Promoting health through occupation - inaugural lecture from Professor Gaynor Sadlo
Published 1 February 2010
Event 4 March 2010
Human beings have evolved as a creative species with a unique capacity to express the aesthetic need of each of our senses. Using our hands creatively is an important way through which we express this need but new research has shown it may also unlock healing mechanisms that combat stress and thus defend the immune system.
In her inaugural lecture, Professor Sadlo explains how our exquisitely-sensitive hands evolved as the finest manipulative tools in the animal kingdom, and how their use stimulate and develop the brain. Her research indicates that creative activities such as playing a musical instrument give us feelings of wellness, and of being taken over, or occupied. This diverts us from personal worries and we can enjoy a 'mental holiday'.
This altered state of mind has also been called 'flow' or optimal experience, when self consciousness disappears, time seems to stand still, body and mind feel in harmony and some people report transcendental experiences.
Professor Sadlo is investigating the mechanisms that make the state of occupation therapeutic. The benefits of exercise and nutrition are well appreciated but creative hand use is seen as just as important. The enjoyable, rewarding benefits of manual skills are ancient, natural, free, relatively easy to achieve and could be recognised as a type of practical psychological therapy.
Promoting Health Through Occupation: creative hands, flow and mindfulness
Gaynor Sadlo
Professor of Occupational Science
Thursday 4 March 2010 at 6.30pm
Ward Hall, Queenwood
University of Brighton
Darley Road
Eastbourne BN20 7UR
Light refreshments will be served after the lecture. All welcome.
Read more news...
Contact: Marketing and Communications, University of Brighton, 01273 643022
