Two years ago I worked as an English teacher for children. As it was my first experience in that field, I was not really confident with education methods, and most of the times I was going back home discouraged and exhausted from the emotional charge that the job was loading on me.
Each class was one-hour long, and divided between a review of the past lesson, grammar exercises and final games. I was a very severe teacher, especially considering that the kids were only 6 or 7 years old. In retrospect, they taught me more than I could teach them.
The most serene parts of our lessons were the ones where we were playing, or colouring some drawings.
Now it's time to colour the elephant! Can you find the elephant in the picture?
Kids, let's learn the alphabet together! Please, colour the A, B and C!
As a way to get closer to the children, I used to grab some pencils, a paper, and colour with them. Very often I found myself enjoying a lot. I was just letting my creativity flow, together with theirs.
One day, I was in a shop - one of those where you can find all the unnecessary things you never thought you'd use but that you eventually buy - trying to look for an umbrella because mine was broken. Walking between the shelves, I found a section with nice books of black and white drawings.
Coming from my experience with the children, I had an instinctive thought: why don't I buy one, and colour it at home, when I'm stressed out?
That's how I found out the book of mandalas. It was not the first time I had heard of mandalas. I had already read something in my spiritual enquiries - looking for some relaxation techniques.
The word mandala comes from the Sanskrit, and literally means "circle" - a mandala is a geometric configuration of symbols. They have a deep connection with religion and spirituality, but we are not going to investigate further. The tradition of mandala is deeply rooted in many ancient cultures and it takes a lot of study to fully comprehend it.
Back to my story, it was a nice surprise to see something in that shop that I could find useful, so I didn't think twice: I bought a copy of that book - together with a heating pad; a big, plastic hand to grab cups of coffee when they're too hot; some napkins and a small tin-can with the shape of a television.
It took more than thirty minutes to colour the first page of the book - I was carefully selecting all the different shades I could use, trying to give a different personality to each flower. I felt very satisfied about my job.
The following times I was definitely lazier, sometimes I was just colouring a whole shape with the same colour, with very rough etchings. In those cases, I almost felt like I was losing time. Because I was not into the process.
The first lesson I learned? If you want to properly do something, you have to be mindful.
Well, the first thing I learned was actually that I didn't have to be very picky about that shop - it wasn't selling only unnecessary things, but also cool stuff like that book!
I believe each one of us would get different benefits from colouring a mandala. In my case, here's some of the things I experienced.
An increased ability to focus.
When the mind wanders around, I try to do instead of thinking: that actually helps me to focus on the present moment. When I colour a mandala, the mind is concentrated on one task per time. I close my eyes, choose what colour I want that leaf to be, take some breaths, and when I open my eyes my decision is taken.
Nowadays, due to the massive use of technologies, we have lost the capacity to focus on one task for more than fifteen minutes. We are used to accomplish a lot of microtasks, and things like reading a book, studying something, or even a simple crafting become hard to complete.
Taking time to colour a black and white page is a great exercise - try it! The great news is that, if we train enough, we can bring this ability to our daily lives, and our concentration peak will become higher and wider.
A way to relieve anxiety.
Taking my time to colour a picture helps me to relax and wash away the stress - like a good shower. Okay, mabe nothing is better than a good shower, but you got what I mean!
The act of colouring can definitely be related to some meditation techniques. Meditation is not only done by closing your eyes and focusing on your breath, but also during your daily tasks - trying to be present and feeling what you're doing.
The point is to clear your mind and focus on the present moment.
As all the other meditation techniques, also this has the huge benefit of stress relief.
Fostering the creativity.
When we were kids, most of the times a white paper and some pencils were enough to make us happy. We were giving shape and colours to the world existing in our imagination.
We still can do that!
There's no rule to be creative. Just express yourself. When I am free to draw and colour something, I let my imagination flow.
Mandala helped me improve my creativity because I didn't have to limit and was able to use all the nuances I wanted to - this trained that parts of creative brain that I was not using so much. But this might be different for you: maybe you will not want to focus on the different nuances, as me, but you may find out instead that you like drawing, and start to give shape to your own mandala!
Some conclusions...
Those are the benefits that I had when I bought that book and discovered the fascinating universe of mandalas.
What about you, have you ever tried to colour a mandala? You can share your experience, questions or suggestions, in the comments below!
Meanwhile, here's some webpages where you can find and download some mandalas:
Warm hugs!
C.