The World Is Quiet Here

Mens sana in corpore sano goes the saying. We’ve focused a lot on the body but we’re casting our light on the aspect of the mind. More specifically, how do we slow down our mind in a world that’s always busy? The answer might be simpler than you think.

- Derrick Tan, Lauren Gui and Wayne Cheong

The body is a temple. Its exterior might be tended to: muscles sculpted, hair properly coiffed. The sterling appearance invites worship and praise. But a temple is just a building if the confines do not reflect the warmth of well-being. The mind is a hurly-burly. Bombarded with bad news, pinpricked with stress, weighed down by disappointment, the anima can only withstand so much. It won’t be long before the cracks appear in the walls, before the fissures give way to collapse.

But the mind can be quiet—a traipse around the park at night, calming music that earworms its way into you—there are means and ways to quell that storm in your head.

Take a trip to a museum, to an art gallery. There’s a serenity to this practice and it’s not just the silence of the place; it’s through the viewing of a piece of art. Never mind what the artist label says; how does that artwork make you feel?

Professor Semir Zeki, a neurobiologist with the University of London, scanned the brains of volunteers while they looked at works of art. He says that when you look at art, dopamine is released and the part of the brain that deals with pleasure lights up; it feels like falling in love. In his study, the increase in blood flow is proportionate to “how much the painting was liked”. But if you feel better when you look at art, what happens when you make it?