Making art to ease the anxiety and depression

Mandala #1

I am not an artist.

I have never been able to draw.

   I have taken one art class in my lifetime, one called “Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain,” which helped me understand that, unlike an artist who draws what he or she sees, I tend to draw what I know.

For example, I know that a dining chair has four legs of equal length, so that’s what I draw—and it doesn’t look like a chair. One who sees like an artist, though, automatically draws the chair with perspective, drawing how the chair appears.

Other than my work with that one class, I have allowed my lack of basic talent keep me from my love of creating, of color and of design.

Then, as I wrote about in a past post, last fall I pulled out my art supplies and started coloring and drawing mandalas. I consider making them part of my therapy.

That making art, being creative, can be therapeutic is not a new idea. According to the International Art Therapy Organization website, art therapy is considered a mental health profession, though it is also used in non-clinical settings.

I have not participated in art therapy with an art therapist. I have simply found that making art, specifically mandalas, helps to calm my anxiety and feel the satisfaction of completing something.

In her blog “The Healing Arts,” Cathy Malchiodi wrote about art therapy using mandalas.

“According to [Carl Gustav] Jung, mandalas symbolize ‘a safe refuge of inner reconciliation and wholeness.’ They have the potential to call forth something universal within, perhaps even the proverbial archetypal Self. And at the same time, they give us an experience of wholeness amid the chaos of every day life, making the ‘sacred circle’ one of the very coolest art therapy interventions for both soothing the soul and meeting oneself.”

An idea for a mandala usually starts with an idea or experience that I want to express. I may not put pencil to paper for days, but I mull over how I want the design to look and what I want to include.



Mandala #2



Sometimes a picture of a mandala is complete in my imagination before I draw it. Other times, I create as I draw.

In mandala #1 pictured with this post, I chose to express my priorities. At the center of the circle, the blue, smaller circle represents for me the center of all life. Around that I have the bond of the wedding rings to represent my marriage, and other symbols to denote my spiritual life, my cats and my writing and reading.

Around that are other symbols representing my love of animals, nature and music and my search for peace.

In mandala #2, I created a picture of chronic depression: the dips into the darkness of depression, the gray of the chronic disorder and the blues and greens of whole life available.

I enjoy creating such pictures to look at later and even meditate on.

The process of sitting and drawing and coloring is relaxing. I focus on the task at hand and practice mindfulness. And creating a mandala teaches me about myself.

I want to venture into other art forms and types. I just need to get over my fear of not being good enough and my notion that if I’m not good at something, I shouldn’t try.

What activities do you engage in to feel soothed, to feel like you’re getting in touch with your real self? Do you make art? If so, what kind? How does it make you feel?





Learning: Meditation is a safe space

When my husband and I got married, it didn’t just change our lives. It changed the lives of our cats.

Waddles had lived with just me for three and a half years. My husband had two cats, Thunder Cat and Sam.

It was not love at first sight when Wa met TC and Sam. It usually isn’t with cats.

They hissed, growled and made other sounds I had never heard. Wa was normally very calm. She hissed more in those first few months in our new home than she had in the years we had lived together.

We did everything the experts say to do when introducing cats: allow them to see each other, but not get to each other. Give them treats when they are together without arguing, thereby rewarding calm behavior. Spray pheromones around the room.

What really worked was time. They had to learn to live with each other, and they had to do it on their timetable.

During the hard times, I put one of Wa’s beds underneath one of the windows in the master bedroom. That way we could keep a protective eye on her.

Eventually, I added a covered bed for her. She loved that space and spent a lot of time there even when peace finally settled on the household. She moved around the house, playing and lounging around. But her place in the bedroom seemed to be her home base.

TC and Sam never bothered Wa when she was there, and they never tried to take it over. It was Wa’s safe space.

Now the space is empty. After Wa died, we took up the beds. We picked up her special blanket and her favorite toys, which still sit on the dresser where we can see them.

When I decided that I wanted to commit to meditating on a regular basis, I wondered where I would do it. I wanted a space in the house where it would be quiet and where I knew I could always go to be still.

I decided to use Wa’s space. I sit on the floor looking out over the bedroom like Wa did. I stare at my candle (battery-powered, of course). Then I close my eyes and listen.

It’s difficult for me to use breathing as a way to center myself. I don’t know if it’s because I have asthma or if OCD makes me think too much about breathing. But I feel out of breath when I try.

Chanting or saying words out loud is also a problem. I feel out of breath or I get into a mindless mode instead of a mindful mode.

So I listen. I listen to the sounds around me: the tick of the clocks, the creaks of the house, the soft puff of the ceiling fan, a train passing through town a mile away. I imagine that my ears are stretching out and turning, like a cat’s.

I practice letting my thoughts go, and I picture them swirling into a globe and spinning around there. I try to watch myself. I try to be here right now.

And I share a safe space with my Wa in spirit.

I have written before about mandalas, and how coloring them, and then creating my own, comforted me during a hard time and continue to comfort me.

The mandala pictured with this post is one that I created to illustrate my meditation, my safe space.

Do you have a safe space? Is it an actual place, or is it a place you go to in your mind? What makes a space safe for you?

Mandalas

I have been coloring and creating mandalas for several months, and I’d like to share what I’m doing with you.

A mandala is at its very basic a circle. According to the book “Mandalas in Nature,” by Sonia Waleyla, and other sources, the word mandala is Sanskrit for “circle.”

The circle is used by many religions and traditions, such as Hinduism, Buddhism, Judaism and Christianity.

According to Wikipedia at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mandala, spiritual traditions may use the circles for such practices as focusing attention, teaching spiritual lessons and meditation.

May stained glass windows in churches can be considered to be mandalas.

The many pictures of mandalas that I’ve seen use different shapes, figures and other drawings, some of them symbolic.

I started coloring mandalas when my cat Waddles became very ill last fall. I had trouble sleeping, reading or focusing on much of anything. Full of anxiety, I sat beside her.

I can’t remember why I turned to mandalas, but I found some free ones on the Internet and printed them out, got out my colored pencils and started coloring.

It gave me something constructive to do when I faced the loss of my Wa but couldn’t yet face the emotions it brought up.

I continue to color mandalas. It is relaxing to me. When I am focused on coloring, especially small areas of the mandala where I have to concentrate, I don’t dwell so much on what I’m worried about. If symbols are involved in the drawing, then I think about those. And looking at the finished product soothes me.

I am making a collection of my mandalas to use in my meditation practice.

As I learned more, I started making my own mandalas with symbols that mean something to me.

I have expanded my collection of pre-drawn mandalas. Those and the mandalas that I downloaded and printed from the Internet are much better drawn than the ones I create, but because of copyright concerns, I didn’t want to post those on my blog.

So here are some that I have drawn.

The first is a mandala that includes symbols of the most important things in my life. God and my spiritual life, my husband, my cats and my writing are the most important. Other important aspects of my life are music, animal welfare and animal rights, nature and the spreading of peace.

The second is an illustration of mindfulness. I got the idea for this one from Jon Kabat-Zinn's book "Wherever You Go, There You Are," where he writes, "In every moment, we find ourselves at the crossroad of here and now." (p. 7 in e-edition).

The third is just a collection of pretty things.

If you’d like to learn more about mandalas, one resource is The Mandala Project at http://www.mandalaproject.org/.