What are the Real Benefits of Creative Coloring? 
Throughout my practice I have offered and encouraged clients to draw with crayons in their meditative journeys for healing and transforming; and to creatively record their inner “dives” and heart’s visions. I am beyond delighted that “adult coloring” has exploded as a most sought-after way to de-stress, unleash creativity, and experience self-healing.
The only real challenge to creative coloring, as I call it, is the core dysfunctional belief system that still runs rampant in our culture that I also continue to hear a lot about: “I can’t draw”. I always respond with a version of “Says who?”
Coloring as Divine Expression
We can all draw; and are meant to recover our full faith and trust in our simple, core ability to pick up crayons, or whatever else we can hold between our fingers, and simply let ourselves meander as we creatively will along a blank sheet of paper – and see what easily takes shape! The requirement for this core recovery of who and what we very much know how to do is the release of scripted, conditioned judgment that has nothing to do with our creative, self-healing core –and everything to do with dysfunction and emotional abuse, actually.
The “adult coloring books” as they are called, are to me mandalas – some of them are literally called that – which in ancient times were “medicine wheels” understood to unleash spiritual as well as creative expression, and upliftment as an expression of divine will as it manifests on the earth plane. Who can argue, after viewing the great Medieval and Renaissance cathedrals of Europe, against the astoundingly creative spiritual expressions of all the stained glass and painted mandalas as endless evidence to bring forth the divine?
How to Tap Into That Divine Force for Your Own Development
Are we in our essence a uniquely multidimensional presentation of the creative, unfolding divine presence? When we draw and color, we truly tap into that “force”; and we open like a spiritual flower, relax and release tension – and enter a correspondingly meditative state in which our intuition freely speaks to us, and we experience “going higher”.
I invite you to grab a set of crayons and try these simple experiments, with these corresponding directions, for what I understand to be a profoundly creative journaling exercise toward self-healing, empowerment and development . . . and see what happens:
Three Key Pictures for Your to Create – and Color!
1. Close your eyes, take three full, deep easy breaths . . . and imagine you are in a field of beautiful flowers beneath a brilliant blue sky, feeling the gentle radiance of a glowingly shining sun. When you feel complete with this inner vision, open your eyes and draw this scene with your crayons – and then draw yourself wherever you’re moved to place you in it. Record your feelings and sensations.
2. Once more, close your eyes and feel yourself easily drawn into a deeper meditative state. Imagine you can call yourself to appears as a child before you, and experience how you and this child connect. As before, when you feel complete in this experience, open your eyes and draw the scene with your crayons. Record your feelings and sensations.
3. Finally, again close your eyes and return to your deeper reflective state. This time, imagine yourself magically transported to a world where your most heartfelt wishes come true; and experience all that unfolds. When this feels complete, once more open your eyes and draw this vision with your crayons. Record your feelings and sensations.
You Can “Draw Your Own Lines” and Actualize
Coloring is to color in “lines that are drawn”. Creative coloring as a journaling exercise for self-healing, empowerment and development allows you to access your core visions for self-healing, empowerment and development – and is such a powerful demonstration of faith, trust and your real potential to actualize.
In that context you “draw your own lines” and create so you can see how it all takes shape. This is how we can manifest and acknowledge our dreams.