ARTICLE; Cape Town; 5 April 2016: Colouring is an exercise in mindfulness and meditation. It has helped me focus on the present moment – where I am, what I am doing and what is happening around me. It has been an expression of creativity without the pressure of a blank page staring back at me with pencil in hand. The selection of colours present moods, feelings and choices made, constantly changing and evolving.
Colouring has strengthened my hand. Writing or typing on a computer or tablet has become a mammoth multitasking event. Email, browsers, notifications all pushing and pulling like currents while I surf the information super highway. When I write by hand, my brain slows down and continuously brings me back to my original train of thought. I have spent the majority of my life on PCs playing games, working and programming using self-taught skills through logic to achieve certain goals. On a keyboard it had all become about speed, a race. Type and edit. My mind had become too competitive to let that challenge simply lie there. A challenge to bang out the words as quickly as possible without putting enough value and thought into each word. Type and edit, delete, start over.
The words in ink speak back to me. My right hand, my body, telling me how it feels. Not necessarily about the words been written, but about me. How am I sitting, the environment around me and how is it impacting the squiggles on paper, tidy or not. It reminds me to breathe deeply and be aware. Writing, as a creative expression, had become a logical expression of 1’s on 0’s and favoured problem solving over creativity.
I am right-handed and write with my right hand. My right hand and arm look and feel stronger. I kick naturally with my left foot and my left leg and foot, look and feel stronger. When I open a bottle or screw top lid, I nearly always first use my left hand. If it is very tight, I will inevitably struggle for a bit with the left hand before switching to the right hand which is visibly stronger and gives a better result. My one side has developed through training and application from an early age to be stronger and physically “preferred”. This does not mean though that my brain will always decide on the sub-conscious level to stick to that preference.
It has been proven that the left brain hemisphere controls the right side of the body and the right brain hemisphere controls the left side of the body. Historical research, especially that conducted by the receiver of the 1981 Nobel Prize in Medicine, Roger Sperry, attributed logic, mathematical processing and language to the left brain while the right brain is mainly in charge of more creative functions such as processing music, comprehension of visual imagery and other spatial abilities.
More recent studies reveal that whether a person is right-brained or left-brained or even left-handed or right-handed, the uses and preferences of the brain’s two sections are far more complex than just a simple left vs right equation. For example, some people throw a ball with their right hand but write with their left. The brain carefully balances and assigns control of certain functions to each side. It’s nature’s way of ensuring that the brain ultimately splits up tasks to maximise efficiency.
An awareness therefore of how your brain has allocated its “resources” can allow you to be mindful (or more mindful) which in turn creates awareness of how your body is behaving or “speaking” to you. How often do we take the time to listen?
So as I finish writing these words and I feel the urge to colour complex patterns and pictures slowly fading away, I have to wonder if colouring was a creative solution to a problem which taught me to write or is writing something completely different.
A gallery of colouring on this website can be found here: – Gallery – Colouring