Creative Exercises to Relieve Stress: Hows and Whys
- Adilla
- Oct 17, 2025
- 7 min read
Updated: Jan 8
Creativity is a powerful tool in healing us. When you take part in creative activities, with no pressure, you give yourself a chance to express yourself and empower your mind.
However, it can be daunting when trying something you have never tried before. Drawing, crocheting, and pottery are all creative crafts that require a bit of courage to start. So, we prepared some guided creative exercises to relieve stress and start your healing journey with art.
Table of Contents
Why Stress Feels Heavier and More Common for Creative Professionals
The emotional sensitivity of our fellow creatives allows us to experience the highs and lows of emotions while enjoying a movie, a book, or even music. Their high attunement with their emotions made them great creators of equally emotionally moving pieces of art. However, it’s important to recognise that their mental well-being is also quite fragile. This intense emotional engagement can impact their mental load and overall health.
Stress for creative professionals works differently, as creative stress could lead to burnout, affecting their ability to perform their creative work. Unlike other stress factors, creatives can’t simply step away from doing creative things to avoid stress.
Moreover, working conditions that don’t work well with their flexible nature make them more susceptible to stress, leading to emotional heaviness.
Understanding Emotional Heaviness (Not Just Stress)
Surely, emotional heaviness can go away after an ample amount of rest? Not quite.
Dealing with such emotions comes with having to understand where they're originating, with factors that can either be physical or mental. For instance, your heaviness could come from an underlying physical sickness. Research suggests that your gut can affect your mind as well.
When it comes to the mental aspect, conditions like anxiety and depression can cause heaviness to your emotions, too. With that being said, stress could also be a factor that affects those feelings.
What Is Creative Exercise
Creative exercises or practices are intentional activities that you do to enhance and nurture your creative mental health. This fosters the importance of enjoying the process of creating rather than the result and outcome. This is how creatives manage stress, beyond just getting proper rest.
Thus, guided creative exercises to relieve stress are a guide to assist you in trying out something on your own or with your friends. These practices aim to give creative stress relief. So, when doing these practices, keep in mind that you’re not trying to create or produce something as a result. The point of it is to become an outlet for your heavy thoughts and mind.
How Creative Exercises Help Regulate Stress
Reduces Stress Level
Creative activities can reduce one’s stress by releasing dopamine or the happy chemicals, improving overall mood. This regulates their emotion, putting them in a state of calm and relaxation.
Embracing Mindfulness
As engaging in creative work requires proper focus and concentration, it brings a creative into a meditative-like state of focus. This deep focus can tune out your heavy thoughts and feelings, giving you a much-needed mental break.
Processes Emotions
Utilising a creative outlet to ease your mind helps you process your emotions in a healthier way. This external way of expressing your thoughts manages your mind, providing clarity and release from stress.
Enhances Problem-Solving Skills
This creative stress relief helps in enhancing your problem-solving skills, as it encourages you to see art from a different perspective by trying new and different ways to express your thoughts.
3 Types of Creative Exercises for Stress Relief
Writing Exercises
There are plenty of ways to do writing exercises as a form of creative exercise to relieve stress. It doesn’t have to be a short story or anything with a purpose or an outcome. Here are some that you can try:
Write within a set time of 5 to 10 minutes, whatever comes to your mind.
A six-word story can be a mystery, a happy or a sad story within a short sentence.
Look for writing prompts that spark your interest and try out how a story flows.
Visual Exercises
This is perfect for creatives who prefer a more tactile creative experience. This is also something you can do as a warm-up before starting your drawing projects.
Doodling whatever is in your view without worrying about making it look perfect.
Draw multiple circles on a single page and try to create something with them, like a caterpillar or cheese with odd-shaped circles.
Creating mood boards from your interests.
Mindset Exercises
The health of your well-being is essential in ensuring you will be able to produce any creative work. Your creative well-being is interconnected with your mental wellness. So, when your mind feels heavy, it’s time to unload the mind and give it a break.
A walk in nature, surprisingly, will heal your mind as you stay present and take notice of your surroundings.
Pick up a new small habit like spending 10 minutes learning about something new or simple, such as rearranging your shelf for a few minutes in a day.
See things from a different perspective by taking time to switch your thoughts to spark new ideas.
Small Daily Practices to Try Out First
Morning Rituals
Before starting your day, give space to let yourself do something intentional, like free-writing or a 10-minute doodle, as a form of creative exercise to relieve stress. This will help set the tone for the rest of the day and achieve a small creative goal for yourself.
Micro-Breaks
Throughout your day, take mindful short breaks to keep yourself going on a regular workday. This may seem counterintuitive, but taking frequent breaks after short periods of focused work provides your mind with a necessary rest before continuing. Like how runners take a drink mid-running, it keeps them going in the long run (pun unintended).
Evening Habits
As you end your day, take some time to either note down how your day went or try out something new, like a new recipe for dinner or a few pages in a book. Having good downtime sets the tone for your resting hours and how well you’ll wake up the next day.
When Should You Do These Art Exercises
As A Warmup
If your work requires you to go into a deep flow state when working, consider starting a warm-up to get your creative gears going. Just like physical exercises, warming up can help your mind slowly ease into work instead of shocking your brain into the workload.
When Feeling Stuck
When you’re feeling stuck and can’t seem to get any creative ideas going, spend a bit of time doing these guided exercises to jumpstart and break through the creative block.
As a Regular Routine
Doing these guided art exercises often can prevent creative blocks and burnout, as it helps deal with perfectionism. Rather than trying to perfect the outcome, they will come to embrace the importance of progress.
Early Warning Signs Creative Stress Is Becoming Burnout
Sleep Disturbances
One of the early signs of burnout is difficulty sleeping. Despite the feelings of exhaustion, it's hard to stay asleep or even fall asleep.
Frequent Sickness
When sleep is disturbed, you don’t get proper rest, which leads to being more susceptible to falling sick. This can come in the form of colds, headaches, muscle aches and stomach problems.
Loss of Motivation
Creative tasks no longer bring you the same satisfaction that they once did. While factors such as misalignment with your personal goals may contribute to this change, if these activities are starting to feel like a chore or a waste of energy, it could be a sign of stress.
Brain Fog and Concentration Issues
Difficulty in focusing on your work or deciding on simple tasks can be a factor in early burnout. Especially if it comes with experiences of forgetfulness.
What If Creative Exercises Aren’t Enough
Switch Your Environment and Routine
Sometimes, a change of space might be something you need. Go outdoors or change where you do your work. If you have a go at music to listen to, try listening to something else. It could spark your creative mind.
Change Your Mindset and Approach
If nothing seems to work, embracing boredom works too. Our mind always seeks some form of dopamine or rush, when just being bored could actually spark our mind to think more. Or a digital detox to clear your mind.
Key Takeaways
Creative stress relief exercises not only heal your creative mind but also your mental and emotional state.
Stress management for creatives looks different from non-creatives' way of stress relief.
You don’t have to pick up all practices in one go; you can start with one exercise per week.
By building this habit, it’ll help you in the long run.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
Can dancing be part of my creative practice?
Yes, dancing can be part of your creative exercises to relieve stress and to boost your creativity. Taking up dancing classes or even just following videos online can be your guide to getting into them.
Can my creative practice be longer?
Yes, you can set how long and how short your creative exercises to relieve stress are. It doesn’t have to be a set time every time you do them.
Author Bio
With a background in Arts English, Adilla has been a casual writer for various hobbies, including parodies of animated shows and plots for board games like Dungeons & Dragons. She loves to read anything and everything from fantasy stories to articles on tips and tricks. Currently, Adilla resides in Malaysia and is a creative writer at TESSR. One day, she is eager to publish her book. To know more about her, check out her LinkedIn.
Comments