your brain. Neuro aesthetics as a field has offered so many interesting studies, and they offer insight into areas such as how beauty influences morality, the built environment, and the concept of wellness. They've also looked at our engagement with art, how aesthetic pleasure differs from other forms of pleasure such as sex and food. And they've also looked at how beauty influences our behavior. Now, the goal of neuro aesthetics is to understand the brain systems that are underlying the experience of. The aesthetic moment and aesthetic choices. And for someone studying neuro aesthetics, they're investigating the brain's response to beauty, art, design, architecture. Now, understanding how our brain responds to beauty has real, practical applications. Specifically, it includes insights into the therapeutic use of art, how it heals and soothes and helps us gives us insight. They're also helping us understand how design and marketing can influence us, which gives us information to be better consumers of products, of social media, of advertising. It really is informing us in how someone might be attempting to manipulate us. And that's really good to know. They're also looking at how architecture can shape our experience of a space, and that's been really practical in terms of where we work, where we study, what schools look like. The architecture of the space we're in has a big impact on our ability to focus and concentrate. Receptive engagement with art is the scientific term for viewing art. Receptive engagement with art. It helps with our mental health to look at art, and it has been shown to alleviate symptoms of depression and anxiety and stress. Looking at art serves as a tool for self-awareness and emotional regulation. Did you ever imagine that you could feel more emotionally regulated after looking at artwork? Head out to an art museum and you'll start to understand the significance of aesthetics when you observe the architecture of the building. I just went to the Young Museum last week in San Francisco, and the space is enormous. It's so vast, and the ceiling is so high. There's a tower you can climb and overlook the whole city. It's got an observation deck. Having perspective, being able to view the whole city from one vantage point gives us a sense of wisdom and allows us to reflect on both ourselves and our current situation. The vastness of the space suggests that what else is inside is extremely important and valuable and worthwhile viewing. Art has also been associated with lower blood pressure. That's so exciting. So specifically, people viewing art can have this physiological change and it's even more predominant. In other words, the change is bigger. The blood pressure goes even lower. When we look at art that has people in it. There's something attractive to all of us in seeing faces and figures. And this is consistent with the research around what babies prefer in test after test, where babies were given the opportunity to look at art, they could look at a picture. And then when they got distracted or bored, they would move their eyes away. And so that's how researchers tallied how long they could be engaged in a piece of art. And they spent significantly more time looking at art. That was a faces. And it turns out this is true for us as adults as well. We are more calm when we're able to look at a piece of art with a figure. And finally being around art releases dopamine, and that's the hormone that helps us feel good. After you leave the art museum. Notice how you feel. It's a quiet place. It's soothing. The art is an opportunity for self-reflection. So in viewing art, we experience this interactive moment and it's your past experiences, your cultural influences, things you know you've felt are all connected to the art. And we can project our own experience onto the art and receive the feelings and the information that really is specific to us. If you wander through a museum and you find a favorite picture and spend some time with it, really slow down. Play a little bit of a I-Spy with it. What? How many things can you notice? How many shapes or figures or designs or colors or brushstrokes or textures in the clay? Each person views art in their own unique way. There's been a thorough analysis of how we view it, and Kendall, in his 2013 book Around Insight, really explores how art has shifted over time and how we can understand the intersection of art. And science. It used to be that salons would include artists and scientists, and it was a group that gathered collectively and one informed the other. And art is certainly a representation of what the artist is imagining, and it is also reflecting the culture they live in, their influences, what aesthetic experiences they have had and how they've personally had receptive engagement with other art in the past, and with the art that they're creating, their own receptive engagement with their own piece of art. When you think about moving into a new home, there is so much information that comes from the field of neuro aesthetics that focuses on the features of interior and the exterior spaces, and how they can promote wellness for us. There's some incredible studies in the Journal of Environmental Psychology. Holtzman et al. In 2025, we're investigating how various design features could determine our experience. And they were looking at things like ceiling height or wall curvature. And these are the pieces of the interior architecture that can determine our experience among lots of different psychological dimensions. We can think about the coherence of the space, our personal fascination with the space, and the concept of holiness. Does it feel like home? Can we imagine that this would be a space that we would live in? This concept of the aesthetics regarding interiors is so important to us. Most people in developed worlds spend more than 90% of our time in built environments. 90% of our time is inside. So the neuro aesthetic researchers are investigating how the environment we place ourselves in can really affect our self-reported sense of well-being. And there's things about the built space that can promote or interfere with what they call human flourishing. For you to feel better. You can look around the room you're in and see about making a little arrangement, moving things around, adjusting some things, making sure that you have art on the wall, of course. Another thing you can do is go to beautiful spaces. I already mentioned art museums. You can go for a walk and be very curious about the architecture that you see. You can certainly go to beautiful buildings. The government buildings, um, like City Hall in San Francisco, is always open. You can have a look at the exterior architecture as well as the interior there beautiful hotels, shops that you find to your aesthetic preference, and the spaces that are more wide open and vast will give you a different feeling than the ones that are crowded or cluttered. And the vastness usually makes us feel more relaxed. And if you go into a church, you'll see the the high ceilings. If you look at temples, the aesthetics are tailored specifically for the purpose of worship. They are designed often to promote a feeling of wonder, perhaps, or piety. Sacredness. The more you know about your aesthetic preferences, the more you can bring back that information into your own space. If you like certain colors, your favorite colors can be the basis of your home design, and you don't have to have a big house with high ceilings to incorporate these ideas of your aesthetic preference. Lots of times people feel uninspired to generate or craft an interesting space to live in, and I want to encourage you to take the time to just start maybe one little corner and build on that from the field of neuro aesthetics. We can also start to understand our preference in art making. Everyone has their favorite material that they love to work with. When you're exposed to a lot of different art. You'll get a handle on the one that suits you best. You might enjoy paint or clay or collage or drawing. There is no wrong way. However you do, it is good and correct, and you can watch the changes in your artwork and explore what that might mean. Does your art change when things are more peaceful versus when things are more stressful in your life? You can also promote your own sense of peace by making art in a peaceful environment and in a peaceful way. You can draw out how you want to feel or use colors to depict a peaceful environment. I talked about the Enso drawing on my Instagram live today, and you can find that on Instagram at Amoeba. And that's an extremely powerful way to cultivate peace in your drawing so you don't have to feel peace. You can cultivate it through the artwork. As we are wrapping things up, I want to invite you to have a listen to episode 138. I think there's some really good stuff in there that you will want to have in the New Year, and if you are looking for retreat and respite, the Paris retreat is open. Aurora, Tivoli and I host every July in Paris, a retreat for women to focus on the neuro aesthetics, art therapy style, slowing down and figuring out how to be with yourself in a kind, generous, loving way. And the women who have come to our retreats in the past have reported new, inspired thoughts long after they returned home, and these symbiotic relationships that they're able to cultivate after the transformation they experienced in Paris. There is a discount for podcast listeners, so you can reach out to me in the show notes or check out the Paris page on my website, and I would love to have a conversation with you and see if it might be a good fit for where you are right now. Have a wonderful rest of your day! And now that you know, what will you create? If you have a moment, please hit the subscribe button and share this episode with a friend. The more we can promote this kind of information for more peaceful living, the faster it happens and spreads. If you've got just a moment, you could drop in a five star review. Write a review that bumps the podcast up a little bit higher so more women can find us and join this community. I'm excited to speak with you in the next episode.