If colouring books were one of your favourite activities as a child, you’re lucky since colouring books are no longer only for kids. In fact, the adults colouring books trend grew up so fast that these little books over flooded many stores’ shelves and became bestsellers in such a quick period of time.
And this is not surprising at all, considering their therapeutic benefits even for adults. So, if you’re wondering why you should wake up the child in yourself again and try out coloring books for adults, we put together just a few of the benefits worth to be mentioned.
Reducing Anxiety and Stress
One of the first reasons to choose adults coloring books for your free time is that they’re great for reducing the stress you accumulated throughout the day and significantly reduce your anxiety.
In fact, colouring those complex shapes and patterns will relax the centre of your brain (your amygdala), reduce the thoughts of your restless mind and induce a state as you are meditating. All of this will generate some peace and quietness in your mind and allow you to get your very well deserved rest after a long and stressful day at work.
Improving Night’s Sleep
In order to get a good night’s sleep, many experts will recommend avoiding getting engaged with your smartphone, tablet, laptop or any other electronic device. This is due to being exposed to emitted light reducing your level of melatonin, the hormone responsible to increase your “sleepiness”.
On the other hand, getting engaged with your favourite adults coloring books won’t only relieve your stress and give you your daily dose of relaxation, but it also won’t disturb your levels of melatonin.
Exercising the Entire Brain
One of the best things about colouring books for adults is that they aren’t a “left” or “right” brain activity, but they’re stimulating both hemispheres and giving your brain an entire “workout”.
Actually, they stimulate your brain’s “creative site” as you pick artistic colour choices and provide the aesthetic balance to the art as well as your brain’s “rational site” or more specifically, your fine motor and problem-solving skills.
Boosting Creativity
If your daily tasks and routines are draining the creativity from you, then “spending some time” with your favourite coloring book for grown-ups will undoubtedly spark your creativity again.
This is because getting immersed into the world of colouring those extraordinary patterns and schemes will completely empty your mind and make you “wander” to get back all of your creative juices. The effect is almost the same as meditating and the freedom of your mind will allow you to work on your personal development and come up with a bunch of new ideas.
Practising Mindfulness and Self-Awareness
Mindfulness is the state when you manage to focus all of your attention on the current moment and accept it without any judgments. Achieving this state is a great starting point if you’re looking for the key elements of increasing your levels of happiness.
If you’re wondering how grown-ups coloring books can help you achieve this self-awareness state, know that when you spend time colouring more and more complex designs and patterns, you need to be more and more focused and try to block out the surroundings. This means that you’re practising mindfulness without even realizing it.
Once you start being aware that achieving mindfulness is great for your well being, you’ll be able to slow down from our hectic world and focus deeply while getting immersed in the world of colours.
Practising Meditation
As we mentioned before, grown-ups colouring books are considered a type of meditation. This is due to colouring helping you find a higher state of consciousness and subtly soothing away anger, anxiety and depression.
In fact, the complex patterns of the art you’re colouring can induce you into a semi-hypnotic state and give you a better understanding of yourself and your place in the world. And this is actually what meditation is about- doing nothing, relaxing and stopping the inner chatter of your restless mind.
Displacing Negative Emotions
As adults, we all have many fears and worries- the endless bills, our families’ well being, our futures etc… And it’s normal dealing with such emotions and thoughts considering our dynamic way of life and the uncertain world we live in.
But since these emotions will always be around, the best thing you can do about yourself is to try to displace them and get immersed into something that makes you happy even for a moment, and grown ups colouring books is just one of the ways to achieve that.
Once you start colouring and focusing on the “hypnotizing” designs and patterns, you’ll see how those negative emotions are slowly starting to fade away and getting replaced with happiness, joy and creativity.
Bringing Happy Childhood Memories
Spending hours and hours of drawing and colouring was almost everyone’s favourite childhood activity since it was very fun, easy and distracting. But it doesn’t mean that you can’t get back this kinds of feelings as an adult. Once you decide to explore all those colouring books for adults online or in your closest brick and mortar store, you’ll see how you instantly become excited about trying out something that brings you back to your childhood.
Great for Some Conditions
One of the most surprising facts about colouring books for grown-ups is that they have been shown as very helpful for treating some common conditions.
For instance, studies have shown that colouring is a very effective therapy for people suffering from Epilepsy. This is due to the focus, mindfulness and difficult motor control work of adult colouring decreasing the occurrence of epileptic attacks.
Also, grown ups coloring books have been shown to indirectly help to treat cancer. And even though cancer’s got nothing to do with your mind’s state, the problem is that all the cancer treatments make you feel extremely ill and distressed. On the other hand, colouring can have a significant positive impact on every patient’s morale, health and side effects from the standard cancer treatments.
Finally, research has also shown that coloring books for grown ups are boosting creativity in people suffering from Alzheimer’s disease and Dementia. Similarly to the people suffering from cancer, these diseases can make you feel devastated and depressed and colouring can make you feel more relaxed and help you exercise your brain. Also, the enchanting smell of crayons and the act of colouring itself will get you back in childhood and stimulate happy memories.
Now that you know how simple grown ups coloring books can impact your mental well being, don’t wait to get yourself one and start immersing in the world of patterns and colours.
