By Patricia Fitzgerald.
The word ‘Mandala’ is an ancient Sanskrit word meaning ‘Circle’ or ‘Container of Spirit’. It is a technique that has been used across the world for hundreds of years. The act of creating an intuitive piece of art brings you into a place of calmness, where decisions can be made in a much more focused manner. You don’t even need to be artistic to create a mandala, they lie within each and every one of us.
The act of merely sitting down at the table to one immediately grants you time to yourself. Time without distraction. Time just for you. You have immediately opened yourself to a calmer place, where the noisy thoughts can begin to settle into a more productive mode. In creating the mandala, you trust your intuition. You become aware of your breath and you begin to relax. I find that thoughts become clearer, and by balancing the mind in this creative way, often the solution to a problem I may have suddenly becomes clear.
Both psychologists and neurologists have found that by stimulating both sides of the brain, which mandala art is does, we gain clarity, stress reduces, blood pressure lowers and the list goes on. Normally when we make decisions we use the left hemisphere of the brain, considered as rational, by bringing in the right hemisphere of the brain and drawing intuitively in the wholeness of the circle, we get a much fuller picture of what is going on in our lives and our minds.
