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In contemporary mental health culture, human inner states are often described in the language of problems, symptoms, disorders and correction. This language is necessary where risk, diagnosis or professional support is concerned. However, its dominance can narrow the ways in which a person understands their own experience. Inner life then appears primarily as an object of observation, control and correction, while authorship of one’s own state is partly transferred to a professional. The purpose of this abstract is to outline another possibility: to consider the elements of an inner state as artistic material, and a consciously shaped state as a work whose author is the person themselves.

The proposed concept of Internal Art is based neither on the assumption that every state is art nor on a rejection of psychological or medical care. It concerns situations in which a person is able to engage independently with their own experience. Instead of asking, “What is wrong with me, and how can it be fixed?”, one can ask a different question: “What exactly constitutes the material of my state right now, and what form do I want to create from it?” Attention shifts from an emotional label to the specific qualities of experience: sensations, images, tension, movement, rhythm, voice, inner speech, the direction of attention, space, weight, pressure, temperature, memory, associations and intention.

This material can be not only noticed but also worked with as a composition: individual elements can be distinguished, selected, intensified, softened and repositioned, and their rhythm, direction, density or relationships can be changed. A state emerges through a sequence of authorial decisions, rather than as a predetermined “correct” response. This is what distinguishes Internal Art from simple regulation. Breathing, movement, attention, imagery or sensory techniques may be familiar from mindfulness, somatic practices, psychotherapy or coaching, but their function here is different: they are tools for working with artistic material, rather than a protocol for eliminating a symptom. Relief or a change in how one feels may accompany the process, but does not determine its artistic value.

The theoretical possibility of this approach is supported by traditions that have expanded the boundaries of aesthetic experience. J. Dewey connected art with the organisation of experience, rather than solely with a material object [1]. In somaesthetics, R. Shusterman considers the living body as a site of aesthetic perception and cultivation [2]. In artistic research, Jane Bacon describes processual attention: the artist’s attention not only to the material but also to the process of perceiving and creating itself [3]. For Internal Art, this provides a basis for distinguishing compositional attention to the elements of a state from processual attention to how choices, changes and the shaping of an inner composition take place.

The concept has particular significance for art pedagogy and psychological education. Learning Internal Art can be understood not as the transmission of a set of “correct” exercises, but as the development of literacy in inner states and the craft of authorship. Just as an artist learns to see colour, proportion, texture, space and composition, a person can learn to distinguish the sensory, bodily, imaginal and meaning-related components of their own experience, notice how they interact, and make conscious decisions about their use. In this case, the professional’s role changes: instead of creating the “correct” state on someone’s behalf, they teach the person to perceive the material, introduce tools, ask precise questions and support the development of independent authorship.

This pedagogical shift also matters because technique alone does not amount to authorship. A person may know dozens of grounding methods, breathing patterns or cognitive techniques and still remain dependent on an external prescription telling them which tool to apply to which state. In the Internal Art model, learning should lead to the opposite outcome: the ability to perceive the material independently, develop an artistic intention, examine how individual changes affect the coherence of the state, and decide what to retain, change or add. Thus, the focus of learning becomes the development of perception, choice and creative responsibility, rather than the compliant performance of an exercise.

The psychological significance of this approach lies primarily in a change in the person’s role: from an object of correction to an author. Models offering alternatives to purely pathologising explanations have already emphasised the importance of context, meaning and personal participation in understanding mental experience [4]. Internal Art takes a further step: it proposes not only explaining a state differently, but also working with it as material for creation. The concept does not claim to replace treatment where treatment is needed. Its subject is another cultural and pedagogical way of engaging with those inner states that a person can safely work with independently.

Internal Art therefore opens a discussion across psychology, pedagogy and art. For psychology, the question is whether all work with inner experience needs to be described in the language of correction. For pedagogy, it is how to teach people to perceive their own states with enough subtlety to act as authors rather than follow a prescription. For art, it is whether an artistic result must necessarily leave its creator and become an external object. Further research should separately examine the psychological consequences of this way of working and clarify the criteria by which an inner composition may be considered an artistic result.

There are three levels/stages we go through in life:

Copying - we learn by imitating others. We copy other people's actions, words and experiences. This is how people learn. In the past, artists' apprentices would only copy the works of masters (whereas today children draw more from their imagination). Nowadays, young musicians are expected to play perfectly from written scores (whereas in the past, they improvised from the very beginning). From birth, a child imitates their parents, and later their teachers.

Masquerade - we learn to adopt and play social and professional masks/roles. Gradually, we become masters at it. 😁

Authorship - taking off the masks and creating. Now, at the masquerade we call life, you can turn up with your own face.

We go through these stages differently in every area of life, sometimes even in a different order. And the same happens within ourselves. 💓 (Think of how a child senses and picks up their mum's mood and way of being; how you listened to, studied and repeated procedures, exercises and techniques from different disciplines. ;))

But it is certainly possible to discover your own ability to create and experience yourself as an author, for whom your own sensations, movements, thoughts, images and experiences become artistic material. And to create your own works of art from it.

You can shape your inner state exactly as you wish, and outwardly it will be reflected in your light. In your actions, choices, deeds, moods and behaviour.