The science of feeling alive: how creativity, play, beauty + wonder shapes your brain, health - and humanity 🧠
👋🏽 I’m Katina, Creative Health Scientist.
I’m also the co-founder of Daydreamers, a TED speaker and an Aspen Institute Health Fellow. I hold a Master’s in Clinical Psychology from Columbia University and have spent nearly a decade studying how creativity works in the brain - and why it’s the most overlooked dimension of our well-being.
I came to this work the hard way: Growing up in an immigrant family, I was told creativity was something you did after you were already successful. It wasn’t until I hit burnout - and found my way back to feeling alive again through creativity - that I realized: this wasn’t a personal failing. We’ve all been starved out of our Creative Health. And, it’s costing us more than we know.
That obsession became Daydreamers, the term “Creative Health,” and eventually this newsletter.
Every Monday I send CreativeRx - a short, research-backed essay on what it actually looks like to live creatively healthy in an exhausting world. I don’t see creativity as talent - I see it as a survival skill, a dimension of well-being, and honestly, the very thing that makes life feel worth living.
Join 18,000+ subscribers - and growing - who believe in this work.
Why become a paid subscriber? 🧠
By becoming a paid subscriber you help support this work - and most importantly, keep CreativeRx free for everyone.
For $10/month or $100/year you also get:
Exclusive Long-Form Field Guides 🌾 (2x a month):
Long-form, research-backed deep dives into the science of Creative Health - i.e. the studies, frameworks, and practices I can’t stop thinking about. We cover how to strengthen your creative brain, restore your aliveness and ultimately, build a creatively healthy life that’s authentic to you.
Starting this summer: I’ll be sharing the first drafts of my upcoming book with our paid community!
Discourse Club + Lecture Series (monthly):
Access to live gatherings where our community gets to think critically and creatively, together about how creative science intersects with modern life. Sometimes it’s just us and sometimes I bring in people, researchers + thinkers I admire.
Full archives:
Years of research, frameworks and Creative Health science - all in one place. Becoming a paid subscriber (even just for a month!) gives you access to everything I've built so far. There's a lot in there.
First access:
Early invites to Daydreamers research, speaking events, and everything happening in the world of Creative Health before anyone else hears about it.
And, if you care about this work being in the world - it’s your way of supporting me in expanding this field to as many people as possible 🫶🏽
Want to go even deeper?
Daydreamers is the research lab behind all of this - where we've spent years studying the creative behaviors of thousands of adults and building tools to strengthen Creative Health across the lifespan. If you want to be part of research sessions, get early access to the products we're building and shape what comes next join the waitlist!
Last thing: Creative Health isn’t just a newsletter.
To me, it’s the seeds of an entire movement.
And, every single one of you who chooses to subscribe helps prove to the world that creativity isn’t some “nice to have.” It’s not something we can demean, defund or deprioritize any longer. It’s essential for our brains, our health and our humanity.
The more of us who believe that? The harder it becomes to ignore.
So thank you. For being here. For caring about this work. For choosing to make your creative brain a priority 🫶🏽🧠
- Katina 🧠
