As you stare into the darkness once again, wide awake, or toss and turn for hours, have you ever considered how getting creative might help?
Art and craft can absorb and calm you and clear your mind, so it’s no wonder they can be beneficial if you struggle with sleep issues.
There are many different ways to use art and/or craft to help you through the night. Some people like to use creativity to relax and still themselves in the moment, and I call this using art as a haven.
Here are some suggestions:
- Abstract art can be the most calming, helping to ground you. Try drawing blocks of colour, or rainbows, or a zentangle pattern, or doodling circles and wavy lines, which are known to be more relaxing. Or use a colouring book.
- Use art or craft to pass the time as the night stretches ahead. I know people who get up in the middle of the night to draw birds or animals, or who doodle in the dark to release tension.
- Craft in particular can be very rhythmic and repetitive, which might slow you down into resting mode. Think knitting, crochet, cross stitch or weaving.
Other people prefer to use art to explore the thoughts and feelings that might be troubling them and help clear their minds – what I call using art as a tool. Here are some ideas:
- Draw symbols (like a closed door, a mountain, or stick figures) to represent how you feel about an issue – this can help you imagine or visualise how these feelings might change. Or use word art (writing your feelings down in different letterings or colours) or play around with colours to express how you feel (search online for the Feelings Wheel for ideas). These activities can help distance you from the issues or think through them.
- If you like journaling, then illustrate your journal with colourful borders, symbols or scrap booking. And rather than using your journal only to express sad or negative thoughts, record other things that are happening around you, like sports events or a new film.
- Vary what time of day you draw how you feel or journal. Doing this last thing at night might help you sleep, but it might also leave you thinking about these issues all the more. Earlier in the day or evening might be better.
And another idea – if you’ve come to dislike or dread darkness and nighttime, try thinking how beautiful a night sky can be – draw, paint or colour a moonlit, starry sky with dark tree outlines as silhouettes.
Art and craft are so varied that there’s something for everyone. Experiment with what helps most, whether that’s making greetings cards or pompoms at three in the morning or stippling, dotting and scrawling on a sheet of paper as an outlet before bed. Just making random marks can help still a racing mind.
Thank you to Isobel Murdoch for this insightful blog. Medley is an online art for wellbeing initiative run by Lincolnshire-based practitioner Isobel Murdoch https://medley.live