Disclaimer: This is transcribed using AI. Expect (funny) errors.
Mindy Peterson: [00:00:00] My name is Mindy Peterson, I’m with Enhance Life with Music, the podcast where we explore the holistic power of music in our everyday lives through the lens of science and health, sports and entertainment, business and education. I am co-hosting today’s crossover episode with my friends at Arts for the Health of It.
Richard Wilmore: [00:00:21] Yay, yay. I’m Richard Wilmore, one of the hosts of Arts for the Health of It,
Constanza Roeder: [00:00:27] And I’m Constanza Roeder. I’m the other host.
Mindy Peterson: [00:00:29] The three of us are passionate about the power of music and the arts to enhance lives, and we’re excited about this opportunity to join forces on this episode that will be released in both of our podcasts feeds. We’ll be weaving our two worlds together for the next half hour, and hopefully we’ll create something for our listeners that is greater than the sum of its parts. Richard and Stanzy, our podcast and areas of passion definitely overlap and intersect when it comes to the power of music to positively affect our state of health and well-being. You certainly do more of a deep dive into the realm of health and wellness than I do, and you take a look not only at music, but all of the arts. Stanzy, I know you had a pretty powerful personal encounter with arts and health that launched your passion for what you do with your nonprofit and this podcast. Can you tell us about that background and experience and then also tell us how Richard came to join the team?
Constanza Roeder: [00:01:33] Oh yes, of course. Yeah. So I am a leukemia survivor. I had leukemia when I was in high school in the arts were a really important part of how I coped with that serious illness in my life and how I recovered after treatment. I had two and a half years of chemotherapy. So is a significant part of my adolescence and there’s lots of process after that. And the arts are this amazing technology that humans have had throughout history to help us process our experiences and return to equilibrium and express things that are kind of maybe inexpressible and just standard language. And so that was a really important experience for me as a young person. And then when I moved from California, where I grew up to San Antonio, Texas, I started volunteering on an adult oncology unit and I never been in an adult hospital before. I’d only ever been in pediatric hospitals where there were activities and arts and all kinds of supportive services. And that just wasn’t how it was on the adult side. It was rather shocking, and I knew that health care didn’t have to look like that, and I knew that we also don’t magically become a different species when we turn 18 and we no longer need beauty and comfort and support and companionship and all those all those things that have major effects on patient outcomes. The environment that we put people in when they’re ill should be an environment that uplifts the whole person that isn’t just dealing with disease, but is looking holistically and uplifting the person holistically for the best outcomes.
Constanza Roeder: [00:03:16] So it just started with me singing for patients. I studied music in school, so that’s what I knew how to do. And it grew from there, and eventually I started the organization Heart Need Art: Creative Support for Patients and Caregivers as a nonprofit here in San Antonio, Texas. And we hired our first visual artist a couple of months later, and we’ve just grown from there. And now we’ve come into health care spaces and provide bedside music, even music lessons. In certain cases, we do visual arts that includes like window painting, where they can patients can personalize their space. We do writing interventions and we actually we also do a lot of support for health care staff right now. So which is really needed if you’ve been paying attention to the last two years, you know that health care staff are really burnt out and need a lot of support and the arts actually help with that. So. So yeah, it’s been quite the journey and we would not be where we are today with our Richard Quest is Richard. Count me at a time when I was trying to do everything myself. I’ll let Richard take it from there.
Richard Wilmore: [00:04:27] I think she’s still trying to do it all by herself, but she now has a small little team. I was the kid. My dad got really sick with cancer the first time I was in second grade, and as a second grader, I thought one day I’m going to be famous and I’m going to start a cancer charity like that was my goal as whatever, however old you are in second grade and I never got famous and I never started a cancer charity, but I had moved to San Antonio about six months before I met Swansea. I was going through a divorce and. I thought, you know what, I’m going to take myself on the date I need the arts, and I didn’t know anything about arts and health at the time and I thought, I need to, like, make myself happy. And so I went to a theater and someone at the theater said, I want to introduce you to someone. And he was there with a little table and this little cardboard sign that she made by herself. And it was like. And I’m like, What is this woman doing? And she told me all about Hart’s need art, and I thought, Oh my gosh.
Richard Wilmore: [00:05:27] One, I didn’t know what arts and health was, and two, I wish my parents had access to stuff like this. My dad has spent probably years altogether in hospitals. And for him to be able to have something like this and and my brothers and I as children going through that, I wish we had access to something like that to bond with our parents during a time like that. So I just started volunteering. I didn’t know what to do, so I just started volunteering because I could tell that she needed help. And the more I just kept like, I didn’t have a job at the time, I just moved here. So I was like, Just keep giving me more and more stuff. And at one point somebody was like, I don’t think this is volunteering anymore. Like, I think you’re working more hours, but I am. I think we need to start paying you. And so I became the first full time employee at Arts Need Art.
Mindy Peterson: [00:06:20] That’s awesome. I just love hearing people’s stories and how they came to their passions and how they’re applying those into. In your case and making the world a better place, which hopefully all of us can do in some way, shape or form. Yeah, it’s not easy. When you were talking, some of the things that really resonated with me were what you were saying about the holistic approach that you experience with the pediatric care that you got and just the disconnect between that and what you observed in the adult care. That’s really intriguing. And there are so many parts to us as humans and to neglect something so important as that artistic part of us, you know, it’s really kind of like neglecting the spiritual and neglecting the soul of who we are. And we’re so much more than just our physical bodies and those other aspects of us contribute to the physical health of our physical bodies.
Constanza Roeder: [00:07:17] Have a great little story about that. One of our patients. And one of my patients that I worked with for a long time, they weren’t able to get her cancer into remission. And before she went home on hospice, she brought me in a room and she really charged me to do more. This is before I’d even started. Hearts need art, and this was someone who, like before I met her. When I first met her, she was like, Oh, I’m not an artist, I’m not a I don’t really even like music. And then she like, she was like, Oh, you can sing for me anyway, and just became a it became a real source of comfort for her through the months that she was in the hospital and she really charged me with, like u, we need more of this. Like, it’s nice that you’re here once a week, but we need this every day and we need art and we need writing. We need different things that we can do so we can get out of our rooms and out of our isolation and connect and express what we’re going through. And she said something really telling. She’s like, They really put us through hell when we’re in here and we need to remember the reasons why we’re alive as much as we need the things that are keeping us alive. Wow. And that was I feel like that was a profound moment in my life how she articulated that it was so true. And then how do you how do you argue with that? Yeah. I’m like, OK, fine. I guess I’ll I’ll start an organization and change my life. It’s fine.
Mindy Peterson: [00:08:35] That is powerful when you. You mentioned something to earlier about returning to equilibrium, and there is something about that homeostasis that there are so many factors that feed into that that you can’t. They’re not intangibles. You can’t put a finger on it, but it’s so crucial to bringing about homeostasis in our life and our healing and our purpose for wanting to stay alive. Our quality of
Constanza Roeder: [00:09:00] Life now that we’re at equilibrium is from Ellen Dissanayake. She’s an ethnologist that studies art’s role in culture throughout history and across cultures, and she defines the arts as activities that help humans return to emotional and social equilibrium.
Mindy Peterson: [00:09:16] Oh, I love that. Yeah.
Constanza Roeder: [00:09:19] There’s this communal part of it that’s so important. And then there’s this emotional, spiritual part of it at the individual level that’s so vital.
Mindy Peterson: [00:09:26] I need to get that quote. I’m going to pull that out. At some point, she thought that
Constanza Roeder: [00:09:29] She has an amazing and amazing work that she’s done, I think, but we want to hear. I know our listeners want to hear more about you, I think, Richard. Sure.
Richard Wilmore: [00:09:38] Yeah. Mindy, your focus is really on the art of music specifically, but not just its relationship to health. You explore the holistic power of music in science and health, but also in sports and entertainment and business and education. Can you tell us more about your passion for music, life enhancing effect on all the different facets of our lives?
Mindy Peterson: [00:09:57] Sure. Yeah, I’d love to. Well, I can tell you. You a little bit about the story of how my podcast came to be and just my passion behind that. I’ve been a piano teacher since 1991, and so I’ve had these years and decades of teaching piano and being involved in the music world and the music community. And one thing I’ve constantly been amazed by and drawn to are the constant articles that I see in the news, research studies on the power of music. And I’m a huge believer in that, and it’s always exciting to see some of those articles and studies that prove that power of music. And I’m talking about studies that talk about the effect of music, training and music making and the brain development of children. The effect of those same activities on the successful aging of the brain and outsmarting Alzheimer’s. Music is what enabled Gabby Giffords to relearn how to speak after the shooting that she survived. Music has a powerful effect on our athletic performance. It’s been called the legal doping because it can, it can enhance our athletic performance up to 15 percent. So studies like that have always just really intrigued me and caught my attention. I’ve always thought, why don’t we hear more about? I mean, these are really powerful scientific studies. And why don’t we hear more about this? So when I discovered podcasts in general, it was immediately hooked and fell in love with them. And so I started thinking, I need to find a podcast that shines a spotlight on this power of music and the power of music, not only on the lives of musicians or those of us who consider ourselves to be musicians, but its impact on people who don’t consider themselves musicians, either.
Mindy Peterson: [00:11:50] So, for example, imagine going to watch a movie and there’s no music or watching a commercial, and there’s no music. I mean, music is all around us, whether we consider ourselves musicians or not. What’s your hospital? Yeah, yeah. But, you know, imagine going to a baseball game or a hockey game and no organ music, you know, it’s just it’s everywhere and it affects our lives. It’s a soundtrack of our lives. It’s used in marketing when you go to a restaurant. The music is or should be intentionally chosen to either keep you there longer and have you eat slower and spend more, or if you’re in a fast food restaurant to turn the tables and get you in and out of there quicker. So all of those aspects of music and how it, I guess, its relevance to our lives and its prevalence, it’s everywhere have always intrigued me. And so I set out to find a podcast that really shine the spotlight on those different facets of music, and I couldn’t find it. So I ended up starting it. And my kind of my goal and my mission with enhanced life with music podcasts is twofold. One, I really do believe in the power of music to change the world and enhance lives. So I kind of feel like it’s a bit of a community service because there’s so much available to us through the power of music to make life better.
Mindy Peterson: [00:13:12] And I want people to know about that and take advantage of it and utilize that. A second sort of mission and goal for me is maybe not quite as altruistic, and that is, I feel like the biggest job security for us as musicians and music educators is for our community to know and understand the value of music and our shared human journey. Because if if our communities understand that power and that value, they’re going to want to invest in musical experiences and music training, music education. So I kind of feel like it’s the service to musicians everywhere, too, like if people understand the amazing powers of music, they’re going to want to invest in it. Mm hmm. Well said. Well, I would love to get your input on what’s going on right now in the world of arts, especially music, but in the worlds of art in general and health, because that’s your world and that’s something that I’m interested in. My listeners are interested in it. So. Are there any trends that you are you’re seeing? I feel like with what I’m hearing, there’s much more just increasing openness to pulling arts and music into the healing experience and the medical experience. But I’m interested in hearing your perspective on that and you’re you’re much more tapped into that world than I am. What are you seeing in terms of that and just trends in general?
Constanza Roeder: [00:14:40] Sure. Well, there’s certainly a groundswell of arts and health moving in our country even since I started the organization five years ago. There’s I mean, I feel like new ones are popping up all the time, and it’s really exciting to go from having no one to talk to about how to start a. Arts and health program, I eventually found people, but they weren’t near me. And now there’s they’re starting to be more pop up all around, which is really exciting. And there’s so much going on in the field and there are so many different ways. It’s being applied in very intentional ways. Obviously, in health care settings, there’s a lot happening in health care. There’s also applications in health care education. So in medical schools, there’s this increase in awareness about humanities that we actually need doctors who understand humans and human nature as much as they need. Like the science and the medical backgrounds, they also need to understand people. And so medical schools are starting to use the arts in their humanities, training for medical professionals to teach them observation skills, empathy, having tools for their own creative expression to mitigate burnout. Burnout is a really big issue in medical school and then after medical school. So medical education is another big place. Community health is another. It’s an emerging field right now where there’s a lot of it happening, but they’re starting to do more research around it. And that would be things like like, we’ve had several people on our podcast on arts for the health of it that are doing arts for community health, even though that’s not what they’re calling it, but they’re using arts, for example, with inner city kids to help them.
Constanza Roeder: [00:16:27] There’s this one group in California. They use dance as a vehicle to kind of provide wraparound services for underprivileged girls, and they follow them all the way through like they enter when they’re in grade school and they go all the way through graduation. And they have a hundred percent graduation rate where kids go, graduate from high school and go on to college, and they do it through dance. Like that’s the way that they build community and provide wraparound services for people in their communities. So there’s really innovative things happening in the field and really cool research. There’s new things coming, new partnerships even within our government. So the National Institute of Health recently partnered with the National Endowment for the Arts to create the Sound Health Network, which is specifically highlighting research and trying to fund research around the health impacts of music specifically. And that’s kind of a groundbreaking, you know, yeah, connection. The National Endowment for the Arts has partnered with other branches as well, specifically the Department of Defense, to support veterans. So there’s a whole program called Creative Forces, and they’re helping veterans recover from PTSD and trauma recovery. So actually, a lot of a lot of arts and health that’s happening in United States is happening in military communities, which I think people might be surprised to to hear anyway. I could go on and on and on. We just we just went to the conference for the National Organization for Arts and Health and heard all kinds of amazing presentations for groups around the country that are doing cool stuff.
Mindy Peterson: [00:17:58] That’s awesome. It’s so exciting and encouraging to hear what’s happening, especially when you’re talking about what’s going on with health care education, because that’s our next generation of health care providers. So if they’re tuned in to the importance of those intangibles and just the I guess in the past, we’ve referred to it as bedside manner, but it’s so much more than that. One thing about the arts, including music, it has this powerful ability to bond humans, and there’s research behind that too in terms of the oxytocin that’s created in our systems when we’re making music together. But that’s one of those things that you just can’t overlook the power that one of those intangible powers that music and the arts have so great to hear about our next generation being. Yeah, having that included in their education.
Richard Wilmore: [00:18:51] And I feel like it’s one of those. Like I said, I had never heard the term before. I had never knew what it was. But we now have like, I mean, I hear it every day, a gazillion times a day, and I’m like, shocked that people don’t know it now. But then it’s also like starting to become there was just that. What? Like, 60 minute, 20 20. Lady Gaga and Tony Bennett are talking about it. Like it’s starting to become a thing that’s not necessarily everyday speech, but that people are starting to realize like, Oh, there is a connection. I’m not just waking up and turning on my favorite song in the morning to get ready just for the fun of it. Or I go to the gym and it’s the loudest music I can find. You know, I’m not listening to like Mozart on my way to the gym. I’m listening to whatever to get me, like, excited. And so to have a better workout like you were talking about. It’s interesting that kind of the slow trickle of people starting to talk about it. And I don’t know if that’s just because I’m in the world now where I’m like hearing it or if it’s actually maybe becoming something, sir.
Mindy Peterson: [00:19:56] Well, for my listeners and your listeners. Too, for that matter, if you have listeners who are interested in learning more about arts and health or music and health. Are there certain resources in addition to your podcasts in your website, which I know there’s a lot on there, but are there are there resources that you often are recommending to people that people who want to dig into that topic more?
Constanza Roeder: [00:20:22] You want to go down the rabbit hole? There are places I can send you. I am your mad hatter. Welcome.
Mindy Peterson: [00:20:31] Yes, you have your top ones. And then I seriously, I would love to have your list, and I’ll put it in their show notes for this episode on my feed. But yeah, I’m all about these resources and lists. So tell me, tell me your top one.
Constanza Roeder: [00:20:44] You are the two primary ones that are kind of like good gateways in is the website for the National Organization for Arts and Health, which is the Noa Dot net. They have a resource page on there. They have white papers that they publish. They have links to research lists and things they have link to like the World Health Report, which a couple of years ago released a scoping review of arts and health happening around the world and the different ways it’s applied and the impact and all. That’s really cool report. And then there’s another great resource through the Center for Arts and Medicine at the University of Florida, and they have a whole research database that they keep up to date. They actually do a really do an amazing job keeping that database up to date, and it’s like pages and pages and pages and pages of of arts and health research, and you can search the database by keyword terms. So like, how is it applied in cancer, Alzheimer’s, elder care children like you can do different keywords. You can look for music, visual arts writing. So that’s a really great database that I recommend for people that want to go down that rabbit hole. Awesome.
Richard Wilmore: [00:21:51] Also, Google alerts are really fun. That’s what I. I’m very overwhelmed by all of the research nerdy stuff that stands. He loves life, so I have an email like multiple emails once a day that come in with certain keywords. But then I go through to one research and two like, who’s out there doing the work? Like, That’s where we find a lot of our guests for this podcast are through articles that I find that I’m like, Oh my gosh, this person in wherever it’s doing this amazing thing and I want to talk to them about it. So if you don’t want to be overwhelmed by pages, after pages, after pages, just try Google. Yeah, Mindy, I have a question for you where like, I sometimes hate this question because I’m the person who does something and then forgets what I just did. But how long have you been doing your podcast and tell us, like the types of people you have been talking to? If there are some, I’m sure that stick out in your mind of episodes that have maybe changed you in some way. Hmm. Yeah. For that, you can from.
Mindy Peterson: [00:22:56] Yeah. Oh gosh. Yeah, well, I learned from all of them for sure. In terms of the type of people that I talked to, my podcast is not niche at all. So it’s a little bit all over the place in terms of pretty much any topic that’s talking about how does music affect our lives every day? And also how can it make music or how can music make life better? So I kind of on my website, once I got to 100 hundred episodes, I was like, OK, I need to categorize these a little bit more because it’s a little overwhelming for people just to go see this huge list that’s so holistic, but not necessarily organized. So much so I did. I did kind of categorize them into four different categories. One is science and health, one is sports and entertainment, one is education and community. And then the fourth one is business because there are some really unique, really effective business applications of music, too. And I also in that category are things like how is music being used in marketing? If I go into a store and or a restaurant and there’s music playing, what’s it trying to do to me? Like, how is it trying to manipulate my buying? I find that really fascinating in terms of specific gas or episodes that have really sort of changed me or really caught my attention.
Mindy Peterson: [00:24:27] One that will always stand out in my memory is with Richard Casper. Creative Vets is the organization, the non-profit that he started, and he’s a veteran from the Iraq War. He came back with PTSD. He had closed head injuries from explosions there, lost his best friend to an explosion and came back and just was really in a downward spiral. And his story is one that does. Really caught my attention and was really powerful and really moving, and I was just so inspired with how he’s sort of redeemed the suffering and the trauma and the depression that he experienced to transform life or other people through this creative arts organization. So what he does is he works with veterans and also professional singer songwriters in Nashville. Then they bring veterans into Nashville to meet with these professional singer songwriters to create a song. It’s one of those things like who’s going to turn down an opportunity for an all expenses paid trip to go to Nashville and meet with these famous singer songwriters and sometimes artists, too. And so they have these events where they’ll talk enough about the vets experience to create a song together with them. And it’s just been this powerful way for the veteran to share their experience sort of with metaphor without having to get into the graphic details of what they experienced, because a lot of times they don’t want to do that.
Mindy Peterson: [00:26:08] And it’s been a really powerful way for them to share their story in a way that they haven’t been able to before, even with their closest friends and family. There’s been family members who have said this is the most we’ve ever been able to experience what they experience and enter into it and hear their story is through this song. And so that I can’t do his story near justice, what he can. But that was one of those episodes that just really touched me and I thought, Wow, this is the epitome of making the world a better place through music is what he’s doing. So that was really powerful. One other episode, I guess that really comes to my mind is Steve Siler. He has a story about the power of music because of how melody and words are processed in two different parts of the brain. You can read words, you can have words spoken to you, and they don’t really sink in and impact you the same way they do. When you hear those same words as lyrics in a song.
Mindy Peterson: [00:27:14] Because when those words are combined with melody, you’re working with both sides of the brain, and it just allows you to process and integrate those truths in a way that you’re not able to just by reading them on a page or having someone say them to you. And with his light bulb moment, it came through an event that was for survivors of trauma. And he was told going in. These are people who have survived traumatic events, so just a heads up, they don’t want to be touched, you know, don’t go up and give them a hug or something like that. And after he performed this song that was written about and by and for survivors of violence, the women in this event were just lined up to give him a hug. And telling him the words of the song are words that our loved ones have been telling us for years and we’ve heard them. But they just haven’t sunk in the way they did when we just heard them in this song, and it was just a really powerful story. And again, I’m not doing his story near justice. You’ll have to listen to the episode, but those were two episodes and guests that really stand out in my memory.
Constanza Roeder: [00:28:27] Hmm. Beautiful. That’s so cool. And is Richard Casper, the guy who collaborated with President Bush on the portraits? Yeah.
Mindy Peterson: [00:28:38] Portraits, yes. And he was given an award by Bush. It may have been the Bush Library Foundation or something like that. I don’t remember the specifics, but yes,
Constanza Roeder: [00:28:46] That’s so cool. I’m definitely I have to look up that episode.
Mindy Peterson: [00:28:49] Yeah. And his organization is really cool and to follow on social media too, because they it’s a great way to stay up to date and what they’re doing and the results and the fundraisers that you can participate in to support them, the artwork. In fact, you’d enjoy that because they do not just music, but they do a lot with the arts in general. So sculpting and visual arts, things like that. So Instagram, they have a really great account where they’re showing all of the artwork that their participants are creating, so that’s fun to see.
Richard Wilmore: [00:29:20] Do you have resources that people should know about?
Mindy Peterson: [00:29:24] Oh, well, since my podcast is a little more all over the place, I guess I can’t point to just one, but I would say if people go to the to my website under the podcast tab, there’s an Archives tab and there you can see all the episodes and you can see the groupings, those four groupings that I mentioned because people tend to be more or less interested in one over the other. So for example, if you have listeners who are like, I really want to stick with the health aspect health and well-being medicine, go to the Science and Health tab and just look at. Those topics and see what catches your eye or if you’re more into sports and entertainment, go to that tab and just see what catches your eye. And I do have pretty thorough show notes for all of these episodes, so whichever episode in topic catches your eye? Just go to the show notes and there will be resources there.
Richard Wilmore: [00:30:18] Well, also stealing your idea to categorize them?
Mindy Peterson: [00:30:21] Well, we’re
Constanza Roeder: [00:30:22] Getting to that point of quite the library of episodes.
Mindy Peterson: [00:30:25] Yeah. Well, I yeah, I’m I’m sort of an organization nerd. So that’s that’s just right up my alley.
Richard Wilmore: [00:30:33] You have a good spreadsheet. Oh, I do.
Mindy Peterson: [00:30:35] Yeah, my idea of like, if I just need therapy on a on a like Friday night and I have nothing going on, I will organize my cupboards. That’s the nerd that I am when it comes to organization.
Constanza Roeder: [00:30:47] The world needs people like that.
Mindy Peterson: [00:30:49] The world I know like that, right?
Richard Wilmore: [00:30:52] Love a good, color coded closet. I can tell you who would be your dream guest for all of us here on the on the podcast. Oh boy, that means I have to have an answer.
Mindy Peterson: [00:31:03] Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Cause you’re next. My dream podcast guest would probably be Michael Franti. He is a he’s sort of the epitome of somebody who’s using music to make the world a better place. And it’s it’s his music, it’s his lyrics. It’s what he does to what he lends his his name to. He does a lot of pro bono volunteer stuff. He’s just someone who walks the walk and talks the talk, you know, so he’s someone I would love to talk to about just the power of music to make the world a better place. He’s a cool guy, and I love his music. Nice. He’s also a really great person to follow on social media because he does a ton of connecting with fans on there. He does. He did a ton of streaming concerts during lockdown and just a really great way to keep tabs on what he’s up to.
Richard Wilmore: [00:32:02] So have you reached out to him?
Mindy Peterson: [00:32:03] I have. I have. Yeah, he’s been too busy. Understandable.
Richard Wilmore: [00:32:08] But we have a surprise. He’s here in the green room.
Mindy Peterson: [00:32:11] He’s not one of these days, though. I hope I can have him on as a guest.
Constanza Roeder: [00:32:18] Richard, what’s
Richard Wilmore: [00:32:18] Yours? Take him in all of these. So he. Thank you. Um, do you need another minute? I feel like I. Yes, I have to, and I have to figure out which one I want to talk about more.
Constanza Roeder: [00:32:34] All right, I’ll go first. Maybe mine’s one of them, and then
Richard Wilmore: [00:32:36] Maybe I won’t. Probably not.
Constanza Roeder: [00:32:43] I feel like this is like what so many podcasters would say, but I feel like they’re really genuinely is a lot of overlap with Brené Brown’s work, and she’s just down the street. Houston. Renee, if you want to be on our podcast, you know, she you know, her work on vulnerability and creativity is just right up in there of kind of articulating why our hearts need art and like, why some of the roadblocks that we hit in creating art. And so I would love for her to be on on the podcast and to pick her brain about kind of the intersection of arts and health. And, you know, maybe invite her to be a stronger advocate specifically on that topic.
Mindy Peterson: [00:33:28] So sure, she hasn’t reached out to her.
Constanza Roeder: [00:33:32] We have. She also has been busy with her podcast, but they did actually respond like real person what was like a a form response, which was so nice.
Mindy Peterson: [00:33:40] So. Oh God. Yeah, well, she has the podcast and books, and she is so much
Richard Wilmore: [00:33:44] Welcome on her podcast too. It’ll be fine if she wants us. Mine would, probably, which is weird that Stormzy didn’t come up with this, but I feel like this is my answer for every dream guest would be. And then I’ll explain it would be Rosie O’Donnell. Of course, she introduced me to the arts, which helped probably save my life and introduce me to Broadway and theater. And she has used the arts to save her own life and has started the Marvel Art Center for Underprivileged Children and does a ton of arts and health work and may or may not even know it. So she should come on and we could tell her and do a little prep segment.
Mindy Peterson: [00:34:30] Sometimes that’s the best is when people don’t even realize what they’re doing with the arts, and we see it, and it’s fun to just put the spotlight on that. Like, Hey, this is this is the arts that we’re talking about, and you don’t have to have a degree in art or a degree in music or 30 years of experience playing music to take advantage of that.
Constanza Roeder: [00:34:52] It’s very true. And I will just say quickly for this is specifically related to visual arts, but applies to. Creativity in general, there’s some studies that have been done measuring cortisol levels before and after active art making and people actively engaging in creativity. And this one specifically with visual arts. And they found a significant lower cortisol level in participants after forty five minutes of art making. But they found that there was not a significant difference between people who had a lot of experience making art and people who are brand new to making art that they each experience those health benefits. So giving yourself permission to do those things that are creative and expressive. I feel like I see this message a lot in other podcasts that I’m on, but we all need to reclaim the healing power of our own creativity because it’s been stamped down by so many. And Mindy, you’re an arts educator, so you probably see this of, you know, I’m a voice teacher. So I have students that come to me that have been told that they’re tone deaf or they can’t sing or fill in the blank. And patients that we work with are always like, I’m not an artist. I can’t draw, I can’t whatever, fill in the blank. And they always have a story of wounding around their creativity. And if you’re one of those people that’s sitting here and saying, like, Oh, well, I’m not an artist, I’m not fill in the blank, maybe think about why you believe that and what you might need to do to move past that because the arts are too important. I believe it’s Leonard Bernstein. His his quote that music like sex is too important to be left to the professionals.
Richard Wilmore: [00:36:28] We can have that out of your podcast, Mindy. If you need me, you know. You’re risque,
Constanza Roeder: [00:36:35] But it is. It’s so central. It’s so essential to human thriving as individuals and as communities, and especially coming out of this time when we’ve been so isolated from each other and so separated from our especially communal artistic expression that we need the arts now more than ever, we need to go to concerts together. We need to dance together, we need to create together. We need to share our stories with each other because we have to. We have to in order to come back to each other and stop tearing each other apart. And that’s one of the greatest powers that the arts have. And you mentioned it earlier, Minzy, is it? It’s a shortcut to human connection, and that’s really what it’s all about. Love that.
Richard Wilmore: [00:37:15] I’m so glad we connected Mindy. I don’t really remember how we did it, but I’m glad we did. And then I took a trip and got to meet you in real life, right? The rest is history. How can people follow you and connect with you and your podcast?
Mindy Peterson: [00:37:32] Yeah, my website is a great place to go. It has all the links there. mpetersonmusic dot com slash podcast. So if you go there, all the information on the podcast is there and also all my social handles. I’m on LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram. So all of those I’m on regularly and are great places to connect with me. You also emailed me to which my email is on my website. And what about you? Where’s the best place to connect with you?
Richard Wilmore: [00:38:03] We’re anywhere; same thing. One of the two of us is answering your email or Instagram message. You can go to heartsneedart dot org, and that will be the great place to find everything you’ll need to get a hold of us. Awesome. So make sure you’re subscribing to both of our podcasts and listening every week, and we appreciate Mindy being on here and for allowing us into your world and say hello to all your listeners for us.
Transcribed by Sonix.ai