How have you been treating your monkey mind? Have you been giving it free-reign? When you do, it jumps from one thought to the next, always distracted and unsettled. At times it feels like a tangled web that needs untangling. At times its chatter gets so loud, you may think that you are going crazy. It is hard to focus and complete tasks, remember things, or even sleep at night. And not to mention, many of us have negative self-talk in the mix…stories we have told ourselves over and over that only make us feel worse.
I am offering one possible solution to taming your monkey mind today. It is the art of doodling. Many of us grew up doodling in our notebooks while the teacher talked (long before schools had laptops and IPads instead of pencil and paper). It wasn’t even about what you were creating and you usually didn’t even have a plan where your pencil would go next. It was all about what doodling did for our active, distracted brains.
If you haven’t already heard of it, the Zentangle Method is way to create non-representational and unplanned images by drawing a combination of structured patterns of dots, lines, simple curves, S-curves and orbs. I first saw a Zentangle workbook at Michaels Arts and Crafts store a few years ago. It looked fun and easy. Once I began to learn more about it, I discovered that there are courses and groups that meet to zentangle as well. And drawing on tiles is actually the preferred way to zentangle because you can just move the tile square around as you go.
Being a 7 on the enneagram, I have often had a scattered mind. Zentangling has been one way that I have entered into a meditative state of mindfulness. Because I am using structured patterns, I have found that those boundaries help me to maintain focus while at the same time freeing my brain up to be creative.
You can learn more about the Zentangle Method on their official website: Zentangle.com
Zentangling is just one of the methods that I mention in the Anxiety Journal. If you want to learn and practice more ways to tame that monkey mind, then purchase this digital journal for only $20 today.
About the Author: Julie Glaser is a healer who creates sacred spaces for people to share, release, and grow. She’s in the habit of being in awe and wonder and writes to share her own experiences and learnings with other inquisitive souls in the process of transforming.
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