The cardinal rules of sleep hygiene apply to children and adults alike. Create a regular bedtime routine for yourself and your loved ones, turn off all devices an hour before bed, turn your bedroom into an inviting and comfortable sleep oasis, avoid caffeinated drinks, read a few pages of your favorite book or grab a sleep journal and put pen to paper to get rid of the day’s worries and stresses.
Now that school’s out and that we have more hours of daylight, it can be daunting to try to stick to any or all of those rules. Whether your kids are outside until the street lights come on, or given extra TV time so you can all chill together in front of some family-friendly summer flicks, they’re probably too tired to read or write anything down once bedtime rolls around. That’s when a 15 or 20-minute coloring session helps everyone wind down.
Coloring Reduces Stress and Anxiety
This post contains affiliate links to products. We may receive a commission for purchases made through these links. Read our full disclosure here.
According to health specialists at Beaumont Health, “Coloring has the ability to relax the fear center of your brain, the amygdala. It induces the same state as meditating by reducing the thoughts of a restless mind.” The act of coloring makes you slow down and shut everything out, which allows your mind to get some rest after a long day at work, at school or at camp.
If you haven’t colored since you were a child, no worries. Coloring is an activity the whole family can enjoy and you don’t have to be an artist or have any drawing skills to do it.
And, it’s good for you.
The Top 8 Benefits of Coloring
Have you ever noticed how excited children get when the wait staff at your favorite family restaurant gives them a handful of crayons and coloring sheets? Or when the table is covered with a large sheet of paper everyone can color on? I love that. And I I’m not the only adult who joins in on the decorating of the place settings. That’s because coloring makes you feel good.
1. Coloring Relaxes Your Brain
According to a study by the University of the West of England (UWE Bristol) involving a group of undergraduate students, researchers found that after coloring for 20 minutes participants reported being more contented, more energetic and calmer than after reading. They also reported higher levels of mindfulness and flow, and they displayed more creative thinking and had better visual attention.
2. Coloring Improves Brain Function
When you’re coloring, different parts of your brain’s cerebral hemispheres are activated. When you choose what colors to use, your creativity is activated. And as you draw lines and color-in shapes, your logic is activated.
According to the National Library of Medicine, color is believed to be the most important visual experience to human beings. It functions as a powerful information channel to the human cognitive system and plays an important role in boosting memory performance.
3. Coloring Induces a Meditative State
While coloring doesn’t replace art therapy, it can be as beneficial as meditation for some people. Focusing on the complex structure of your coloring page helps put your mind into a meditative state. A meditative state happens when you stop focusing on future or past worries and only focus on the present. Concentrating on coloring suspends your inner dialogue and removes negative thoughts and emotions from your mind.
Clinical psychologist Ben Michaelis told HuffPost Live, “There is a long history of people coloring for mental health reasons. Carl Jung used to try to get his patients to color in mandalas at the turn of the last century, as a way of getting people to focus and to allow the subconscious to let go. Now we know it has a lot of other stress-busting qualities as well.”
4. Coloring Improves Motor Skills
The more we draw, the more our hand-eye coordination and fine motor skills develop – skills we don’t use when we’re scrolling on electronics. And while coloring can help children refine the fine motor skills needed for legible handwriting, coloring is good for adults, too. Even if you those stopped trying to beautify your handwriting years ago, moving your hands and fingers can help keep your ligaments and tendons flexible and increase the function of synovial fluid. That in turn can help relieve stiffness and pain caused by arthritis.
5. Coloring Relieves Stress
Coloring requires attention to detail. When you’re focused on the coloring, contouring or filling of positive or negative spaces, you’re not obsessing about the things that stressed you out throughout the day. Finishing your day with coloring can also bring back memories childhood, of a time when your life was less complicated and stressful.
6. Coloring Improves Focus
We use our brains when we draw, and this not only releases endorphins, but helps build new connections and pathways. It opens up your frontal lobe, which controls organizing and problem solving, and allows you to put everything else aside and live in the moment, generating focus.
7. Coloring Reduces Anger
The act of coloring helps replace negative feelings with positivity. Coloring is a joyful activity that leaves little to know room for fear or negative thoughts. Kids and adults alike calm down coloring almost instantly, freeing themselves with joyful thoughts and a sense of accomplishment. Color me Calm and Color Me Happy by art therapist Lacy Mucklow and artist Angela Porterare are beautiful books that will have you feeling zen and help you channel your anger into satisfying, creative accomplishment in no time.
And most importantly –
8. Coloring Improves Sleep!
To get a better night’s sleep one of the first thing a sleep coach will tell you is to avoid using electronics for at least an hour before bed time. This is because exposure to the emitted blue light reduces your levels of melatonin, the sleep hormone. Coloring is a relaxing and electronic-free bedtime ritual that won’t get you all wound up or mess with your melatonin level.
Get The Whole Family Coloring Together
Starting a drawing practice or convincing your kids, teenagers and the other adults in the family that drawing “is good for you” may be difficult at first. A good way to get everyone started, without pushing it on anyone is to invest in a table-top paper-roll dispenser and cover the dining room table with paper you can draw on instead of using a tablecloth. Put a jar of markers, crayons or coloring pencils at both ends of the table and see what happens. I did this for a multi-generational dinner party and the adults enjoyed it as much as the kids.
Another option is to get a giant coloring poster for kids or for adults. Stick it somewhere where you can leave it out for a few days so that anyone can add a touch of color whenever they feel the urge.
And if you want your family to learn some geography while they’re at it, giant coloring maps are also an option. Omy makes giant coloring posters of the USA, the Atlas World Map, the ocean, the cosmos, and cities like Washington , New York and Los Angeles among other things.
Once the whole family has taken to coloring, then they (and you) will be much more receptive to adult coloring books and creative journaling. And you can continue your drawing practice in your own room, before going to bed.
Have you tried drawing to relax? Are you a doodler or do you prefer coloring in pretty (or complicated) patterns and mandalas?
You may also like: Write Yourself to Sleep
Related: Art Therapy to Clear Your Mind