Colour Therapy - Grown Up Colouring

'Countryside to Colour' colouring pad

Happy March!


It is a lovely day for colouring. Adult colouring or colour therapy colouring books are becoming extremely popular in our society. With health benefits from mindfulness practice to relieving stress, it is no wonder more and more people are turning to colouring in our fast paced lives.

I have yet to buy my first colour therapy book, however I began discovering colouring before I was aware of these new books and their health benefits.

Several years ago, I had become interested in watercolour paints and bought a colouring pads with detailed countryside images that could be easily filled in with paints or crayons. After finding one just for colouring I had completed a few images but soon had lost interest.

When becoming ill last year, I was keeping myself creative while I was recovering so I could keep my mind off being ill and focus on something that I could gain a sense of achievement from. I found my colouring pad and would listen to music, finding myself miles away as the time flew colouring beautiful images of the countryside and I think that is simply the idea of colour therapy.

As I did more and more, I began to create a small gallery on the spare bedroom wardrobe in which I decided to recouperate in, so make me feel more cheerful and give something for people who came to stay, a chance to look at and admire.


It's been a great way for me to see how far I have come in my recovery, particularly when I have matched the seasons to my mood. I'm not much of an artistic drawer, but there is something satisfying about colouring in a great drawing no matter what your ability is.

'Countryside to Colour' - colouring pad

My Tiny Buddha Post

It is such a rewarding feeling when your post goes up onto a blog. I have been a regular reader of the site Tiny Buddha during my anxiety and many posts have made feel a bit more cosy inside and less alone. As my recovery was making good progress, I decided it was time for me to share my story like the millions of you have on Tiny Buddha and see if I would be able to help others too.

Having to wait several months for my story to arrive was exciting but I also couldn't wait. Lori, the creator of the site sent me an email with my link as promised, and within hours I had already received two comments from people who also suffered with chronic anxiety. I got that warm fuzzy feeling but it was ten times warmer than reading someone else's post. It was great knowing how similar their stories were and how encouraging they were. It is such an accepting community.

When you write about experiences of anxiety and depression you still feel inside like you are the only one and even though you have friends and family around, they won't be able to know exactly how you feel completely. My friend told me they had severe depression the other day, and although my depression was mild I knew exactly what it was like to feel embarrassed, helpless and alone. You want to remain strong in front of the eyes of the people who care about you and don't want them to judge you.

My friend wanted to pass on to our other friend about her situation to which they managed to understand a little because their mother had had depression. They said "We never use phrases like: That's so depressing - because feeling upset isn't the same as having depression'. I said that was a really sensible thing to do. It made me think of the times when people would tell me to 'just relax' and I felt they would almost be annoyed at for me just not trying. But the thing is, if you have anxiety or depression, you can't just cheer up or relax, and believe me, they are the two things the we want most in the world when we feel this way and we get frustrated that we can't have it.

Since January my recovery has tapered off and I feel pretty much my normal self. I am learning to relax but rather than telling myself to literally, I am using kindness and self-acceptance which gradually gets absorbed into my mind. What I have learned with anxiety is what we fear the worst. I remember in my worst states that I feel the world would just suddenly fail against me and that my body wouldn't be able to take anymore pressure I was giving it. It's always hard to face fear in the face and feel those horrible sensations. It's like walking through a current going the opposite way. You want to trek to that light of happiness. Even if you feel like you are going nowhere, you have to remember that each step you are getting closer. You just have to remember that you are ok and you and your body will get through this.

There were many times where I would just wish my anxiety to be gone, many times when I thought it had gone, but when it did 'disappear' it disappeared too quickly. It's only having recovered slowly that things have averaged out.

Regarding my Yoga, someone asked in the comment of my Tiny Buddha post…Well I am getting there. It's about carving out time and committing and that will be something that will take its time also.

For now, here is my Tiny Buddha post …. Practice, Persevere, and Trust That You're Making Progress

I hope it brings inspiration to those whose minds are bit fuzzy and dark but also an inspirational read into the world and journey of anxiety and depression.

Zoe

There is Enough Space for Respect In This World..

What happened to a world full of correspondence of letter, a world full of individualisation of your handwriting and the magazine drawings of the acceptably unachievable perfect woman?

We seem to live in a world now where technology has taken over us. I look around me and I'm surrounded, just like many of us could agree. An instant buzz of the mobile and the ding of an email, the  too familiar black and white text and those in speech bubbles, recreating a real life conversation. We have become so virtual. Yes, the basics have become useful, but not an unhealthy dependency we have all be guilty to admit too.

Children, touching iPads and iPhones, putting together virtual puzzles and forgetting the tangibility of those misshaped cardboard pieces. I realise now that this is what my photography lectures have been talking about with their film cameras and how we have changed that dramatically, shooting acceptably good quality on our phones. I hadn't seen it that way, but there is always two sides to every argument.

Sometimes when you walk away from technology, you really experience a pure version of yourself. I never gaze hour after hour on Facebook at the other girls deeming themselves hot, in competition with their female friends and surrounding males. I don't stare at online magazine sites trying to keep in touch with the fashion of 'right now'. All this and what makes the world perfect, to say the least in a girls eye, is forever changing, the whole world is forever changing. We need to find ourselves and respect ourselves. This is what has gone wrong and we don't seem to know our place in this world. Our politeness and respect as flopped. All this crime, drug usage and lusty sex is a distraction, a quick route to get us to our happy place, but does it really? Of course not. We want so much more than that. We want love and we want respect and how are we supposed to get it? Not by those ways. By respecting and loving yourself. If you can't love yourself first, then you will find it harder to love others around you. Everyone is deserving of someone.

We have become so troubled as world, so confused and full of angst and misunderstanding. But what we need to understand is that we are all in this together. We all started off with a fresh innocent face, crying for air on our day of birth. The world was at our oyster and no means superficial in our eyes. We had no idea what insecurity meant, just that we knew that pain could make us cry.

We get lost, we all lose our confidence somehow along the path of life. It's our job to react to it in the right way and gather it all up. We have to look within ourselves and find peace. Find calm, a natural euphoria that we can escape to drug and alcohol free. It's possible and it takes practice.

Just sit. Remove yourself from that buzz of technology. Feel the guilt but do it anyway. You deserve time for yourself. You deserve to heal and each day brings a new opportunity for that.

Smile. Smile to yourself in the mirror, feel the overwhelming embarrassment, stare into those eyes and soften that gaze. Hold your head up high, take in your flaws and smother them with acceptance, wear them with pride.

We should pass others, no matter who they are, with a knowledge that they hold pride within themselves. A knowledge that they may have problems too and realise that things in your life may not be as bad as it seems, even if may feel like it now.

We need to be open to change. Pride ourselves, the country we belong to and the world we share and live in.

The world shouldn't seem such a scary place. The only thing we need to change, is ourselves.

The Importance of Priority...

Priority.

It's an important word and we usually place that on our work when it starts becoming a bit strenuous. I don't know about you but I tend to be a bit of a workaholic. I may not be in work, but with multiple uni modules to complete all at the same time, it can be a bit of a frazzle.

You ask questions to yourself, trying to decide which of these projects are more important and when to do them. I also like to plan and even then, there is the stress of where to slot everything in and how long I should be working on that particular task for.

We often see people on their commute to work with a snack bar or a muffin, with perhaps some coffee, or maybe just the coffee...maybe just nothing at all? We have to rush to this place of work, our obligations are there. It doesn't matter about breakfast. "Maybe I'll just skip lunch?" you think Or "Maybe you will just take a bite of your sandwich, a bite of your apple and go to the vending machine to buy yourself a calorfic Mars Bar?" After all, they do contain the same amount of calories as that ham and mayo sandwich that you were going to eat. Besides it boosts up your energy levels and gets you going. Those cheaters, that's us.

Well..actually in fact I don't tend miss meals, my stomach won't do with that; it would be grumpy with such an arrangement. We rush to get to the next thing, is what I'm saying, the more important thing, until we actually stop for a second and think "What IS the most important thing?" That is one question I asked myself today. I had four different things on my to-do list and they all seemed pretty important. The most important seemed to be that work word. Hmm yes that. But I also wanted to go to the gym. That's important.

The main thing that we should be considering is "What is important right now?"
For me? Health. Without health, we can't do the things that we want to do and find important, if it's flailing or just not really there. Yeah, it may be that coffee that speeds you along but actually getting some rest and taking breaks every once in a while to energise naturally, you'll actually function better without that coffee. Allow coffee to be your leisure than to be your owner, strapping you to a lead and making your run at top speed to keep up with it.

That was something I found difficult, not the coffee, but taking time to have a break and re-eveluate my day or to just do nothing for ten minutes or so every couple of hours and literally sit there and recharge. There are many ways to do that, even if it's just listening to some music or reading etc but actually slowing down and deciding what task you are going to do next will help you a lot if you are one of those frazzled lot. It's something I'm working on and though it can be difficult at times, it's starting to show it's benefits.

You can go about it your own way but actually I have learnt that sometimes doing the opposite can actually make you achieve more.

Hope it helps!

Honey Lemon Tea...

Tea with the absence of honey is bitter.


I have a mug with a smile at the bottom. It is quite a satisfactory smile with a little tongue peeping out, but none the less, it is a friendly mug. It's got quite a large capacity so it is fantastic for thirsty tea, coffee or hot chocolate drinkers. I was in good need of some tea with added honey and lemon. I always use the raw ingredients as I believe you get the most goodness out of it and a stronger taste than those mixed packs in supermarkets.  I find this drink very comforting and while I had my big mug, tea at the ready I took a journey.

The honey wasn't mixing well but the lemon was floating and bobbing playfully. Lemon Tea is nice without honey but I think the fact I had honey meant that I knew the sweetness was soon to come. I sipped my tea faster. "What am I doing?" I thought, "I'm supposed to be savouring my tea." But I wanted to get to the sweetness. I had enough of the bitter taste of the black tea and lemon. But that surface was so refreshing, why did I want to leave it? Perhaps it didn't taste good enough?

The cheeky expression at the bottom of my mug smiled at me as I continued to gulp away. Soon enough that bitterness turned sweet, an overlapping delicious transition with a full sensation to earn. I finally reached the full sweetness. But it wasn't as sweet as I had hoped because I hadn't put enough of this sweetness into my mug. I rushed my tea for the faint taste of honey swirling invisibly. I was disappointed and deflated.


No one likes a bitter world. We want sweetness and a smiling face at the end of the day. So why do we rush it? Why are we not content at where we stand right now in this present moment? Why is the future so much better? I think we should try and savour our mugs of tea, coffee, hot chocolate, juice or water. We should savour time and the see world in a mindful way, smell the world in a mindful way, hear the world in a mindful way, feel the world in a mindful way and of course, taste the world in a mindful way.

We can sometimes forget and lose sight and forgot to feel, through the rush of life. It perhaps might give us a sense of calm, purpose, joy and make us remember what life is really about it.