Susan Magsamen > Quotes

“Look for chances to take the less-traveled roads. There are no wrong turns.”
― Susan Magsamen, The 10 Best of Everything Families: An Ultimate Guide for Travelers

“Dopamine, serotonin, and oxytocin released in the making of music and art can help to relieve anxiety and depression.”
― Susan Magsamen, Your Brain on Art: How the Arts Transform Us

“just twenty minutes of doodling or humming can provide immediate support for your physical and mental state.”
― Susan Magsamen, Your Brain on Art: How the Arts Transform Us

“When you make art and you don’t know what’s going to happen, you’re involved in the mystery that life really is.”
― Susan Magsamen, Your Brain on Art: How the Arts Transform Us

“Colors have the capacity to change our respiration, our blood pressure, even our body temperature.”
― Susan Magsamen, Your Brain on Art: How the Arts Transform Us

“Compelled, over hours and days, she entered a flow state where images arose spontaneously, one evolving into the next, “like life really is,”
― Susan Magsamen, Your Brain on Art: How the Arts Transform Us

“The best journeys are the ones that answer questions that at the outset you never even thought to ask.
-Rick Ridgeway”
― Susan Magsamen, The 10 Best of Everything Families: An Ultimate Guide for Travelers

“Pennebaker saw that those using expressive writing around trauma had far fewer visits to the campus health center than those who wrote trivial stories.”
― Susan Magsamen, Your Brain on Art: How the Arts Transform Us

“Play is a key component of the arts and aesthetics in myriad ways. Art and play are like two sides of the same coin, with play being a part of artistic expression, imagination, creativity, and curiosity.”
― Susan Magsamen, Your Brain on Art: How the Arts Transform Us

“Drawing “is tapping into a very old part of ourselves and moving us into the emotional and intuitive parts of the brain,”
― Susan Magsamen, Your Brain on Art: How the Arts Transform Us

“Its true: Everything tastes best right out of the sea, the fields and the orchards.”
― Susan Magsamen, The 10 Best of Everything Families: An Ultimate Guide for Travelers

“You’re not asking your rational, cognitive brain to be in charge. Quite the opposite. You’re marshaling other parts of your brain to be of service. It’s a reminder that the arts are passively active. No need to think; just do it.”
― Susan Magsamen, Your Brain on Art: How the Arts Transform Us

“Drawing activates multiple regions in the brain that force our brain to process information in new ways while inspiring us to imagine and create new images in the brain.”
― Susan Magsamen, Your Brain on Art: How the Arts Transform Us

“how rhythmic, repetitive movements with the hands have been shown to release serotonin, dopamine, and oxytocin in the brain, making her feel a little bit better.”
― Susan Magsamen, Your Brain on Art: How the Arts Transform Us

“Their findings also showed that the simple act of doodling increases blood flow and triggers feelings of pleasure and reward. It turns out doodlers are more analytical, retain information better, and are better focused than their non-doodling colleagues.”
― Susan Magsamen, Your Brain on Art: How the Arts Transform Us

“Judy survived by doing what many of us do: She boxed away the difficult experiences and emotions, keeping on with her life.”
― Susan Magsamen, Your Brain on Art: How the Arts Transform Us

“Somatic therapy is a body-centered psychology that uses physical techniques to help move emotions and experiences that have become stuck inside us. Instead of just talk therapy and cognitive therapy, the somatic approach recognizes that the body holds on to trauma and can be instrumental in helping us to recover.”
― Susan Magsamen, Your Brain on Art: How the Arts Transform Us

“We next look at mandalas and their role in using colors and drawing to relieve the stress caused by anxiety.”
― Susan Magsamen, Your Brain on Art: How the Arts Transform Us

“When I am doing art, I’m in what I call a droning state. A different part of my mind is working. That switched-on part of me is turned off. And while I’m off, I can have better conversations about my emotions, or anything, really. I’m just an easier person to talk to.”
― Susan Magsamen, Your Brain on Art: How the Arts Transform Us

“Think about this experiment the next time you feel moved by your favorite song. You are literally changed, on a cellular level, by aesthetics.”
― Susan Magsamen, Your Brain on Art: How the Arts Transform Us

“Now imagine if illustrating pain was protocol when you went to a doctor’s office. Illustrating pain by painting, drawing, and sculpting can help detect, identify, and convey important characteristics and information.”
― Susan Magsamen, Your Brain on Art: How the Arts Transform Us

“Jung’s studies in Eastern spiritual practices led him to experiment with mandalas as a tool for accessing unconscious thought patterns and emotions, both in himself and his patients. He would invite his patients to spontaneously fill in circular drawings, adding patterns and symbols as they came to mind. This simple activity seemed to help guide people back to their emotional center “through the construction of a central point to”
― Susan Magsamen, Your Brain on Art: How the Arts Transform Us

“These drawings are calling your shy imagination, your intuition, off the bench, to play a creative guiding role in your life,” Jim explains.”
― Susan Magsamen, Your Brain on Art: How the Arts Transform Us

“Just twenty minutes of coloring mandalas resulted in significantly lower anxiety levels, more than free-form drawing on a blank piece of paper.”
― Susan Magsamen, Your Brain on Art: How the Arts Transform Us

“The arts offer us a way to slow down, feel our emotional pain, and let it unfold, revealing a changed but full human being.”
― Susan Magsamen, Your Brain on Art: How the Arts Transform Us

“Studies have found that coloring can have a similar physiological response in the brain as the act of meditating by reducing outside noise and allowing for focus.”
― Susan Magsamen, Your Brain on Art: How the Arts Transform Us

“According to Jung, the lama explained that a mandala was a mental image built up through an individual’s subconscious. It could be used to uncover insights hidden within the layers of the mind and to achieve a state of emotional equilibrium.”
― Susan Magsamen, Your Brain on Art: How the Arts Transform Us

“Your ability to move your attention flexibly, which is called switching, is quite limited,” he said.”
― Susan Magsamen, Your Brain on Art: How the Arts Transform Us

“Healing doesn’t happen in a straight line. It unfolds.” Judy intuitively had created a container that held the charge of her past traumatic experiences and her need to process and let go. Judy”
― Susan Magsamen, Your Brain on Art: How the Arts Transform Us

“Learn to get in touch with the silence within yourself and know that everything in this life has a purpose. —ELISABETH KÜBLER-ROSS, PSYCHIATRIST”
― Susan Magsamen, Your Brain on Art: How the Arts Transform Us