'Really, if you go back to your own childhood and think about things that were fun and relaxing, why does that ever have to stop?' Abrams said. 'There's actually research that has been done that shows that lowers your heart rate and lowers your blood pressure just by doing that movement.'Īt her practice, Abrams focuses on how the process of doing art can help her clients feel more whole when they're done with a session than when they came in, and even personally resorts to doing art at times to relieve stress or relax. 'Sometimes it's the process itself of painting an abstract image and simply moving your arm side to side and making large brush strokes,' Abrams said. 'Art therapy would be utilizing art and various art media as a way to communicate and articulate things, feelings and emotions nonverbally to channel difficult experiences and the emotional attachment in a less threatening way than verbal communication,' Abrams said.Ībrams has found that art therapy helps her clients, who are typically seeking help after experiencing a trauma or series of traumas, express emotions that are sometimes hard to find the words for in a process she describes as being cathartic and relaxing.

'When I was a child, my mom had coloring books of mandalas and tessellations that she would do while I did my homework and it was just a total practice in Zen activity,' Kennedy said.īoyer noted that art therapists will use coloring techniques to treat patients with stress-related issue, such as Jenn Abrams, an art therapist at Creative Counseling Center in Newport News. 'More and more people are realizing coloring is a relaxing way to de-stress at the end of a long workday or as an activity to keep their hands busy while listening to music or watching television,' Boyer wrote.Īmber Kennedy, marketing director at the Peninsula Fine Arts Center, recalls seeing her mother work on coloring books when she was younger.

Relive my childhood