This exercise is worth 15 points. To turn in your work
you will need to scan it in and created a PDF file (please send a copy of the
original work as well so I can see what you were trying to copy). You are not
being graded on your art work rather your brief one paragraph write up of your
experience. Comment on what you think of this exercise in creativity and
relaxation, how it felt to actually do the drawing, how you felt during and
after the inverted drawing exercise. Note how you were feeling, what your brain
was doing and engaged in before, during and after the exercise.
According to Kalat for almost all right handed people and
more than 60% of left handers, the left hemisphere of the brain controls speech
while the right hemisphere is responsible for spatial relationships such as
what an object would look like if it was rotated. The left brain is verbal,
logical, rational and analytical while the right brain deals with images,
patterns, dreams, analogies and new ideas. Because of this difference in processing,
the right brain is more conducive to the relaxation response (Davis, Eshelman,
McKay, 2000).
Using the imaginative and creative part of the brain can be
relaxing. This exercise is adapted from The Relaxation & Stress
Reduction Workbook (pg 58).I used this exercise in a Stress and Coping
course. This exercise draws on the theory and work by Betty Edwards an art
teacher and researcher (see the vase-face exercise on the moodle site). She
forces her students to shift from thinking about a drawing exercise to intuiting
the drawing exercise by asking them to draw the image upside down.
The inverted drawing exercise is designed to cognitively
shift you from labeling, logical, rational mode to a nonverbal, visual,
intuitive mode the left brain can’t process. After the inverted drawing
exercise, according to Edwards, “students reported less time urgency, less
attachment to meaning, and a heightened sense of alertness, while feeling
relaxed, calm, confident and exhilarated.”
(adapted from Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain
as it appeared in The Relaxation & Stress Reduction Workbook (pg 58).
Kalat, J.W. (2008). Introduction
to Psychology 9e.
Davis, M., Eshelman, E. R.,
& McKay, M. (2000). The Relaxation & Stress Reduction Workbook.
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