Sometimes less is MORE!

At work in our roles, and at home in our personal lives how much of our time is spent consuming vs. creating? Consuming includes following procedures and protocols, things like reading and answering emails and messages on Slack, participating in meetings with agendas and tasks requiring outcomes, taking in information about work and other people’s lives, eating and buying things.

It is completely normal for us to consume a lot. It’s what we’re trained to do as humans. However, when we’re consuming?more?than we’re creating, that’s when I believe we run into problems.

This week at work I had some amazing opportunities to directly benefit and participate in two amazing programs that The Hospital Research Foundation Group - Creative Health support: Art Therapy and Pet Therapy.

Yesterday we were thrilled to host a Meet the Researcher event at the Living Choice Fullarton Retirement Village called: Healing Hearts and Paws. This unique opportunity allowed our staff and supporters to take a step outside our regular schedules to connect directly with the brilliant minds whose life-saving research is made possible by our incredible support.

First, Anne Hamilton-Bruce, Principal Medical Scientist shared insights from her transformative research program, DOgSS – or 'Dogs Offering Support after Stroke,' aimed at enhancing recovery and well-being for stroke survivors through the therapeutic benefits of canine companionship and we got to MEET and cuddle the dogs from the program. ?

Pet Therapy is a guided interaction between a person and a trained animal which can help patients to cope and creatively and sometimes subconsciously improve their mental and physical health.

What has been discovered is that patients often feel isolated and even the most withdrawn seem to open-up and let barriers down when therapy dogs are around.? The companionship of an undemanding animal that gives unconditional love is often one of the most missed aspects of a patient’s life. Research like Anne’s continues to validate the very real value of this type of therapy in a hospital setting.

The purpose of pet therapy is to help animals and people bring joy, love and creatively to each other. I can speak from my own personal experience as our own Pomeranian Bacon provides us with a human-animal bond that 100% improves our quality of life every day. The Hospital Research Foundation Group believes in the social, emotional, and physiological benefits of positive interaction between people and therapy animals.

Additionally, on Tuesday our staff at Woodville were given the opportunity to participate and experience a 1-hour Wellbeing Art Therapy Session. Our small session that was attended by four of us was a creative visualisation of a place that makes us ‘happy’ that involved all our senses. After the visualisation we had some time to draw and create our ‘happy place’ with pastels tangibly on a piece of paper. After we finished our art pieces (see photo attached) the art therapist asked us questions about our drawings and gave us feedback on what they observed about our body language while we were drawing.

The Hospital Research Foundation Group - Creative Health team of art therapists deliver one-on-one and group art therapy programs at hospitals and healthcare facilities across Adelaide.

Art Therapy provides a creative alternative to talk therapy, focusing on building supportive and trusting relationships within a safe environment, using art and creative expression as a vehicle for communication. Our Art Therapists support patients in areas including mental health, stroke rehabilitation, cognitive impairment, general medicine and palliative care by providing either one-off or a series of sessions that support patients in their individual treatment or recovery. Our therapists are based at the Royal Adelaide Hospital, The Queen Elizabeth Hospital and Southern Adelaide Palliative Services at Flinders Medical Centre. We also offer a trauma psychotherapy service for veterans and emergency first responders suffering symptoms of Post-Traumatic Stress in our office at the Jamie Larcombe Centre.

From this session our staff discovered that Art Therapy:

-????????? develops skills for coping?

-????????? helps with relaxation and pain management

-????????? expresses and communicates feelings and emotions visually

-????????? builds self-esteem?

-????????? identifys core values that are foundational to being human

-????????? increases communication skills?

-????????? shares feelings in a safe nurturing and confidential environment?

-????????? achieves insight to problems and issues

-????????? explores imagination and creativity?

-????????? manages grief and loss

So how can more creation add value to our lives. It’s funny because after our Art Therapy session the first thing that came to my mind was that actioning ‘less’ can result in achieving more. For example, by taking time out and away from ‘consuming’ to reflect and ensure self-care we are more equipped to create.

What I’ve found is there’s lots of ways to inspect this in my own life and make a conscious decision about this. And I want to invite you to do this too. For example, I’d like you think about it this way, when you are dealing with life, living your life in a consumptive way, you are basically a bystander to the activities of other people’s creation. The problem with that is that you aren’t living a conscious life when you are in straight consumption.?

Very little is taught in our workplaces about creation. When I think about my career and the opportunities I’ve had to create from my own brain, uniquely from my own brain and not just repeat back and regurgitate something I had already consumed, it is so rare that I’ve had the opportunity to access and learn how to create.

So that’s what I have been pondering this week. This is not to say that everybody should be a creator if they don’t want to. I’ve just been thinking that nobody ever offers us up this kind of framework of thinking about the world in terms of being a creator, and creating something new that has never existed. Imagine the possibilities if we all started thinking this way!

Any thoughts?