Meditate By Coloring Mandalas: How-To-Guide & Benefits

Meditative drawing helps to separate you from thoughts and connect you with creativity and inner stillness. As a result, you experience deep relaxation, fulfillment, and unconditional happiness. 

In a coloring meditation, you mindfully fill colors in a circular, complex-looking geometry called Mandala. While doing so, you may get absorbed so deeply in drawing that you may forget the sense of yourself and slip into a meditative state. 

Now, you may ask,

What Is Mandala?

Mandala is a Sanskrit word, translated as “Circle.” But, It is known as a drawing of complex symbols or shapes. 

In ancient times, various traditions such as Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism refers Mandala as a spiritual tool and a map representing deities. 

However, In today’s world, we often associate the Mandala as a circular design with repeating shapes, geometries, and colors. 

Mandalas can be precise, perfectly symmetrical or asymmetrical, carefully designed geometric. They are often drawn in circles, but they can also be in squares or other polygons.

Now, Let’s see How to do coloring meditation using the Mandala. 

How To Meditate By Coloring Mandalas? 

Here’re the 3 Steps for coloring meditation. 

Step 1. Bring A Mandala Drawing & Colors  

Print a drawing of Mandalas or bring a mandala coloring book. 

Also, bring crayons, pencil crayons, pastels, or markers in various colors as per your preference. 

(If possible, take less variety of colors to avoid confusion while picking them during coloring)

Step 2. Preparation

Once you are ready with materials, go to a quiet space, where no one can disturb you or interrupt you. 

Alleviate all possible distractions, including your phone, and prepare a comfortable sitting position for meditative coloring.

Now, sit in a stable position, with the spine comfortably erect and eyes closed. Then, take a deep breath in and out, and mindfully do deep breathing 5 times. 

When you find yourself calm and relaxed, follow the next step. 

Step 3. Mindfully Start Coloring

When you start coloring the mandala, try to cultivate the present moment awareness (mindfulness) or, in other words, hold your mind in the present act.

If any thought comes to your mind, let it come and go without judging it. 

In case if your mind gets wandered away, bring it into the present moment – coloring the mandala. 

While coloring, don’t think about your choice of color or how the art will look. Instead, start with the one color and later follow your instinct.

The author of numerous mandala coloring books, Susan F. Fincher has quoted the same, “One color on the mandala invites another, like a guest who asks to bring his friend to your party.”

Hence, It is important to listen to your initiation and do what it tells you to do without making any conflict. Because when you go with the flow, you may sink deep into your creative faculty and connect with your true self (soul).

Thus, this meditative experience will give you peace, contentment, or joy. 

11 Benefits Of Meditative Coloring 

Then mindful coloring may help to,

1. Provide relaxation and tranquillity
2. Cultivate positive emotions such as joy, love, contentment, etc.
3. Enhance intuition and creativity 
4. Increase the attention span 
5. Improve concentration 
6. Increase self-awareness 
7. Reduce stress and control anxiety & depression 
8. Reduce negative thoughts and emotions
9. Divert the mind from the temptation of addictions
10. Reduce blood pressure and heart rate 
11. Provide good sleep at night 

Research studies have proved that when people meditate or become mindful, they often get benefited, as mentioned above. Thus, we can also gain such benefits by mindfully coloring the mandalas. 

Do you know that in some health centers, coloring therapies are used to heal patients? 

The University of Pennsylvania Cancer Center and the University of California at Irvine Cancer Center have offered mandala workshops to cancer survivors.

Dr. Herbert Benson from Harvard said that coloring mandalas lead to relaxation and concentration due to repetitive movement that requires putting aside thoughts that arise and return to the point of focus or repetition.

Related Post: 18 Benefits Of Meditation And Mindfulness

Where To Find Mandalas For Coloring? 

Here are some websites which offer printable Mandalas drawing for FREE.

1. Justcolor.net (This site offers various drawing and coloring pages, including mandalas)
2. Supercoloring.com
3. Printmandala.com
4. Colormandala.com

It would be great, if you purchase a mandala coloring book and keep a record of your meditative coloring art. 

Here are some recommendations if you want to do so,

>>> Download 10 Printable Mandala Coloring Pages For FREE <<<

Some Tips For Meditative Coloring 

1. Daily spare some time for coloring meditation because when you do it consistently, your practice will improve, and you may experience a deeper level of association with your inner self. 
2. You can play relaxing, ambient music in the background to find flow while coloring.
3. As said, keep a 4-5 (or less) variety of colors to avoid complications while selecting the different colors.
4. Choose complex mandalas for coloring, becuse It will insist you to focus more and find a flow state.
5. Don’t judge your painting or think about how your painting will look. Here, our motive is not to make an aesthetic art, but to think less and just follow your intuition and achieve a meditative state. 
6. Don’t keep any vain expectations to get something out of this meditative coloring. (For example, I meditate because I will bring happiness or bliss in my life) Because It will distract you and demotivate you.
7. When any vain thought comes to your mind and distracts you, don’t become frustrated; instead, simply re-engage your mind into the coloring like nothing happened.
8. Use a coloring book and keep a record of your colored mandalas.

The coloring meditation technique can easily grab our attention and keep our mind in the present moment which gives us a relaxing, joyful experience. 

Also, this technique doesn’t require any expensive tools or materials, and people of any age, from kids, teens, adults to seniors, can do this meditative coloring in their free time and leverage many benefits. 

If you haven’t started this unique meditation technique yet, I hope you will start it as soon as possible and explore your inner beauty and creativity.  

FAQs

Is Coloring A Form Of Meditation?

Coloring can be meditative when you cultivate the present moment awareness (Mindfulness) by paying attention to what you are doing. 

In other words, when you fix your mind just in the coloring without judging anything and not paying attention to your thoughts, the simple act of coloring becomes a meditation process. 

Remember, merely coloring in the auto-pilot, thinking this and that can’t be transmuted into meditation. 

Do Coloring Books Relieve Stress?

It is scientifically proven that coloring helps to relieve stress, anxiety, or depression in people of any age group. 

Moreover, many medical centers suggest and offer therapies that include mindful coloring exercises to divert the patients’ attention from the pain and to make the recovery process fast.

So, without thinking too much, just start coloring and daily spare some time for it. 

How Does Mandala Coloring Relieve Stress?

When you mindfully color the mandala, it holds your attention and fixes your mind on the act of coloring. Thus, your mind’s grip on the negative, stressful thoughts loosens up and causes relief in stress.

Remember, the stress in your head builds up when you contemplate a negative situation or repeat the negative thoughts repeatedly. 

So, the solution to relieving stress is to divert your mind (focus) to something that pleases you, like coloring the mandala, which everyone likes. Isn’t it?

Ok, that’s it for today.

I hope you enjoyed reading this article and start doing meditative coloring from today itself.

If you have any ideas or advice to share, feel free to comment below.

Thank you. 

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