Colour Me Calm

Stress has become part of people's everyday lives, due to an increasingly demanding world. You have to deal with the pressure of work, the demands of your partner, the children and make time for your social obligations. While meditation, or Yoga has become a popular way for people to combat the effects of stress, many have turned to the basic de-stress technique of colouring in. This is why it works:

Stress affects your mental, and physical health. Long-term stress affects can cause health decay, mood swings, and even decreases your concentration. It affects everyone, from workaholics to stay at home parents and you need some form of de-stressing method to be incorporated into your lifestyle.

Colouring is a form of meditation. It has been known to have a therapeutic effect on people suffering from Cancer, and other conditions such as depression, anxiety and lack of concentration.

If you think back to the last time you sat down with some colouring pens, and book full of drawings, can you remember what that felt like? Can you remember how you could sit there for hours on end, and just get lost in your own creativity?

Like mediation, colouring in allows your brain to switch off from other thoughts. It clears your mind, and focus you on the moment. When the mind is in this meditative-like state, it helps concentrate your focus on the task at hand and gives you a sense of calmness, and clarity.

When you do any form of craft such as cutting and pasting, decorating, painting, and even colouring in pictures, that concentration tends to replace the negative thoughts and images running through your mind, with positive ones. Thus occupying the same space of the brain with any anxiety-related mental imagery, helping you to divert your attention and in turn streamlines your focus to this single activity.

While you sit and colour in the drawing in front of you, your brain is busy making basic connections such as 'which colour goes together', which is also why this technique is used to improve memory because it increases the connectivity between the right and left brain, stimulating the growth of new brain cells. Any form of art is a form of self-expression which can benefit your brain and mental health to make you a happier, healthier person.

A person has about 60,000 thoughts per day of which 95% of them are actually the same couple of thoughts repeating themselves daily. This is why the most basic activity such as colouring or knitting, which doesn't require the brain to do all this thinking, and helps your mind to relax. You will find yourself 'zoning out' when you get completely immersed in your own creative activity.

Art helps boost your self-esteem, providing you with a sense of accomplishment and pride when you look at your creation.

Helps to relieve feelings of agitation, anxiety, depression, aggression, and for some, it can help you fall into a deeper state of sleep.

Put aside about 30 min of your day to go to a quite space, where you can take out your colouring pens and just get lost in the moment. Forget about the rest of the worlds and focus on one simple task as hand. It really works. Go on just try it!

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