Welcome back to our blog!
We hope you are enjoying this beautiful weather! Not having to wear coats, carry umbrellas or think of what warm clothes to wear certainly helps me feel lighter and putting on a dress, shorts or T-shirts in bright colours gives me a boost and an internal dopamine hit. The past winter felt very long and very cold and the spring and summer is very much welcomed.
Various strategies are advised to support wellbeing, today, with the launch of our newest book On The Reef, I’d like to talk about colouring, which is a great and accessible way to practice mindfulness for many reasons:
Creative expression
To work on anything creative can give a sense of accomplishment and triumph. Creative expression has been proven to support with processing and releasing emotions. You don’t need to be a modern-day Picasso to practice creative expression! Just by choosing a colour you’re expressing creativity- it really is that simple.
Anxiety & stress reduction
To colour is to concentrate on a simple, repetitive task. Similar to meditation, when you allow your brain to focus on something simple, you are able to give it some respite from worries you may be carrying. By switching from a heightened state to a calmer ‘zen’ state regularly through colouring, you can begin to implement this shift throughout the day when you aren’t colouring. This provides an overall reduction in anxiety, stress and depression symptoms, which has been scientifically documented and proven.
Cognitive enhancement
Colouring uses lots of parts of your brain, including parts for creativity, logic and decision making. This enhances your cognitive skills, and improves the neural connections. By activating these parts of your brain whilst doing a calming activity, you allow your brain the ‘room’ to process your thoughts of the day, providing you with more mental clarity.
Improving fine motor skills
Regular colouring can improve hand-eye coordination (though we do encourage colouring outside of the lines...) and can also improve dexterity. In an age of computers and smartphones, it’s good to go back to basics and keep the small muscles in your hands engaged in healthy ways.
Regular colouring is proven to be beneficial for many areas of your physical and mental wellbeing. Keep in mind that it doesn’t have to be perfect, because it’s not the final picture that matters, it’s the time you took for yourself, and the good it did you that is the most important thing. So pick up a pen and just go for it, there is no such thing as a spoiled page.
Colouring books are where it started for us here at Originals and Prints, we wanted to provide an activity for people to enjoy, whilst passively learning about their surroundings and providing themselves with calm in what can feel like an overwhelming world.
(we also just love to colour...)
You can view our books here,
Until next time,
Take care of yourself
0 comments