THEY call it the new stress-reliever.
Adult coloring books have taken the Philippines by storm, resulting in an increased demand in bookstores from eager buyers, mostly women, riding on the next wellness trend. I guess you could call it a juju cleanse for the mind.
Some publishers of these adult coloring books even boldly proclaim these as “art therapy,” as these are supposed to help workaholic female executives chill even as they try to color within the lines of each illustration.
I was lucky enough to pick up a copy of Johanna Bashford’s Secret Garden: An Inky Treasure Hunt from a top-secret retailer. (Yes, the kind that you’d need to bribe me with lunch first for me to give you the name.) Published in 2013, this book started the trend of adult coloring books, selling 1.5 million copies globally. She’s also published Enchanted Forest: An Inky Quest (released in February), and coming in October is her latest coloring book, Lost Ocean: An Inky Adventure. Unlike other illustrators of her young age, Bashford prefers to draw the old-fashioned way, using her hand, pencil and paper, before rendering in pen and ink.
Xandra Ramos of National Bookstore says the company “has been working very closely with publishers in making sure we are able to efficiently supply the demand for coloring books. Adult coloring book enthusiasts can expect new stocks and new releases from the Therapy series, Millie Marotta [Tropical Wonderland], Bashford’s Lost Ocean, Filipino artist Kerby Rosanes [Never Quit Drawing], and Zoe de Las Cases [Secret Tokyo], among others, in the next few months. It is great not only for the book business but for coloring materials as well. Sales of coloring pencils and markers ranging from affordable to premium price points continue to benefit from the adult coloring book craze.”
Fully Booked has been able to bring in more titles with even more complicated, intricately detailed patterns guaranteed to keep fervent colorists occupied for hours. This was where I got my first adult coloring book—Creative Coloring for Grown-ups: Japanese Patterns. The bookstore’s latest line includes Creative Colouring for Grown-ups: Vintage Patterns, Creative Coloring for Grown-ups: Beautiful Patterns, as well as Millie Marotta’s Animal Kingdom: A Coloring Book Adventure. (A store clerk at the TriNoma branch told me that they already have deliveries of Secret Garden and Enchanted Forest, but are only available for those who have reserved them.)
Needless to say, I’ve picked up the coloring habit myself. Not because I’m stressed, but because it’s just fun to fill in the pen-and-ink illustrations with all the possible color combinations one can muster. There is no pressure to draw anything—just color within the borders of each black and white picture. I guess part of it also is the nostalgia. It’s a connection to that child in me that once was happy with the simple pleasure of holding a crayon, coloring pencil, or cray-pas and eagerly filling in black-and-white graphics with color—way back when I didn’t have work deadlines to meet and bills to pay. And looking at each finished colored work just tickles me to no end, half-convincing me that I’m a creative genius! Hahaha.
There’s also that wonderful waxy and earthy sweet smell of crayons that makes rubbing all those colors on paper an extra delight. (Yes, I have a box of 64 colored crayons, which I got as a gift from a friend last year.) I use colored pencils mostly, since the Japanese patterns are quite delicate, but am able to take out my crayons on a few pages with drawings that accommodate the latter’s thicker tips.
I noticed that the first few nights since I started my coloring habit, I dreamed very vivid scenes as I slept. In the next weeks, I noticed I would fall asleep more easily without any sleep aids (e.g., my Bali sleep music). I was also waking up more relaxed and ready to face the world (read: the gazillions of e-mail in my inbox).
A few have reported a lowering of their blood pressure due to their coloring habit. I have yet to check if that’s true in my case.
Of course, coloring books is not a panacea for everything that ails us. In fact, those who use coloring books as a stress-reliever should be attacking the cause of their stress more directly. (Traffic jams getting you down? Leave the house earlier, or move closer to your office. Pissed off with a boss who constantly overlooks you for promotions? Talk to him and ask him for suggestions on how you can improve your work for the company. Or resign.)
If coloring isn’t your thing, there are other ways to handle stress:
• Yoga. Doing the asanas (poses), along with the breathing exercise, helps you focus on what’s important—yourself. We bring our awareness only to what we can do at the moment, but with more practice, it eases us toward perfecting a certain pose without hurry. Everything is at our own pace. (And, yes, it does stabilize one’s blood pressure, as has happened in my case. When I had to quit because of a totally unrelated shoulder injury, my normal BP increased that my doctor had to put me on an antihypertension drug.)
• Meditation. Similar to yoga, meditation also calms the mind, and helps rid us of our anxieties. It only takes just a few minutes each day of quiet time, with our eyes closed, in a relaxed position, as we try to empty our mind of useless random thoughts. Again, breathing in and out through our nostrils helps us focus on the present. For beginners, candle-gazing meditation may be the easiest—it’s what I picked up from my former yoga teacher. (For more on candle-gazing meditation, see bit.ly/1J5UdPy.)
• Massage therapy. Unless you’re extremely ticklish, a one- to two-hour massage is another way to survive our harried lives. Having a really good massage therapist work out the kinks and cold spots in our muscles helps us to relax and sleep better. (My gauge of a good massage therapist is whether I fall asleep while the massage is ongoing.) Whether on a weekly or monthly basis, a massage is not an indulgence. For some, it’s really a lifeline to sanity.
• Soak in a tub. If you don’t have a bathtub at home, by all means check into a hotel and just soak in your room’s tub filled with warm water, soap bubbles with your favorite scent (preferably lavender-based to relax you), while in a darkened room. Switch on some blissful or meditative music, and close your eyes. Just enjoy how the soap and water washes off not just the day’s grime, but cleanses your mind of the week’s work or personal stresses.
Whatever your preferred stress buster, it’s important to switch off from the outside world—and, yes, that means our phones, computers, and even the TV. Looking at every text message or e-mail as it is delivered to our smartphone or tablet, or even hearing the TV blaring in the next room, reduces the time to focus on quieting our minds and healing our souls.
Image credits: Photo by Stella Arnaldo