Why Adult Coloring Is Good For Stress (guest post).

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Welcome my dear friend, Samantha. She’s wise. She’s inspiring. She’s offering a freebie. She’s someone to whom *I* turn when I need advice or a boost.

Please to enjoy…

adult coloring sheet

When I was twenty-one I lived in an ashram in the Catskills for about nine months.

I’d spent a few months at a time there before, and six weeks at an ashram in India a few years before that.

We would wake up every morning at about 4:30 am, have chai, then sit for an hour and a half long morning chant. I would then most often go to the “cave,” a meditation space tucked away in a corner, no windows, no light except for one single candle in a blue glass holder in the front of the room.

Perfectly still, perfectly quiet. I loved meditating there. Sitting after having chanted for an hour and a half, it was pretty easy to be still and quiet.

Oh, the days of youth…

Fast forward to 2016. I’ve had a difficult last nine months.

I have a nine year old. I’m running two businesses. My parents had a very difficult and stressful move to a retirement community. Two friendships that were very important to me pretty much imploded. And that’s honestly the tip of the iceberg.

Problems of privilege, I know, but nonetheless I’ve ended up with sleep that is a bit of a shit show challenge, and some chronic anxiety that is constantly hovering around the edges of my mind and body.

I’m not surprised that it’s come to this. I’ve been here before. I come from a long line of anxious people. It’s genetic. It’s learned. It just is. And I’ve worked very hard not to live in that place but sometimes things line up and I find myself face to face with it. That’s life.

I get that sitting meditation is good. But the feelings in my body make it hard to do. Can I? Sure. Would it be good for me? Sure. But do I need to do it even though I hate it? No. Absolutely not. Self-help and self-care shouldn’t suck.

So what to do? Look outside the box.

Enter, coloring.

I have several friends who were raving about it, but I hate a bandwagon. So I ignored them. But after some wearing down I gave it some thought, and really, it made sense. Here’s why:

1. Coloring takes your focus away from your worries and directs it towards the page. We’re so often stuck in the past or worried about the future. Coloring can help you be in the moment.

2. Coloring is a conscious decision to step away from whatever other non-relaxing other thing you might be doing. I set a timer at the end of the night to shut down my computer. Anything I can do to stop the itch to rabbit hole on my computer is a good thing.

3. There are often repeating patterns you can focus on. This approach is part of many different kind of meditation techniques across cultures. Mandalas, labyrinth walks, japa (mantra meditation,) focusing on the breath, to name a few.

4. It’s art. Art has been shown in many studies to help people. Our minds can be calmed by beautiful things. Colors can elicit emotions as well as help us express them. Just look at kids doing art and see the focus and joy. We can get that back too…grownup style.

5. It’s fun. It’s playful. It’s easy. It’s creative. Being a grown-up has its advantages. It can also suck. I’m very lucky that I have a job (two, actually) that I love, a doting husband, an easy kid. I have privilege in my life and good health. And yet I’m often overwhelmed. I can get anxious, and sad, and sleepless, despite my wonderful life and my expertise on the topic of stress. We can all, after all, use a bit of fun to remind us that it’s ok to relax and take a break from all of the adulting.

So I tried it.

coloring stress

Does coloring take the place of systematically figuring out what things are impacting my overall stress load? Certainly not. Is coloring a fun way to decrease my stress? Absolutely.

Once I was in, I went in search of some free coloring pages to download. There were a few I liked but not many. The ones I did like were often not full sized, or not actually free in the end. So I imagined exactly what I would want to download:

Free pages that are original, beautiful, and have thoughtful ideas that support me to decrease my stress without making me feel like I’m reading some cheesy FB meme or missing the boat by not doing more to take care of myself.

I searched. And I searched. They didn’t exist, so I commissioned a friend to do the art and I put words to them that I use with my patients all the time. Here’s one of them:

 

adult coloring

If you want a full set, I’d love to share them with you. Just CLICK HERE enter your email, and download all eight!

Enjoy!

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drsamantha_calltoactionDr. Samantha Brody is a licensed naturopathic physician in private practice in Portland, OR. When she is not in the office you can find her meeting with clients virtually across the globe, speaking at gluten-free events, and writing her forthcoming book The Stress-Less Strategy. She has been featured in The Wall Street Journal, The LA Times, Livestrong, Shape, First for Women, and Huffington Post. Click here to download a FREE copy of Dr. Samantha’s Stress-Less coloring pages.

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Comments

  1. LOL about hating a bandwagon. I am the same way, but maybe if so many love it they can’t all be wrong??

  2. I find coloring really helps with my anxiety. My brain turns off and all I see are colors.

    • Ha. Consider the debt repaid already. I have a secret hatred of hummus (why are there so many ways to spell that?) because my ex husband ate it ALL the time. The upshot is I’m always pleased and vindicated when someone chooses the thing that is not-hummus. So perhaps I am eternally in YOUR debt??

    • I have always hear blues, greens and purple…stay away from yellows, oranges and reds unless you want to “wake up” and “go”!

    • Great question. Cheryl is right that the standard answer is blues and blue derivatives. I’m not sure if it really matters if it’s in this context though? I am calmed when the colors match and make sense. But I also organize my closet by item, color, and then length so order is what’s most important for me. across the board!

      • Well I wouldn’t want my classroom painted orange or red…not for preschoolers anyway! I will take the “standard”…

  5. I love colouring in – it de-stresses my brain and helps me to chill. I’m not artistic and I’m a bit OCD so it suits me to a tee. I love the idea of combining positive phrases with the experience too.

  6. Before the coloring craze I bought water colors, paper and an easel. It works.

    I come from a long line of anxious people. I used to call my parents and others in the family: “the anxiety family,” not very original but…

    • The family part is so interesting. My little one is adopted and I thought by not having bio kids I would avoid passing anxious tendencies down another generation. It appears it’s both biological and learned. Of course. The good news is that if I want to model healthy behavior I can’t let it drown me. So we color… 🙂

  7. Like so many other stress relieving ideas, i will consider trying it, but not say with certainty that i will do it. Otherwise it will become one more “have to” that might lead to more stress, which is not the point!

    • Yes!! One of my main points exactly! The coloring is just an outside the box way to shut down for a sec. I’m working on a book called The Stress-Less Strategy about looking at the big picture and decreasing overall stress load (by redefining stress completely and finding things we have control over) as a primary approach to stress “management” instead of just adding more self care to the to-do list.

      The other thing about another ‘”have to” is that then when we don’t, we often feel like we’re failing. That, is BS.

      I’m presenting a small group workshop this summer on how to do this at a conference called the World Domination Summit in PDX. https://worlddominationsummit.com/academy/the-stress-less-strategy

  10. My daughter is an art therapist and uses different mediums (paint, clay, etc.) to get people to open up verbally and to help express themselves. She sometimes uses these pages if clients are reluctant to take a creative step on their own. Art IS therapy (as is music and movement) and if all are combined….MAGIC!

  11. I love colouring! It is a total stress relief for me and you just reminded me that I need to do it more often. I had a very difficult last year also and have had bouts of anxiety. I am always looking for new ways to relax and unwind. Meditation is great but you can’t always “get there” —> insert colouring 🙂 Wishing you all the best and happy colouring!

  12. It’s so nice of you to put this together. I downloaded all the pages, and since I’m already the owner of several adult coloring books, along with a couple sets of colored pencils, I’m all ready to go. I did discover, that my lack of artistic talent of any kind, frustrates me still today, long after my childhood days of art class at school have ended, when I try to do anything that requires artistic ability. I remember back then, starting those paint by number pictures so many times and making such a mess of them, I never finished a single one. I still can’t stay inside the lines, nor am I consistent with the intensity of coloring I do. But I’m ready to give it another GO! Plus it’s a fun activity with my two creative-minded granddaughters.

  13. Because I see this as a safe space 🙂 I will say my kids are already driving me crazy in the summer is only a little bit underway.
    I’ve been shouting to my friends: SEND WINE.
    Maybe I should be shouting send coloring pencils!!

  16. My friend got me an adult coloring book that I’ve been really wanting to color, but then my hand broke (sigh)–now that the cast and splint are off, super excited to start! :D!

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