When was the last time you engaged in a coloring book? Many adults might struggle to recall unless, perhaps, they participated while assisting their children. Nevertheless, coloring can bring benefits to adults and seniors even without children around, particularly when using a mandala coloring book. What kinds of perks await?
Here are 12 benefits of mandala coloring books for adults:
- Acts as a means of self-expression
- Builds confidence
- Relieves stress and anxiety
- Boosts personal awareness
- Improves focus
- Helps you find your inner child
- Increases dexterity
- Controls blood pressure
- Activates the brain
- Spurs creativity
- Makes you happier
- Helps your immunity
The above list proves how incredible coloring mandalas can be, but we’ve just scratched the surface. Continue reading for even deeper insights into the benefits of meditative coloring for adults and seniors!
1. Acts as a Means of Self-Expression
People express themselves in many ways, including in how they dress, the color of their hair, and the activities they engage in. Artistic self-expression is another outlet, and coloring mandalas is the ideal way to release your pent-up thoughts and emotions.
Self-expression is also beneficial for self-reflection. You’ll have a valuable opportunity to get to know your thoughts, beliefs, decisions, actions, and overall life. Healthy self-expression enables better collaboration and communication.
2. Builds Confidence
How do you feel about yourself? Many people look outward when suffering from low confidence, considering drastic changes like weight loss pills or plastic surgery.
However, self-confidence comes from within and goes beyond skin deep. Harnessing your skills and talents is one method of discovering and strengthening your self-confidence, such as coloring mandalas.
No rule says you must color within the lines. You’re an adult, and you make up the rules. If you want to venture outside of the lines, you can!
However, if you wish to stay within the lines and create a gorgeous mandala that gives you something to feel proud of. You might admire the perfectly complementary colors you selected or your exceptional linework.
Perhaps you took your coloring a step further and added shading or adorned a colored photo with feathers you glued onto the page. You might not have drawn the mandalas, but you created a work of art, nevertheless. You should derive pride from coloring that you can use to build your confidence.
3. Relieves Stress and Anxiety
Stress is an unavoidable part of daily life. While we can’t eliminate stressors entirely, we can change how we react to and deal with stress. This is an important skill for adults and seniors to have, as your anxieties don’t dissipate even if you’re retired. You just have other stresses to contend with.
Stress isn’t good for the body, mind, or soul. It makes relaxing difficult, and stress can rob us of our focus. You might feel incessantly negative and lash out at others.
Unmitigated stress poses many health risks, increasing our chances of developing diabetes, obesity, stroke, high blood pressure, and heart disease. That’s why coloring mandalas matters so much, as it’s a great tool for combating stress.
Coloring puts you in a trance-like, meditative state. You’re not actively thinking about much, which will facilitate the release of your negative emotions. The repetitive action of coloring mandalas soothes you, reducing anxiety and putting you in a relaxed state of mind.
If you create appealing patterns, you might feel even more at ease. Likewise, selecting specific colors can help you destress, using pink and blue can be effective for relaxing.
However, you must choose your colors carefully. For instance, high-energy colors like orange or red can incite you more. To further facilitate stress relief when coloring, put on relaxing tunes or nature sounds such as chirping birds or a rolling ocean.
4. Boosts Personal Awareness
How often do you get time to think about yourself? As we ease deeper into adulthood, the answer becomes rare.
You have so much competing for your everyday attention and thoughts, from your career to your family. You might raise children or take care of an aging parent. You’re an afterthought, and it can begin to show.
Filling in the artwork of a mandala coloring book is your time. It’s your opportunity to escape, take some time for yourself, and think of yourself for once.
Don’t consciously guide your thoughts when you sit down to color. Instead, focus on what you’re doing and let the thoughts flow like rain.
What were you thinking about the most? These are things you need, which you might have yet to properly identify before now because you simply don’t have the opportunity or the time.
Becoming self-aware does more than keep you in tune with yourself.
You’ll also excel in leadership positions, feel more confident, have better interpersonal and professional relationships, make better decisions, communicate more efficiently, and have better emotional regulation.
5. Improves Focus
The hustle and bustle of daily life rarely leaves you with time to focus on much of anything. This “go, go, go” mentality can affect you at work or during other periods when you really need to focus, as you’ll have a hard time tuning out and zeroing in. Coloring mandalas lets you do just that. Minimize distractions as much as possible to stay in the zone, so to speak.
Select a quiet room, color at a time when you know your family won’t need you as much, close the blinds, turn off the Netflix, and mute or shut off your phone. The focus you put into your coloring book endeavors will translate to other areas of your life, such as improving your work focus.
Older adults frequently struggle with focusing, a natural side effect of aging. However, data has found that coloring can improve cognitive functioning. You might notice that it’s easier to focus, as your mind will be sharper even as you get older.
6. Helps You Find Your Inner Child
We all have an inner child deep within us, although many of us have long since forgotten him or her. They got buried by all the responsibilities of adulthood, such as mortgages, college payments, child-rearing, careers, saving money, and retirement.
Your inner child is just waiting to be freed. The problem is many of us don’t know how to get our inner child out of the adult prison we’ve put them in.
The answer? Thinking and acting like a child, even if only for a while, affords us a glimpse into our inner child. You might recall feeling airy and happy after playing a game of dollies or race cars with a child, whether your own or a nephew or grandchild. That’s your inner child coming out.
Coloring mandalas unlocks your inner child, as coloring is inherently a child-like activity. You’ll have fun with what you’re doing, such as selecting colors, and begin to fill in the open areas of the mandala with more abandon.
Finding your inner child can help you address and forgive childhood traumas, learn more about who you were in the past to appreciate your present and future, take better care of yourself, and be a better parent, whether now or in the future.
7. Increases Dexterity
Age reduces more than cognitive functioning. A senior’s dexterity lessens, often due to diseases and conditions like Parkinson’s, osteoarthritis, carpal tunnel, osteoporosis, cubital tunnel, rheumatoid arthritis, and more.
The only way to improve dexterity in the elderly is by using one’s hands. From origami to knitting or building with clay, activities reduce joint pain, stiffness, and tremors.
Add coloring to the list. Coloring mandalas has more benefits that seniors will appreciate, such as stronger motor skills, better grip control, and improved hand-eye coordination.
Younger adults can also benefit from better dexterity, especially considering how seldom so many of us write by hand. Becoming more dexterous with your digits will help you navigate your daily life smoothly.
8. Controls Blood Pressure
Do you have high blood pressure? At least 122 million Americans do who are 20 and older. High blood pressure is dangerous, as it puts you at an elevated risk of heart problems (including heart attack) and stroke.
While the best treatment for high blood pressure is medication and dietary and lifestyle changes, coloring might also impact your blood pressure for the better. The calming, meditative state that coloring mandalas puts you in busts stress, which plays a factor in blood pressure. You can augment other blood pressure treatments with coloring mandalas to see how they benefit your health.
9. Activates the Brain
We’ve all heard the myth that we only use 10 percent of our brains. That’s graciously false, but how much brainpower your daily life requires depends on the activities you select.
For example, coloring mandalas activates dual hemispheres of the brain, balancing your cerebellum. You’ll also get to engage your creative and analytical sides when coloring as you debate which colors to select and the patterns. You’ll also recall the cognitive advantages of coloring for seniors, which makes mandalas a great choice of material for your next coloring day.
10. Spurs Creativity
One of the clearest and strongest benefits of coloring mandalas is greater creativity. Coloring is inherently a creative act, especially once you move away from kiddie coloring books full of characters. These coloring pages aren’t as creative, as you know that Mickey Mouse should have black ears and Pluto should be yellow.
However, a mandala is a blank slate. There is no one right or wrong way to color it.
If you want to experiment with shades of one color like pink, green, or purple, you should! If you wish to try a holiday-themed mandala, like red and green for Christmas or orange and black for Halloween, that’s perfectly festive.
You can choose complementary colors according to what gels are on the color wheel or even contrast colors. What matters most is that you find it visually appealing and engaging.
Harnessing your creativity can make you feel freer, no matter your age. You’ll improve your problem-solving abilities, as you can think on your feet. You’ll express yourself more clearly, feel prouder and more confident, and control stress.
11. Makes You Happier
Have you ever heard of a runner’s high? Some runners chase the endorphin rush because they love how good it makes them feel.
While there’s no such thing as a coloring high, it’s a similar premise. Coloring mandalas can make you happy, so it’s something you’ll want to do often.
Between its meditativeness, creativity, and self-expression, reduced anxiety, increased self-esteem, and a stronger understanding of oneself by unlocking one’s inner child, it’s no wonder coloring brings such joy.
It’s a simple, inexpensive, yet wholly engrossing activity, especially when you get into more complex artwork like mandalas. Happiness is something we can all use more of our lives no matter our age.
12. Helps Your Immunity
We saved the most compelling reason to color mandalas for last. It might make you healthier. A coloring book page can’t block viruses, but it can bolster your immune system by regulating stress and anxiety.
Your health is important at any age in adulthood, but seniors must especially take good care of themselves, as a common illness like the cold can sometimes become deadly if it evolves into pneumonia.
Coloring is used as a holistic therapy for some diseases such as cancer and Parkinson’s. The aforementioned benefits can soothe these painful conditions and improve a patient’s mental health for a better outlook on tomorrow.
It’s Time to Get Coloring with Mandalas
Mandala coloring books are anything but kids’ stuff. These complex but gorgeous artworks help us focus, eliminate daily stresses, keep us healthier, improve brain functioning, and make us happier.
It’s hard to take time for you in today’s nonstop adult world, but you must. Even coloring for 10 minutes a day can do much for your physical and mental health, so grab a coloring book, pick out your favorite crayons or colored pencils, and get to it!
By AL Tran
