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For over thirteen years, Shanthi Project has been committed to sharing the power of mindfulness with our Lehigh Valley community. Each year, we reach over 4,000 local children and adults, helping them build strong, long-lasting social-emotional resiliency.
This school year, we’re looking forward to tackling some ambitious plans: expanding our programming, creating a solid foundation of mindfulness in schools, and reaching more community members than ever. But as a nonprofit organization, realizing our mission is a team effort. We rely on the support of friends, donors, and sponsors to help us change the lives of those we serve.
To that end, we’re thrilled to host our biggest fundraiser yet: Easely Yours, an art exhibition and silent auction! On Thursday, September 26th, this event will not only raise funds for our essential mindfulness programming, but it will allow us to celebrate the profound connection between art and mindfulness. Attendees can bid on a beautiful array of donated artwork, enjoy food, drinks, and music, and meet others at the intersection of mindfulness, wellbeing, and art.
Take it from Kim Hopkins, our Executive Director:
“Art has the unique ability to connect us to our innermost thoughts and feelings. Through Easely Yours, we’re not only celebrating creativity but also channeling it toward a greater cause: supporting the mental health and wellbeing of our children and youth through science-backed mindfulness education. Every piece of art auctioned at the event will represent a step toward a more mindful, compassionate Lehigh Valley.”
During the exhibition and auction, we’ll be showcasing work from talented local artists. As creatives themselves, they've experienced firsthand the connection between mindfulness and art. Lauren Kindle—one of these artists—told us, “For me, painting is a way of being peaceful and present, a sort of meditation in itself. When I am really deep in my painting, I'm no longer thinking about my ego or being aware of myself. I'm very much in the moment, responding to the colors, the feeling of the paint, and the act of placing one color beside another.”
Curlee Raven Holt, another contributing artist, agreed: “Humanity and the world as a whole benefit when we are engaged in understanding our emotional inheritance and lived experience and make attempts to develop our true selves. Art is the language of dreaming out loud.”
Art and Mindfulness: The Science
Even if you’re not an artist yourself, the link between mindfulness and art is impossible to deny. For decades, peer-reviewed research has found meaningful, mutually beneficial connections between the two.
For example, the scientific literature has often explored mindfulness-based art therapy (MBAT), which combines expressive arts with mindfulness and meditation in order to encourage present-moment engagement. This mindful awareness, researchers have found, can relieve symptoms of distress and improve health-related aspects of quality of life, especially when it comes to cancer patients.
Over the years, MBAT has shown major potential for helping those with chronic medical conditions. In fact, this systematic review from 2020 combs through the full spectrum of research on MBAT, finding that it can indeed mitigate both mental challenges, like anxiety and depression, as well as physical symptoms like fatigue. Overall, the review concluded that a synthesis of mindfulness and art can significantly improve personal well-being.
Outside the medical field, combining mindfulness and art has also yielded impressive results. Take, for instance, a 2020 school-based study, which investigated an integrated mindfulness and art program. Researchers observed significant decreases in anxiety, depression, and behavioral problems in children, as well as significant increases in their positive peer relationships! Notably, most students in this study came from low-income families and ethnic minorities. Ultimately, these results suggest that a combination of mindfulness and art can be a useful approach to increase children’s mental health, especially for students from marginalized backgrounds.
The connection between art and mindfulness isn’t just a one-way street, either. Not only can art boost the effectiveness of mindfulness practice, but mindfulness itself can also lead to a deeper, more meaningful experience with art. In fact, one recent study discovered that mindfulness can benefit both art-viewing experiences and art-making activities. The findings suggest that increases in creativity, complexity, and freedom of self-expression can all stem from mindfulness intervention.
Putting It Into Practice
Given this powerful link, it comes as no surprise that Shanthi Project has made an effort to incorporate art into our mindfulness curricula, no matter where or whom we’re teaching.
Five years ago, we wrote about our mindful art classes with teen residents at Northampton County Juvenile Justice Center. These sessions—which have included painting, fabric weaving, collaging, and origami, among other art forms—have resulted in material impacts. Engaging with art encouraged students to share ideas, extend help to classmates, and support each other’s creativity. Our focus on trauma-informed mindfulness has had an impression on the art these students choose to create.
“They aren’t just making art, they are constructing new knowledge about their life experiences, about others, and about their world,” reads our 2019 blog post. “One could argue that they aren’t making art at all, they’re making meaning.”
In a similar vein, we assisted in 2022 with the creation of an art exhibition exploring the role of art and mindfulness in building equitable, diverse, inclusive, flourishing and healthy communities. To dive into this connection, students at Easton's Northampton County Juvenile Justice Center and Dr. Kristin Baxter's First Year Writing Seminar Moravian University students collaborated to showcase mindfulness murals. Other works of art were created by over 1,000 students in elementary schools through the Bethlehem School District. Check out some of their artwork below, and follow this link to read our feature on this memorable partnership!
We also include art in the day-to-day curricula of our mindfulness programming. For instance, our Calm+Kind+Focused in-class sessions often feature art projects as tools for understanding and practicing mindfulness. Because our mindfulness sessions are based upon decades of research about the efficacy of mindfulness, including mindful art was a no-brainer for us—especially given the peer-reviewed link between the two! We’ve featured some photos of our students’ artwork below.
It’s Your Turn: Celebrate With Us!
Since Shanthi Project began, we’ve understood the profound relationship between art and mindfulness—and we’ve applied it in our work to the benefit of those we serve. We’ve seen, time and time again, how powerful the two can be in combination. That’s why we’re so excited to celebrate this connection with you at Easely Yours!
This evening of community, art, and mindfulness is now less than one month away, so be sure to secure your tickets now. Through your support, we can continue to expand our vital work in the Lehigh Valley.
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