Art Therapy: Design A Beautiful Mandala From Scratch

The Benefits of Art Therapy

Research shows that engaging and taking part in artistic activities has a positive effect on well-being. Some of the benefits include decreased stress and increased capacity for self-reflection.

When we embrace creativity, our heart rate, blood pressure and cortisol seem to stabilize around healthy levels. In other words, we create a biological state that protects us from the consequences of stress.

By adding opportunities to be creative throughout the day, you cultivate psychological renewal. It helps you build resilience and it boosts both your mental health and life satisfaction.

How To Get Started With Mandalas Today

There are several ways through which you can start benefiting from Art Therapy right away. One way is to design and colour in your own mandala. This post is meant to help you with that.

Mandalas help us focus on a specific aspect or area of our life. They have the potential to expand our awareness and ignite introspection. Jung pioneered their use in psychotherapy.

Types of Mandalas

In this post, we will be working with a circular mandala. However, mandalas can assume different geometric shapes. Besides shapes, mandalas can also serve different purposes.

There are three main types of mandalas. These include:

• teaching mandalas
• sand mandalas
• healing mandalas

Teaching mandalas are used as a mental map. They convey ideas or depict concepts which facilitate learning. Sand mandalas are mainly a representation of the impermanence of human life.

Healing mandalas are meant to promote wisdom and induce calmness. This is the type of mandala we will be working with.

Materials

To take part in this activity, you don’t need fancy materials. You can be creative and even find interesting ways to recycle old paper or cartons. Here is a list of material I used for this tutorial:

• compass
• white paper
• pencil
• rubber
• coloured pencils
• crayons
• black marker

Here are a few tips. If you don’t have a compass, you can use an object that has a circular shape. This can be a plate for instance. If you don’t have a black market, you can a black pencil or crayon to contour.

Mandala Art Video Tutorial

Here is a video-guided tutorial of a mandala we created to celebrate the International Day of Peace:

Template to Colour-in

If you would like to benefit from the colouring-in aspects only, you can download a template of this mandala from our shop for free.

We hope you enjoy this mandala art lesson as much as we did. Remember to share your mandala with us by tagging us either on Instagram or Twitter and adding the hashtag #together4wellbeing.