Gilda's Club of Rochester presents
Drawing & Coloring for Clarity, Centering, & Creating
Coloring for adults has become a national sensation since around 2012 (according to an Adobe survey looking at the number of adults). But the fad isn't empty, or rather, it's not without strong empirical support. Here's a couple of reasons why adults benefit tremendously from what was once exclusively thought of as part of the domain of children or possibly artists:
It exercises and strengthens parts of the brain that you WANT to be fit!
"Believe it or not, coloring has intellectual benefits as well. It utilizes areas of the brain that enhance focus and concentration. It also helps with problem solving and organizational skills. This may sound strange, and like perhaps the usefulness is being stretched, but it is all true. Our frontal lobes are responsible for these higher level activities and functions of the brain, and coloring detailed pictures activates all those properties. Think of considering complex color schemes, and using the brain to balance and make the picture aesthetically pleasing. [1]" See "7 Reasons adult coloring books are great for your mental, emotional, and intellectual health on HuffPost."
Coloring – in particular - has been shown to reduce anxiety levels!
"Groundbreaking research in 2005 proved anxiety levels dropped when subjects colored mandalas, which are round frames with geometric patterns inside. Simply doodling, though, had no effect in reducing the other subjects' stress levels." See this CNN.com article summarizing the health benefits of coloring
Coloring is a paradigm of mindfulness and is an outlet for creative impulses that are good and healthy
As we age, adulthood seems to significantly reduce creative outlets – but these creative activities are happiness-boosting and part of innate human psychology. Coloring isn't quite art therapy, but it's financially viable for almost anyone, can give an outlet to these repressed creative desires, and is a paradigm of mindfulness! I say that because in order to actually perform the coloring task, areas of your mind involved in executive functioning and attention must be active, and that disallows your mind from wandering back to things you're stressing about or preoccupied with..we're actually pretty terrible at multitasking, and we can't perform the coloring task without forcing our mind to attend on what's immediately in our present mind!
With these benefits in mind, here are the details for my class on April 19 at Gilda's Club of Rochester – hope you can attend!
View the Gilda's Club of Rochester event description
Location: Gilda's Club Rochester 255 Alexander St., Rochester NY 14607
Audience: All
When: Tuesday, April 19, 2016 –
5:30pm to 7:00pm
To register call (585) 423-9700 or email [email protected]
Join Marjorie Baker Price for "Drawing & Coloring for Clarity, Centering, and Creativity"