The Ancestral Tradition of Mandalas
Mandalas are an excellent way to teach children how to achieve emotional balance and live-in harmony.
The Ancestral Tradition of Mandalas
Mandalas are ancient tools of self-knowledge. There is a relationship between coloring mandalas in childhood and solving certain situations or learning better in school. These drawings also serve to express emotions and live-in harmony, regardless of age.
They say that mandalas allow us to achieve emotional balance, bring us peace and calm and push away stress. Even though the coloring is childish, the fact is that many of our problems would end if we borrowed the pencils from our children.
Each person's life is like a mandala - a vast, limitless circle. We stand in the center of our own circle, and everything we see, hear and think forms the mandala of our life ... everything that shows up in your mandala is a vehicle for your awakening.
Pema Chodron
Mandalas and the Ancestral Traditions
More and more children attend medical and psychological offices because of their hyperactivity. They can not stay still for a second. They have to do something else if they do not get bored or start misbehaving. An excellent way to quiet them is by giving them one piece of paper and a pencil to draw. Based on this secret, schools are beginning to offer mandalas to children. What are mandalas? Mandalas are a set of geometric shapes that represent the characteristics of what surrounds us. They have their origin in India, and the word means "circle." There are a well-defined center and symmetrical designs in the surroundings to form a unique piece. Mandalas relate to the art of meditation and Hindu wisdom. Surely you have seen them in some decoration shop or some clothing store. They usually have many colors, and shapes can be somewhat hypnotic.
The Benefits of Coloring Mandalas for Kids
There are many ways our emotions can be externalized. Little ones also need to express what they feel in some way. Some choose to cry, others go from here to there, and others rely on art to demonstrate their feelings.
The use of mandalas seems to facilitate a state of harmony with oneself and those around us. Mandalas are an excellent choice, regardless of age. What changes in children? That they are usually more familiar with the drawings and the painting and see these schemes as something beautiful to be distracted with. The coloring of mandalas early is related to better development in three fields: emotional, cognitive, and behavioral. The stimuli that the little one receives in doing this activity are varied and beneficial to their growth!
The most important advantages are:
1. Foster attention and concentration
2. They favor fine psychomotricity in the fingers
3. To Reduce stress and anxiety
4. They help to develop patience, perseverance, constancy.
5. They allow them to acquire knowledge about geometric forms and think spatially
6. They bring well-being, increase creativity and imagination, and combine colors and figures.
7. They increase self-esteem and stimulate aesthetic sense.
A mandala is the psychological expression of the totality of the self.
Carl Jung
If children painted mandalas regularly, many fights, arguments, and inappropriate behaviors would be avoided. For this reason, more and more schools include these drawings in the classroom, following in the footsteps of Marie Prévaud.
She was the pioneer in this field for several decades. But before her, Carl Jung used the mandalas as a therapy to interpret dreams or know his patients' personalities.
Mandala Kids Yoga Lessons
Mandalas in adult life Having left childhood behind does not mean that paintings and colors also have to stay in the past. Undoubtedly, you also have the possibility to color mandalas and enjoy their benefits! Mandalas in adults are used to achieve a state of deep meditation and, according to current psychology, represent the human being and his relation to the Universe. So, coloring a mandala helps you connect with your inner self, bring out your most creative side, and lower your heart rate and blood pressure. It is about taking a trip to the depths of your being, take advantage of not thinking about anything else besides drawing, shapes, and colors.
A mandala is not merely a beautiful gift or a piece of decoration in your home. It's also a way to get to know a world so far mysterious, in which the best of you are waiting to come out. You will see how through these colored forms, you will find calm amid the gale, the rainbow after the storm, and the light after so long of darkness.
The mandalas were meant to be objects of contemplation, aids to meditation, their proportions magically balanced to purify and calm the mind. To stare at a mandala was to experience if only briefly, the nothingness that is at the heart of enlightenment.
Douglas Preston
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