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This post is 924 words long, if you want to skip the article and get a free 9.5 Therapeutic Value™ coloring page, click here to get the free coloring page >>

Do you ever color some books and don’t feel that relaxed? Or you don’t even bother starting other books?

Coloring Books has been around since the 1950s and honestly, people started using it simply because it’s fun to color.

What happened was that over time people realized that coloring helped them to relax. It became the easy way to de-stress instantly. You could pick it up anywhere, at anytime and just color.

Atleast that’s how it was when we were kids.

What we realized is that after some time, some pages was making us relaxed and others didn’t do anything. In fact, some pages created more problems than helping us relax.

Why is it? We explain it in this article

 

Art for us has an emotional impact. It’s been clinically proven to help patients recover faster. But it’s not all art, since only some art can get rid of stress.

To understand why, we have to understand why do we color? Equally important we have to understand what makes us relaxed or de-stressed?

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi created the psychological concept of flow. Flow is what happens when you’re in just doing a task or activity and time seems to just be flying by.

By the way, this post is 924 words long, if you want to skip the article and get a free 9.5 Therapeutic Value™ coloring page, click here to get the free coloring page>>

We’ve all had those moments, whether it’s washing dishes, or playing with our children or just having a chat with our good friends for hours.

When coloring, we can get into the state of flow. This happens as you almost zone out and get into coloring one section, then another and then another.

But it doesn’t always happen with some coloring pages.

We tend to follow the trend, the newest book, the latest shiny art.

It’s great to have a change in the type of coloring you get to do. But if you want to color to relax, to get into the state of flow and for it to be therapeutic, you need to look at selecting the right coloring pages, just as you would select a good pair of running shoes.

When you look at this image, what do you see?

It has a pattern with flowers, leaves and random shapes. On the other hand, when you see this image, what do you see?

It’s a face of a woman wearing a hat with long hair looking at you.

When you color the first image, the one with the patterns, you don’t have to think about the colors as much as you do for the second image. The second image, with the person, will automatically ask you to color her skin a handful of skin colors.

Whether or not you add any blending to the face, the skin color limits you and if it doesn’t look good, like the way you imagined it to be, you won’t be happy with how it turned out.

By the way, this post is 924 words long, if you want to skip the article and get a free 9.5 Therapeutic Value™ coloring page, click here to get the free coloring page>>

Going back to the State of Flow, if you are thinking too much about specific colors for the skin for these types of pages, then you’re not coloring to relax, you’re coloring for art.

This is a key difference. When you color to relax, you get into a state of flow and let time pass without being judgmental.

We have taken all of the therapeutic effects based on scientific research and created a rating out of 10 called Therapeutic Value™. Only 5% of all coloring books have a Therapeutic Value™ rating greater than 8/10.

When you’re coloring for art then you can carefully look at the skin colors or any color combination, blending, and other techniques. Although it is the same for many animal coloring pages, you can still have choices of animals to color in with intentional patterns.

Outside of large open coloring spaces or backgrounds, you also want to select coloring books that bring you inside the coloring journey through positivity and gratitude.

One way this can be done is through positive psychology, to see an example of this in a coloring page, click below.

Click here to get a free 9.5 Therapeutic Value™ coloring page >>

When these aren’t done, you end up going from your daily stress to straight into coloring without transitioning your mind.

The term is context switching. By making sure that the context in which you are coming from is more gradual, it makes it easier for your mind to adjust.

In conclusion, you want to understand why it is you are coloring. Whether it’s for art or it’s to relax after a long day.

It’s completely fine to color for art, just understand that when you color for art, you will want for it to be perfect, have perfect blending, lighting and textures.

When you want to relax after a long day, you want to get all the benefits of relaxation through coloring the right way.

Constantly finding the right coloring books designed to help you relax can be a struggle. If you’d like to get therapeutic coloring pages based on the science of positive psychology sent to you every month, click here to learn more about the Monthly Coloring Club.

If you found this article useful, please share it with one friend who might want to relax more while coloring and comment below.