What is the meaning of mandalas? They are useful to relax, and they also say a lot about our personality when we color them ourselves. We discover its benefits and how to interpret them.
It seems that the new fashion now is the “Mandalas “, they are not only popular as prints on clothes or ornaments but now they are being painted. That is, paint our own mandala ourselves. Adults coloring like children? You have to see what people do with fashions!
In this article you will be able to understand what mandalas are and why they are all the rage.
What is a Mandala?
By Mandala we can understand those drawings that are made up of rounded shapes with concentric circles and repeated patterns. Since time immemorial, the circle has been a sacred figure due to various characteristics, but especially because it has no beginning or end and because it represents cycles.
Multiple cultures have used mandalas in various ways, but always related to meditation, relaxation, self-discovery and reaffirmation of the present.
For example, Tibetan monks use the creation of mandalas to represent their deities. In them they work hard over several days and weeks in fields of sand with colors, starting from the central point towards the edges and respecting the symmetry.
It is a process of creation and connection with your gods. Once they finish their work, they then destroy it as a demonstration of the non-permanence of things in life and begin again.
What does it mean to color a mandala?
Currently the pace that we carry from day to day is frantic. Work, housework, worries, etc. Our mind needs a truce. Many times we experience mental fatigue and exhaustion due to this self-inflicted stress.
And just like when we are physically charged we decide to go to a gym or give ourselves a massage, a good decision to relax the mind could be to color a mandala.
There are many psychologists and therapists who recommend coloring mandalas as a means of connecting with oneself, reducing anxiety and reaching meditation. They describe it as a meditative state.
Meditation is considered as the art of doing nothing, only of perceiving the present and through the coloring of the mandalas our mind enters a state of concentration in the present that drives away our thoughts and forces us to focus on what pattern we are going to color below. On the other hand, the repetitive visualization of concentric circles relaxes us.
During the coloring activity, in addition, both cerebral hemispheres are activated to carry out this action, this fact does not usually happen throughout the day. Our logical hemisphere is focused on choosing colors, looking for patterns and following an order. It is fully operational. And meanwhile, our creative hemisphere is not stopped, since the combination of colors and the search for artistic beauty depend on it. Both are in sync.
On the other hand, when coloring, we unwittingly transport ourselves to our childhood, school work, entertaining afternoons with painting stories, etc. It helps us to gather energy and to look to the future with positivism. At the same time that we reconnect with our inner child, we open the door to creativity that is sometimes forgotten, which will help us in our daily lives to face difficulties in different ways and will encourage divergent thinking.
Interpreting the mandalas
I have already finished my mandala, the experience has been very positive (probably), do I save it or throw it away?
This is a very personal decision, what I do recommend is that you look at it for a moment when it is finished and pay attention to the small details that it can transmit about your state of mind. The colors used, the pressure and the precision when coloring can give you some clue:
- The colors used: can indicate the emotions experienced. For example, if red predominates in your mandala, it can be associated with passion, violence or aggressiveness. However if the predominance is blue, trust, peace and loyalty may be showing up.
- The pressure: clarifies the level of tension in which we have developed the activity. In deeper and stronger lines our body has maintained a greater tension than in the weaker lines. In this way we can also check what our evolution has been throughout this activity. How we start versus how we end.
- Precision when coloring: it can show us the level of concentration and attention that we are paying to the activity since the higher the concentration, the more precision our lines will have.
Interpretations are very subjective, but they can help you recognize your feelings and reflect.
