Welcome to this new professional entry!
This entry is going to be short and sweet.
I am tuning in to share a video I made of a little art journal, each page/spread filled with a mandala for the day. This practice was something I learned about as an Art Therapist. It is simple and easy to practice each day. This kind of daily practice is for self-care purposes, but mandalas can offer us a vessel for healing, too. This art practice can offer a moment to check in with ourselves, process something about our day, reflect, make sense of, re-center, or soothe.
I use mandalas as an Art Therapist for a variety of reasons based on the needs of my clients. Mandalas can be used as a tool to help restore a sense of mental balance. There are many ways to create mandalas! Mandalas and geometric patterns are found everywhere in nature – I find this fascinating.
There are pre-made mandalas, make-your-own mandalas, sand mandalas, mixed media mandalas, sacred mandalas like yantras, nature mandalas, and symbolic mandalas, oh so many kinds of mandalas!
A mandala can be described simply as a circle. It is also known as a sacred circle where something special resides in the circle. The circle provides containment for what lives inside it, often holding and containing what resides there. The containing is helpful because it allows for a more secure pause because we know that whatever it is we put there is held.
Art Therapists can also use this practice as response art after sessions with clients to process the session/images created by their clients. In this little art journal, I played around with different materials (I recommend the thicker paper for mixed media art journals). The materials I used for this art journal: paint, marker, colored pencil, pen, collage, spray paint, glitter, and even tin foil. These little bite-size pages are nice because it is also a way to explore different materials in a contained way which can reduce anxiety because you are just filling up this small circle and that is all for the day.
And that is all for this entry, folks! Thank you so much for allowing me to share this super fun entry. I hope you enjoyed reading and watching.
Happy Mandala-ing,
Rachel Howard, LMFT, ATR-BC, RYT
All images © Rachel Howard
Friendly reminder (disclaimer): The information in this entry is not therapy and cannot be a substitute for work with a licensed therapist. The information in the entry is only intended for educational purposes around the topic of Art Therapy, a different perspective, or ideas for self-care/wellbeing, and food for thought.