Coloring
How Coloring Can Help Your Mental Health
We all know that kids love coloring. But did you know coloring can be a great mental exercise for adults?
Coloring has proven to be an excellent activity for kids, teens, and adults. Within the last decade, the adult coloring trend has exploded. A variety of coloring books have flooded shelves everywhere, from grocery stores to online retailers. Unlike Coloring books for kids, these for adults with detailed empty patterns of mandalas, animals, and floral designs.
But what makes coloring so popular among people of all ages?
The quickest answer is coloring helps you channel your inner artist, relaxes the brain, and delivers a sense of peace.
Let’s read on to know how coloring shapes our minds.
Coloring is not just enjoyable. In fact, it’s one of the easiest and effective ways of fostering physical and mental wellbeing in kids. This relaxing form of self-expression stimulates creativity and offers many other benefits for little ones:
Adults have been writing, typing, and doing motor skills for years. So, they achieve hand strength for granted.
In the case of toddlers and preschoolers, they are beginning to develop those muscles. Hand strength is essential for all hand-related fine motor skills, like handwriting. Writing needs strength, and coloring helps exercise the same.
For most of us, a crayon is perhaps the first writing instrument we hold. By coloring with crayons, kids fine-tine pencil grip that requires both – hand strength and practice. And, coloring allows for both!
Note that most poor hand grips are developed before our hands are strong enough to support the proper grip.
Coloring books for kids present them with shapes, imagined stories, and interpretation while coloring. While coloring, children decide the colors they want to use in their pictures, which exercises creativity.
Even if kids draw the same shape over and over, they are still engaging their brain’s creative center.
When kids color, they engage their freedom and self-expression. What should I draw? What colors should I select? Will the face be frowning or smiling? Should I use one color or multiple ones? They decide all these things on their own, either consciously or subconsciously.
Coloring gives them a chance to work through their emotions and express the way they see the world. Little ones are often short of words to express themselves. But coloring lets them express themselves without needing vocabulary.
In fact, coloring pages may increase the variety displayed in the pictures children create.
Coloring is a proven focus-building exercise. Children should learn to focus on academic careers as well as professional careers. As kids develop focus, their drawings become more intricate, taking more time to complete.
Benefits of Coloring Books for Adults
A series of reports suggest coloring can be beneficial to adults. The practice may aid relaxation, boost good mood, and even improve sleep spans.
Adult coloring books may relieve stress in the same way as does meditation. Living in the present allows the mind to forget negative thoughts, past stressors, and future worries. And since coloring is an in-the-moment activity, you stay in the present that is beneficial for mental wellbeing:
Do you struggle to fall asleep at night because of inevitable thoughts? Coloring during bedtime offers mindfulness that further helps you fall asleep and stay asleep longer. So, replace your remote control and sleeping pills with adult coloring books and see the difference.
The act of coloring combines creativity and logic. So, it demands the use of both fine motor skills and vision. Choosing the colors to use, creating patterns, and staying inside the lines train your brains to develop an excellent vision and fine motor skills.
With the growing dependence on electronics today, people don’t use fine motor skills as necessary. Many health professionals claim that activities like coloring and brain teasers can delay dementia’s onset.
You can turn coloring into a social activity by engaging in coloring sessions with your friends or family at home or in parks. It’s a great way to relax and bond with your near and dear ones.
We all know that socialization is good for the body and mind. It increases self-esteem, combats stress, and strengthens immunity. Combining the benefits of socialization and coloring can increase the feeling of happiness and improve overall health.
Wrapping Up
If you agree with us, get some good coloring books and explore your creativity. You can choose from a plethora of books, including intricately inked drawings and geometric-shaped design books for coloring.
