Is Coloring Good for You?

Photo courtesy of Pixabay Yeyeqinqin

In case you're looking for another excuse to pick up some pencils (or markers) and do a little coloring, you can now justify your time spent doing so by saying, in all truthfulness, it's good for you!

According to a recent post on the Balance Meditation app blog, science has shown coloring can be compared to meditation for its stress and anxiety reducing qualities. We can improve not only our coloring skills, but our overall wellbeing with coloring.  Turns out it isn't just fun, it's healthy! Putting pencil or marker to paper and letting our creative juices flow can lower our heart rates and reduce harmful cortisol levels. In fact, coloring might be just the ticket for those who've found mindfulness and traditional meditation practices difficult.

The post outlined these four benefits to coloring: stress reduction, improved focus, emotional release and better sleep. Free printables were also provided. 

Even the Mayo Clinic has posted an article espousing coloring as a means to better mental health, saying coloring calms our brains and helps us relax, improves sleep and can help lessen fatigue and body aches. Apparently, we were on to something in our childhoods. And it gets even better – coloring can help reduce heart rates, respiration, depression and anxiety. The article goes on to state, however, that in order to receive all these wonderful health benefits, coloring is best approached from a non-judgmental viewpoint; it should be fun. There is no right or wrong way to color.

All this might not apply to cardmaking exactly, let's face it, we want the images we color and use on our cards to look nice, but it might remind us that fun and relaxation are preferable to perfection.

So whip out those pencils or markers and get coloring...it's good for you!