This Sydney lockdown, I have found myself itching to craft and colour. Something I haven’t done in a while. Last week I dusted off my colouring pencils and printed off some mandalas and set about colouring for a couple of hours. It was heavenly!
Mindful colouring burst onto the scene almost 20 years ago and has since grown into a whole industry. The research indicates that mindful colouring combined with stress reduction techniques decreases stress by 46%, compared to 28% after a month. Nearly every newsagent I visit has a mindful colouring book of some description. And while the research as to the effectiveness of mindful colouring is mixed, it continues to thrive as a strategy to decrease stress.
What is mindful colouring?
Mindful colouring is the very act of colouring pre-drawn illustrations, providing an opportunity to suspend your inner dialogue and engage in an activity that disregards the flow of negative thoughts that can dominate our lives.
5 Benefits of mindful colouring
1. Reduced stress levels: Researchers acknowledge that colouring in does decrease the activity of the amygdala, the area of the brain that gets activated when we’re stressed. Of course, we can derive these benefits from colouring in any picture however mandalas have been found to provide the most stress relief because of their relative complexity, structure and challenge. As stress or anxiety is experienced as varying levels of inner chaos, colouring a predetermined complex design helps to organise that chaos.
2. Mind exercise: Colouring works out both brain hemispheres. It activates the creative areas in the brain when blending or combining colours and it uses the cerebral cortex which promotes motor skills and coordination. The logic part of your brain is also used when you select colours for particular areas.
Colouring also allows us to switch off our brains from other thoughts and focus only on the moment, helping to alleviate free-floating anxiety. According to Marygrace Berberian, “It can be particularly effective for people who aren’t comfortable with more creatively expressive forms of art because the picture creates containment around the process.”
3. An alternative to silent or breath focused mindfulness practices: Carl Jung, a psychiatrist and psychoanalyst believed that colouring mandalas provided inner calm and self-realisation opportunities. He observed in his patients that creating and colouring mandalas symbolized “a safe refuge of inner reconciliation and wholeness.”
4. Adult play activity: It possible that through mindful colouring adults can let go of self- consciousness, lose track of time and engage in the challenge without needing there to be a right way or a winner. If that is the case, then mindful colouring could also be considered a restorative activity as well as stress reducing.
5. Reconnect with your inner child: Many of my clients who start colouring in an effort to reduce their stress start to recall happy childhood memories of colouring and as a result the balance of their thoughts become more positively oriented than negatively.
How to improve your mindful colouring experience
1. Before starting check in with yourself
Before starting to colour in notice how you are feeling in your body, your state of mind and how you feel. Are you warm, cool, agitated, relaxed, satiated? or perhaps something else. Are your thoughts calm, racing, ruminating over the day or perhaps they’re congratulating you for a job well done! Does your body feel tired, heavy, light, jittery or maybe slow? Check in with your senses deliberately to determine how you are before you start colouring in.
2. Whole-body mindfulness
As you start to colour in, notice your process. How you chose your first colour, picked up your pencil, how the pencil feels in your hand held by your fingers, how your whole body moves when you colour in. Your spine supporting your posture, your breathing; is it shallow or deep, where do your thoughts go? Staying present to your whole experience.
3. Colour awareness
As you colour noticing the brightness, intensity, and smoothness of the colours you are working with. Noticing your colour choices and how they might compliment or jar with colours beside them. Perhaps some stand out more than others.
If you feel inspired to engage in mindful colouring, here is a link to a FREE downloadable Mindful Colouring Book I put together with a range of colouring difficulties (image below). Go for it!
If you feel inspired to engage in mindful colouring, here is a link to a FREE downloadable Mindful Colouring Book I put together with a range of colouring difficulty. Go for it!
