You’ve probably realised by now that I'm a bit of a nerd and love researching, particularly when it comes to anything to do with the neuroscience of creative hobbies. Academic papers, interviews, books, podcasts, Substack articles… I can't get enough.
It's partly because I find it genuinely fascinating, and partly because I want to make sure that anything Kate and I share with you about why a hobby is good for you is actually grounded in science. (And not just marketing spin!)
I recently had the pleasure of sitting down via Zoom with Katina Bajaj, who is a Creative Health Scientist with a Master's in Clinical Psychology from Columbia University.
If you’re new to the concept of Creative Health, I thought I’d share a little about it. Because, if I’m honest, my first reaction was “Oh great! It’s not enough to have to care for my physical and mental health… I now need to care for my creative health, too?!”
But it’s not overwhelming, don’t worry.
In simple terms, Katina studies how creativity works in the brain and why it’s the most overlooked aspect of our wellbeing.
She breaks Creative Health down into three pillars:
Being fully engaged: with whatever you're doing, not only the small things but also with life at large.
Vitality: the capacity to meet challenge and friction with resilience, rather than trying to optimise your way around every hard thing.
Fulfilment: not the external, achievement-based kind, but the kind that comes from having genuine autonomy and intrinsic motivation over the things you choose to do.
When those three things are present, you're “creatively healthy”. When they're not, you’re “creatively starved”, with Katina describes as “a kind of constant emptiness. Not depression. Not burnout exactly. Just… a flatness and going through the motions, as if on autopilot”.
When she said that, I immediately thought “How many women would recognise that feeling and just call it "being tired"?
Throughout our conversation, one thing became clear: we didn't lose our creative health by accident. Productivity culture quietly taught us to devalue it. Somewhere along the way, the things we did purely because we loved them got reclassified as indulgent, unproductive, a waste of time we should be spending on something that “counts”.
But Katina's research shows that creative health isn't a nice-to-have.
When we value our creative health, we don't just feel better, we become more resilient, more energised, and more capablein everything else we do. Our work. Our relationships. Our ability to meet hard things without crumbling.
So this isn't about adding another wellness practice to an already overwhelming list. It's about recovering something we already had… and were taught to give away.
If you've needed someone to tell you that slowing down, switching off, and doing something just for yourself is actually good for your brain... consider this your permission slip.
Over the next few weeks I'm going to share some of the most interesting things Katina told me during our conversation, including one idea that completely changed how I think about time, and another that reframes the way you probably think about dopamine.
Worth sticking around for, I promise.
Tahnée (and Kate)