Until recently colouring was a fun activity that was reserved only for children and any adult that bought a colouring book with the intent of using it themselves was considered a bit weird. Well how things have changed! Adult colouring books are even outselling cookery books, how crazy is that. So in a turn of events it appears that colouring is now a form of therapy to relieve both stress and anxiety. I bought my first colouring book last year when I was going through a bout of stress from insomnia and bad health, I thought it would help to reduce my anxiety levels and provide me with that much needed calm feeling I so desperately craved.
Colouring is the new (also cheaper) form of meditation therapy, when you are colouring your not thinking about anything else in that moment, it's just you and your pen and its suprising how much of a distraction colouring can create. It takes you back to your childhood when things were a little easier and you can almost go back to being a child again and escape adult life for a while.
So mindfulness, this is something that colouring can create. In a world where our brains are constantly whirring and on the go from technology overload (social media is the devil haha) our minds are always active and this can cause anxiety or worsen an already existing condition not to mention have us living on edge. This is where colouring could be useful, just half an hour of colouring a day can calm the mind especially if you do it in the evening before bed and help us to unwind.
As a person who suffers with anxiety due to my ill health I am constantly on the look out for distraction and techniques to induce that calm feeling. I use mediation, hypnosis and mindfulness apps but colouring is by far the most therapeutic and relaxing thing I do. It doesn't matter how long it takes to colour in that one picture or even if I used the right colours (well to a certain degree!!) becauses there's no deadlines and it actually doesn't even matter, your just doing it for fun!
You can get some beautiful and intricate colouring books now in so many places, even supermarkets sell them. There's different types aswell ones for meditation and others that can help you to become a little more creative and exercise different sections of the brain.
We spend so much our lives using our phones, computers and watching TV that this allows us to briefly enjoy the simple things in life again and have a little down time.
So put down the phone, grab some crayons and get colouring!
Until next time xo
