Colour Me Stress-Free

All of us adored colouring books as kids, until we grew out of them. But a recent trend in France has brought them back to the forefront of people's favourite pastimes; and its users, now older and with access to more knowledge, managed to find out how this childhood pastime may actually be therapeutic for adults.  

Adult colouring books have been making reappearances on bookshelves and walking off them just as fast. With the trend raging through USA, Australia and parts of Europe, April of this year saw Scottish illustrator Johanna Basford's Secret Garden and Enchanted Forest as the 2 best-selling books on Amazon.

Colouring-in has always been fun – anyone who was once a child can vouch for that. So why the sudden resurgence in its popularity, and that too among adults?

Social media and successful marketing obviously played huge roles, but it helped that they're absolutely gorgeous. With intricate doodles filling up everything from animal figures to abstract designs – the contents of these books were breathtaking enough to end up on places like Instagram and Pinterest. Once it took the internet by storm, psychologists and other professionals were approached to discuss the possible benefits of this new phenomenon.

The general consensus among some professionals is that the repetitive activity of filling in shapes with colours coupled with the imaginative thought-process it requires, can help people de-stress. An article in Business Insider quotes a senior lecturer of Psychology at NYU who explained how the process involves a part of the brain that also handles anxiety and how colouring-in can contribute to relaxation and also develop motor skills and vision.

But let's face it – we don't colour in order to brush up motor skills or scrub out anxiety-chambers of our brains; we do it because it's fun. It lets us create vibrant, beautiful images without having to worry about drawing the perfect outline, especially helping those who aren't naturally skilled at drawing. The added freedom of colouring the patterns to our hearts wish is what makes the process even more invigorating. It's also what gets the creative juices flowing.

Mashiat Nawar recently bought Johanna Basford's Enchanted Forest colouring book, which includes pictures of castles and gates and is based on fairytales. “I absolutely love it since I've grown up reading [about] them,” she shares. When asked about how it has helped her, she explains, “It relaxes you. The designs are very intricate and detailed so it's great for building patience. I feel you start paying more attention to details as well.”

“Also life has become very fast-paced for me, so after a week of juggling work and school I can unwind by colouring some beautiful patterns. It helps to evoke my imagination and inspires me when I have a writer's block,” she adds.

The problem with these trends is that they're very rarely available in Bangladesh. But thanks to a bit of research by Yamen Ahmed of North South University, it appears that they're available at the Modern store of New Market. Meanwhile, websites like -  http://bit.ly/1QeQp4e have free printables for those too lazy to scour New Market or Nilkhet.

There are sceptics who disregard colouring books as effective “art therapy” in their professional opinions. But like an article in the Guardian mentioned, proponents of the trend don't believe it to be “therapy,” but “therapeutic.” While creating original pieces of art is of course a more substantially curative activity, colouring-in is something that helps people unwind - the same way that writing or listening to music does.

However valid or otherwise the science behind it may be, the idea of adults taking time off their hectic schedules to fill pages with colour is wonderful. It shows an inkling of how the child in all of us really does appear to stick around, and that's something worth promoting.

Sarah Anjum Bari is a ravisher of caffeine and prose, with a heart that lives in Parisian cafes. Reality checks to be sent in at s.anjumbari@gmail.com