Adult Colouring Books. Crazy Craze or Fantastic For You?

I have an adult colouring book. In fact, I have two. I also have an assortment of adult colouring pages I have found on free sites online. Now, this could just be a craze, a passing fad or adults longing for their childhood and the positive memories it held. But maybe it is more than that.

Maybe colouring is doing something good for us. Maybe, just maybe, colouring is doing something good for our mental health. Maybe colouring is helping us slow down, breathe, relax, recoup a quiet place and a slower pace that we too often lose in the busyness of life.

There are a number of articles being written about the medical value in colouring for adults and children alike. "Medical Daily" has a great 36 second video on four benefits of colouring two which can directly relate to students in school situations: training your brain to focus more effectively and helping to deal with anxiety or stress. To check out the video and the article on what is actually going on when we colour follow this link: Medical Daily The Benefits of Colouring

The Huffington Post has an article entitled "Coloring Isn't Just for Kids. It Can Actually Help Adults Combat Stress." In that article this quote sticks out for me "in simplest terms, colouring has a de-stressing effect because when we focus on a particular activity, we focus on it and not on our worries." http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/10/13/coloring-for-stress_n_5975832.html 

That is encouraging to me. If we are focusing on colouring, we are less likely to focus on our worries. That is a great place to start our de-stressing, de-compressing, refocusing. There are time when we all need to do that. Some of us may even need to carry a colouring page or a colouring book around with us at work or at school and take a few minutes to refocus between classes or before a big test.


Of course, colouring may not be for everyone but you might be happy to hear (or read, as the case may be) that there are free online colouring pages for almost any interest and books to be purchased for all most any person as well. And let's say you aren't into colouring, some people find putting together puzzles has the same refocusing and de-stressing potential. The difficult part about doing a puzzle is that it is much harder, if not impossible to take with you! Personally, I find baking has a relaxing, de-stressing, refocusing effect for me. But, alas, one can't take the oven to school with oneself either.


Here is another link specifically for high school guidance counsellors... but if you read right to the bottom (or just scroll to the bottom) there are a number of links for free colouring pages from a variety of sources. Colouring For Teens a High School Counsellors Blog