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Background of our program

The stress-response

You have a very sophisticated stress response system that helps you cope with and recover from exciting or challenging situations. A variety of neural networks help you pick up important signals at the physical, emotional, and cognitive levels, all of which are important to your mental and physical health. When they work well together, you are balanced and able to deal with diverse situations in an adaptive way. You will be able to see situations from different perspectives, make well-considered decisions from a place of calm and awareness, and be creative in finding innovative solutions. This allows you to develop healthy coping skills and make the most of yourself, your family, and your business.

Chronic stress

Neuroscience shows that prolonged or chronic stress disrupts the integration of these neural networks. Specifically, stressful situations or events that overwhelm you, over which you have little or no control, but which you have to cope with, disregulate your stress response system. You become unbalanced. For example, you may have trouble sleeping and feel tired all the time; you may have problems with your memory, attention, and concentration; you may suffer from all kinds of physical issues, such as headaches, back pain, or abdominal pain; and you may suffer from worrying, anxiety, overthinking, irritability, or feelings of sadness. You try to gain control, often with the opposite effect, where overthinking, analyzing, and worrying can take over, and you stop listening to physical and emotional cues. This reduces your repertoire for responding to stress. Your resilience decreases.

Not only does this disrupt how you function as an individual, but also how you perform in your role(s) within your organization, and even the work culture of a team. It is a recipe for burning out. Disregulation of the stress response system is considered a major risk factor for several disorders, including depression, anxiety and sleep disorders, cardiovascular disease, and diseases resulting from disregulated immune function, and is increasingly recognized as a major risk factor for mental and somatic disorders across the lifespan.

Resetting Your Stress Response: A Neuroscientific Creative Approach

The good news is that you can train your stress response because the neural networks involved are capable of change, regardless of your age or current state of health. This is called neuroplasticity.

Based on neuroscience, we know three important things:

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1. The neural networks of your stress response system develop based on genes, but more importantly, based on experience. Since these are different for everyone, this means that while anatomically everyone has the same stress response system, its programming is unique to everyone. This explains, for example, why resilience varies from person to person.

2. These neural networks are hardly affected by talking or thinking about them. The main reason for this is that the neural networks involved function largely subcortically, that is, at a non-aware level. This means that understanding why you do what you do and feel what you feel does not change the fact that you do and feel what you do. In fact, just talking or thinking about it keeps you in your comfort zone and does not lead to change. To structurally change these neural networks, and especially the interplay of these networks, experiences are important. Not just any experiences, but salient experiences at the physical, emotional, and cognitive levels. Salient experiences inspire, stimulate, and move you, taking you off the beaten path and out of your comfort zone. It encourages you to explore new avenues, see more possibilities, or look at things from a different perspective. These experiences "force" your brain not to respond on autopilot, which helps to change and reset your stress response.

3. Art is an extraordinary, very efficient and effective way to do that. Making art in this context is not about being a good painter or artist. What matters is that art, almost by definition, takes you out of your comfort zone and activates the neural networks that drive you stress response on a non-cognitive, non-verbal and non-aware level. It immediately and relentlessly reveals how you deal with it, what your challenges are, but also your qualities and potential resources.

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Art Works

Making art and music are, above all, experiential activities, that not only make the dysregulation of the stress response visible and tangible, but also manageable. Neuroscientific research (including qEEG, fNIRS, and MRI studies) shows that engaging in visual arts and music activates the same neural networks involved in the stress response.

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• On a physiological level, creating art lowers cortisol (the stress hormone) and increases heart rate variability, an important indicator of overall health.

• On an emotional level, it reduces feelings of anxiety and tension while enhancing mood and emotional regulation.

• On a cognitive level, it strengthens executive functions such as memory, concentration, and creative problem-solving.

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Through visual and musical art forms, we offer a rich range of approaches within our training program “P’Arts for Life” to reset and restore the stress response system, with the goal of sustainably supporting each individual’s full potential.

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