Colouring is an activity that usually associated
with children. As we grow older, we put aside our crayons and coloured pencils
in favour of more ‘adult’ writing utensils like pens and highlighters. However
as it turns out colouring has been proven to be very beneficial to adults by
way of De-stressing the said person while they colour.
A friend who is very dear to me has been colouring
for a while and I have to say when she first told me so I was like ok well each
to their own, that is until last week when things happened to get a bit
flustered the general vibe at work was not good and I needed something to calm
myself, something that didn’t involve much thinking something quiet and simple…
so I started colouring… and now I am hooked… it is incredibly calming and also
stimulates brain areas related to motor skills, the senses and creativity..
One of the first psychologists to apply colouring
as a relaxation technique was Carl G. Jüng in the early 20th century. He did
this through mandalas: circular designs with concentric shapes similar to the
Gothic churches’ rose windows. They have their origin in India.
When colouring, we activate different areas of
our two cerebral hemispheres the action involves both logic, by which we colour
forms, and creativity, when mixing and matching colours. This incorporates the
areas of the cerebral cortex involved in vision and fine motor skills. The
relaxation that it provides lowers the activity of the amygdala, a basic part
of our brain involved in controlling emotion that is affected by stress.
In short terms, colouring has a De-stressing
effect because when we focus on a particular activity, we focus on it and not on
our worries and takes us back to our childhood, a period in which we most
certainly had a lot less stress.
There are colouring books available through
Amazon but I found them quite expensive so I just print off the internet as I
go and have found some lovely designs; at the moment I am using coloured fine
liners but as much as I like them they do tend to streak and also run out quite
quickly so I am fishing around for some coloured pencils, my kids ones are so
out of sorts and all over the place, I actually have some copic markers lying
around somewhere from college I should look…. Hmm
Anyhoo I highly recommend this, it may seem silly
or even feel silly at first but I promise you that you will feel amazing
afterwards, don't be fussed over colours or conform to typical norms just have fun and let the color flow....
Happy Colouring….
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