As the founder of Artful Banyan Tree, Bella Zhang stands as a pioneering force in the convergence of art and well-being promotion. With degrees in Psychology from the University of Edinburgh and Business Psychology from Hochschule für Medien, Kommunikation und Wirtschaft, Bella combines academic excellence with creative innovation. Bella, a certified Expressive Arts Facilitator, employs artistic expression to nurture personal growth and team development. With over 17 years as a dedicated mindfulness practitioner and certified yoga instructor, she integrates physical and mental well-being in her approach to holistic empowerment.
Bella’s extensive international experience, from China to the UK, Germany, and Sweden, equips her with a global perspective and enables her to create an inclusive space that inspires learning and development. Bella’s professional pursuits intersect at the crossroads of art, aesthetics, wellness, and transformational change. She has implemented arts-based methodologies to elevate learning and development, cross-cultural communication, and well-being promotion in both organizational settings and one-to-one coaching.
In an era where innovation harmonizes with mindfulness, Bella’s interdisciplinary prowess illuminates a path to holistic development and well-being for individuals, groups, and organizations. At the helm of Artful Banyan Tree, she envisions a landscape where creativity flourishes and positive change thrives.
1. What brought you to think about aesthetics in your career? And what do you mean by aesthetics?
I was always attracted to things that were ‘beautiful’ and had the urge to create things and surroundings that could bring an aesthetic experience to me and others. Every time I encounter beauty, I can feel a warm and magical sensation in my heart that always makes me smile. This special connection to aesthetics inspired me to create 22 artworks that are linked to the theme of Beauty for my IB (International Baccalaureate) visual arts course. Now that I look back, aesthetics has always been a very important part of my life and work, even though I might not have been consciously aware of that when I was younger.
During times of self-exploration, it’s become clearer to me that aesthetics has not only enriched my daily life and brought me joy but has also empowered me and guided me when I felt confused and lost. Besides my own experiences, people around me (family, friends, colleagues, and clients) are naturally attracted to and touched by their own aesthetic experiences. For example, in my coaching and facilitation process, I often bring in nature-based materials (e.g., leaves, stones, seashells). I’ve observed that when people interact with these materials, tuning into their bodily senses, and following their aesthetic impulses to create, they enter a flow state. My clients often describe this experience as magical, which cannot be elaborated through words, and brings nourishment and healing to their minds, bodies, and souls.
Thus, moving forward, I would like to keep “aesthetic living” as the center of my work with clients, to bring empowerment, joy, and wellness through small moments of beauty. Most of us are under a lot of pressure to perform and focus too much on external stimuli. I firmly believe aesthetics provides an antidote to our stress and anxiety; it helps us reconnect to our senses and inner world, enabling us to practice “being” instead of “doing.”
2. How do you think aesthetics can benefit your work and the work of people in similar roles?
We now live in a culture of “doing,” where too much emphasis is placed on speed, efficiency, multitasking, and productivity. Most of the time, our minds are so restless that we constantly look for new stimuli. The consequences of this are that we cannot stay still, we cannot concentrate, and we cannot be fully present in our interactions with others. This can have a tremendous impact on how we live and work in everyday life. I see this in many people, including myself, when we are under so much time pressure and stress, we work on autopilot and can only focus on what’s next. This often prevents us from sensing what is around us. We no longer see the beautiful flowers on the side of the road; we cannot hear birds singing or the sound of falling rain; and we lose touch with the way our bodies are feeling and end up dismissing our own needs. This is scary to me. Not only would we miss out on a large part of our lives, which is the present moment, but we’d also become ignorant of what is happening and needed in each moment. We are no longer mindful of our thoughts, feelings, and behaviors.
As a facilitator and a coach, I think it’s extremely important to redirect people’s awareness to the present moment and help them reconnect to their bodily senses and their surroundings. This allows them to be temporarily disconnected from their compulsory thought patterns and opens up an inner space that is ready to learn, share, and initiate change. Aesthetics is helpful in this process for both participants as well as facilitators and coaches; it helps us ground ourselves and reconnect to things that we often overlook when we work on autopilot. In addition, aesthetics helps people connect with each other. As human beings, we have an innate love of beauty. Regardless of age, gender, race, ethnicity, religion, or economic status, all of us can have an aesthetic response toward what we perceive through our senses. Hence, in diverse settings, such as corporate environments or schools, we can create an inclusive atmosphere and a common ground for dialogue by allowing participants to co-create an aesthetic experience together. It can be as simple as looking at pictures and sharing what attracts you, or it could be more involved, such as using different sounds (e.g., instruments, vocal sounds) to improvise a music piece together with the theme “Our Team Culture.”
As you can see from these two examples, we enable participants to make meaning out of their aesthetic experiences on a collective level, which impacts their group identity and overall experience within the group. I see tremendous value that aesthetics brings in my line of work, especially when we connect to the IDGs (Inner Development Goals). The world not only needs us to “do” things, but it also needs us, on the individual level, to practice “being,” and aesthetics can help us to reconnect to the deeper part of ourselves and start to appreciate life as it is—perfectly imperfect.
3. Why do you think people neglect or even dismiss, aesthetics as an important aspect of the business?
First of all, I think part of the reason is because it is so accessible. If you look for beauty, you see it everywhere. Just like the air we breathe in, it is deeply ingrained in our everyday lives, but we easily forget about its value and existence. And just like the air, our life is dependent on it. If oxygen is a necessity for our bodily survival, I’d say aesthetics brings emotional and spiritual nourishment to our existence, even though people overlook it.
People associate business with logic, rationality, and the pragmatic side of it. Nevertheless, we know the importance of product or service design and branding. Within the business operation, the impact of work environment, organizational culture, and brand image affects employees’ work satisfaction, belongingness, identification, loyalty, performance, and health and well-being. These factors are all associated with the aesthetics of the business and are vital for the health and long-term sustainability of any business organization.
I think perhaps the traditional business approach or mindset has limited our understanding of business or what matters to business; too much emphasis is placed on short-term profitability, control, competitiveness, and productivity (KPIs). Of course, there is nothing wrong with working towards greater revenues and higher efficiency, what is missing is the humane side of it. Ultimately, people who are running and working for the business are not machines, they are humans who have feelings, emotions, imaginations, and aesthetic needs. Therefore, we cannot take aesthetics out of the equation when talking about running a successful and sustainable business. More people are starting to be aware of this now, as the world is changing rapidly and the old way of doing business is no longer working. There is an urgent need for change, a shift from “either…or” to “both…and,” and aesthetics cannot only help businesses grow and develop, but it can also inspire organizations and their talents to create an organic and regenerative system that fosters holistic development and wellbeing.
4. What do you hope to do in the next phase of your career? And in what way will aesthetics play a part? And how much of a part?
The next phase of my career will focus on well-being promotion and cultivating transformational growth for individuals, groups, organizations, and society as a whole. In this process, art, nature, and aesthetics work together to help restore balance and harmony toward an inclusive and sustainable future. Aesthetics plays a central role because it is an innate desire that connects us, and it is a transformative power that enables us to briefly transcend time and space, shifting our awareness to a state of equilibrium, peace, and joy.
Many divisive voices permeate the news and the internet, and we are also facing enormous challenges ahead. It is time to come back to what connects us all: the longing for beauty, and through perceiving and sensing beauty, we can evoke the inner beauty that radiates the energy of love, kindness, and compassion to the world around us. Luo Hong, one of my favorite photographers and environmentalists, said, “My existence belongs to nature, and I will always strive for its beauty.” He uses his photographs to exhibit the beauty of our planet and invoke audiences’ inner beauty and environmental awareness. His work is inspirational and motivates me to incorporate aesthetics into my daily work. Together, we can create positive changes and make the world a beautiful place to live.
5. Can you tell me something that you think people misunderstand about aesthetics? And what can we do to help change that?
There are many misinterpretations and biases. One of the most stereotypical associations is “aesthetics = being pretty.” Aesthetics is indeed related to beauty, but at the same time, something can be beautiful but not necessarily pretty; these two are not the same thing. This misunderstanding might partly be a result of our spoken language, as we often use these words as synonyms for each other.
Another misunderstanding is to think aesthetics can only be used in art. Indeed, we often talk about aesthetics when we look at artworks, but aesthetics means more than just art. Based on its original meaning in Ancient Greek, aesthetics means sensation and perception. Therefore, we can have an aesthetic experience when perceiving an artwork, but that does not mean aesthetics only exists in the art world.
Last but not least, people often tend to think aesthetics only belongs to certain groups in society, or only certain people have the privilege to include aesthetics in their lives. This has led many to believe aesthetics is too untouchable, too fluffy, too up in the air, and has nothing to do with ordinary people’s everyday lives. The opposite is true. Aesthetics exists in every moment of our life, it does not have to be significant, profound, or intense; it can simply be the morning light that comes through the bedroom window, the scent of the summer breeze, or a genuine smile from a stranger. Aesthetics is accessible to everyone; it is something that connects all of us. It can be something very subtle but extraordinary at the same time. This summer I had a reflection on this topic, and my personal experience inspired me to write a short paragraph on aesthetics and the meaning it has brought into my life:
(original text, English translation below)
用双手去创造美好，
用心去接纳美好，
用身体去感知美好。
在喧嚣纷扰的现实世界中，
让我们用对美的追求与向往，
在内心构建一片净土，
和一个能带给我们愉悦与滋养身心的空间。
美并非只属于高端奢华的社会群体与生活方式，
它存在于生活的每个微小的瞬间。
也许是当早晨第一缕阳光照进窗内的那一刻；
也许是当树叶被风吹拂起地面的那一刻；
也许是当你看见墙面挂着的一幅画的时刻；
也许是在夜幕降临时，
当你不经意看着人潮涌动、车水马龙的瞬间。
人类对美的感知是与生俱来的，
也是敏感而微妙的，
因此我们是可以把美融入到生活中的每个细节。
每一次与美的相遇都会带给我们心灵与灵魂的震撼与感动，
一次又一次，
我们在美中觉醒、重生；
一次又一次，
我们在美中获得新的希望与勇气。
用美带给我们的灵感去创造、去改变、去传递爱、去歌颂生命、去追寻梦想。
(English translation)
Creating beauty with our hands,
Receiving beauty with our hearts,
Experiencing beauty with our bodies.
In the hustle and bustle of life,
We shall use our love and longing for beauty to build a pure land or a sacred space that brings us joy and nourishment.
Beauty does not only belong to high-end luxury social groups or their lifestyles,
It exists in the little moments of life.
Maybe it is the moment when the first ray of morning sunlight comes through the window;
Maybe it is the moment when the leaves are blown off the ground by the wind;
Maybe it is the moment when you see a painting hanging on the wall;
Maybe it is when night falls,
You are standing on the street and watching the busy traffic and people passing by.
Humans have an innate connection to beauty that is sensitive and subtle;
We are always able to integrate beauty into every aspect of life.
Each encounter with beauty astonishes and touches our hearts and souls.
Again and again,
We are enlightened and reborn when experiencing beauty;
again and again,
We find new hope and courage in beauty.
Let us use the inspiration that beauty brings us to create, change, radiate love, appreciate life, and pursue our dreams!
*All photos provided by Bella Zhang, follow her on Instagram.