Try Zentangling
Have you ever done art as a form of therapy?
Anyone who has lost track of time while drawing, painting, sculpting, carving, or doing any other artistic medium will know that hours can go by in a second. (Somewhat like what happens when you write!) You enter the ‘zone’. It’s almost like a meditative state.
“The goal of meditation is not to get rid of thoughts or emotions. The goal is to become more aware of your thoughts and emotions and learn how to move through them without getting stuck.” — Dr. P. Goldin
Photo of art created by the author
With the stress of life right now due to COVID-19 this is the ‘zone’ that we need to put ourselves in right now, as much as possible. Art can be used as a form of meditation. The benefits of meditation are too numerous to mention here. Meditating daily for several weeks provides long term improvement in all facets of daily life.
The benefits that we need to focus on right now are for all areas of living that are related to the current pandemic. Even 5 minutes of meditating can help with:
Decreasing emotional reactivity — helping people disengage from the emotionally upsetting images in all types of media that we are being bombarded with right now. Reduces reactive aggression by redirecting your thoughts.
Reducing loneliness — the feeling of being disconnected.
Improving depression and reducing anxiety in the face of stress and distress. Meditation improves your mood and outlook on life and aids with insomnia and runaway thoughts. It works here by decreasing stress inducing inflammatory chemicals called cytokines.
Reducing the symptoms of stress-triggered medical conditions such as irritable-bowel syndrome, fibromyalgia, post-traumatic stress disorder, increased blood pressure. Meditation helps to relax nerve signals that coordinate heart function, blood vessel tension and ‘fight-or-flight’ responses.
Increasing attention span — task details are better remembered by workers who meditate compared to those who don’t. Right now we need focused leaders, scientists and health care workers who are going to make critical decisions for us. Meditation helps to reverse brain patterns that cause poor attention, worrying and mind-wandering.
Photo of art created by the author
I loved coloring with my kids. It was quality time spent together, it was fun, and it was relaxing. I didn’t realize how much I missed it until I wasn’t doing it anymore!
Who doesn’t remember the smell of new crayons? Or opening up a brand new coloring book when they were young? I can remember the feeling like it was yesterday. Art was always something that drove me in my younger years — I loved to draw and craft. It wasn’t until after I had my first few bouts of depression that my doctor suggested that I make some time for myself and find something to do out of the house. I had just been to an art demo at our local art gallery and I thought that would be the perfect thing for me to do — take an art class.
So I did.
The benefits were great — doing art regularly definitely helped to ease my depression symptoms, and taking art classes got me out of the house, and meeting new people. Some of these people are my very dear friends. They are more priceless than any famous masterpiece to me.
Fast forward several years, and one of the life-long friends who I met through the art club/gallery stumbled upon a form of art called ‘Zentangle’.
Photo property of Val Enders — used with permission
Now this friend, Val Enders, never does anything halfway — it’s go big or go home with her. Every year she finds a new form of art to do — anything from beading to oil painting to encaustic work to carving. And everything in between. She has accumulated so many art supplies that she could stock an art store. She believes in life long learning — and art is her go to. About five years ago was her ‘Zentangle’ year. She took a few of us to a class and I was hooked!
It is a great form of art therapy. Doing Zentangle art took me way back to my coloring years — I lost track of time while doing it. There are numerous sites for Zentangle instruction. It might look complicated, but the patterns are so easy to learn and range from simple to difficult in how challenging they are to do.
A monkey could do it.
“Art is a guarantee to sanity.” — French-American artist Louise Bourgeois
What is mindfulness-based art therapy? (MBAT)
The concept of combining mindfulness and art therapy was formally introduced by Laury Rappaport, a psychologist and writer. In 2009 she wrote a book called “Mindfulness and the Arts Therapies”. Basically MBAT is self explanatory — a combination of mindfulness training such as meditation within an art therapy framework. Mindfulness enhances your ability to be self aware and increases your capacity to reflect on life experiences.
Art therapy became popular in the 1940’s, when therapists began using ‘art therapy’- in order to help clients create art as a way to identify and release hidden emotions. Art psychotherapy was used for a different purpose. Therapists would analyze art created by clients in order to develop insights into various psychological issues and emotions. Art can:
be a way to meditate and self-connect
provide a feeling of flow and freedom
allow for true self-expression
help us to become centered and steady.
Let’s focus on ‘art therapy’.
MBAT works by helping you shift focus, and creates a connection between your imagination and your body — it allows you to express your feelings through art — feelings that you can’t express with words. Scientifically proven benefits of the healing effects of mindfulness based art therapy include:
decreased anxiety
aiding in the treatment of eating disorders, substance abuse, depressive disorders, stress-related issues and anger-related issues
improving the physical illnesses that result from stress
Benefits for children include:
increased self-awareness
self-compassion
resilience
Life right now must certainly be considered a traumatic experience for children, and teens. Help them get through this with some easy art therapy.
It is fun, you can do it in your home, and by doing mindfulness-based art therapy for as little as one hour a day, or even a few minutes, there will benefits to your psychological health.
Try the Zentangle form of art — but prepare to get addicted to it. All you need is some printer paper, cardstock, notebooks — really any paper you have laying around and for a writing medium anything with a sharp tip will do. Your whole family can get involved in this really fun activity.
Kids can do this with crayons — or you can do a piece of Zentangle art and let them color it! A masterpiece created by the whole family would be fun to frame — a reminder of how you stayed grounded through this pandemic and how you bonded with your family.
“There are two distinct languages. There is the verbal, which separates people… and the visual that is understood by everybody.” — Thomas Kinkade
Happy Zentangling!
Corrine Roberts is a wife, mother, avid reader, artist, and aspiring writer. She originally published an earlier version of this piece on Invisible Illness. She lives in Edmonton, Alberta.
Sources: Huffpost, Healthline, Verywellmind, Washington Post