Coloring Mandalas 2: For Balance, Harmony, and Spiritual Well-Being (An Adult Coloring Book)

Recovering from back surgery, I knew my artistic mind needed a more relaxing, yet retain a stimulating art media to keep my interest. This book does it! Mandalas do have spiritual or rather meditative foci that can help increase healthy thinking as one heals, but the FUN I have had using my professional color pencils, watercolor pencils and a bit of charcoal, chalk, and pastels on the quality paper in this book have really taken my mind off my pain. The mandala images are all on one side of the paper throughout the book, so no bleed through and as I mentioned, the paper quality is not cheap newsprint common of other coloring books. Since getting this book (and a few others!!), I have recommended them to several family members and now they are checking out this great way to relax and use their right "side of the brain" in more ways than one. One additional component of this book are the several pages of blank circles at the book's end where YOU can design your own meaningful mandalas...something many self-help instructors and counselors encourage people to do. This book is definitely worth every penny and is one of the best of the adult coloring books available. I also wish retirement centers would provide this type of quality art books for residents to provide healthy mind stimulation and possible growth and/or mainttenance.

Though I've just begun using it, I bought the Mandala Coloring Book to aid me in relaxation after hectic days and before bed. It is intriguing, to say the least. While coloring the intricate designs, I'm not able to think of much else, making it easier to wind down and "turn off" my head.

I am so glad Fincher brought out this second book! I had already worked through the first book and taken such pleasure in it. Yes, the first one is good, but, for my purposes, the second one is even better. It's made with the same high-quality paper that takes the colour so well and the same lie-flat spiral binding that makes colouring easy. There's a helpful little essay at the beginning explaining the author's theories concerning the mandala and why it can be so helpful both therapeutically and spiritually. The designs are what make this book a standout! And there are so many of them: seventy-two in all! What abundance! Each one is a detailed and beautiful work of art, even before you start laying the colour down. Snowflakes, cathedral windows, tribal amulets: you will be inspired just by looking at these mandalas. I often colour a mandala on my day off, in the afternoon, when the sun is slanting in just so. I open the book at random, and look at the mandala for awhile before getting a sense of what colour to start with. I never know what will be the end result until I've laid down the last stroke. And I always title and date the mandalas. A hot bath, a glass of wine, a long walk on the nature trail and colouring. I love to colour, and this book gives me a lot of scope for creativity in colour design, as well as making me feel connected to past cultures. Just a note: I did the entire first volume with a large box (48 colour set) of Prismacolor pencils and was so pleased with the results. The more colours you have, the more you can experiment. And go to an art store and get yourself a couple of nice, hand-held pencil sharpeners: you are going to need them. Many of the designs are quite intricate and detailed.

"A mandala is a circular design that grows out of the urge to know oneself and one's place in the cosmos...Mandalas exopress completeness and invite us to experience ourselves as a whole being, and individual." --Susanne F. Fincher in Creating Mandals 2 - For Balancing, Harmony, and Spiritual Well-Being Mandalas have been used as a part of spiritual contemplation, ritual, and self discovery since ancient times. Spanning across many cultures, the use of mandalas in architecture, art, and sculpture shows that all humans share common concerns, experiences, and curiosity as to their place in the world. Swiss psychoanalyst Carl Jung saw mandalas as evidence of a dynamic urge towards individuation--the process where an individual carves out a unique identity. An American art therapist named Joan Kellogg, in association with psychiatrist Francisco DiLeo, conceptualized 12 stages of growth and development that the human psyche cycles through in a lifetime. A visit to each of these stages of consciousness helps us work through challenges, clarify our understanding, and resolve unfinished business. Kellogg's model is called Archetypal States of the Great Round of Mandala, known as "the Great Round" for short. In her first book, Coloring Mandalas - For Insight, Healing, and Self Expression, author Susanne F. Fincher created mandalas to color based on the 12 stages of the Great Round: Void Bliss Labyrinth Beginning Target Dragon Fight Squaring the Circle Functioning Ego Crystallization Gates of Death Fragmentation Transcendent Ecstasy Kellogg later found it necessary to add a 13th: Stage 0, Clear Light. In her book Creating Mandalas, Fincher elaborates on Kellogg's model more extensively. In her new book Coloring Mandalas 2 - For Balancing, Harmony, and Spiritual Well-Being, Fincher concentrates on Stage 9, Crystallization. All 72 mandalas in this book are associated with the completion of a cycle of growth that began in the Void (Stage 1). Often resembling crystals, mandalas from the Crystallization stage celebrate our achievements, as well as resting in the pleasure of having fulfilled a personal creative inspiration. Crystallization is also a time of significant spiritual understanding, when our spiritual nature comes together in harmony with our physical nature. Last Sunday, my husband, son, and myself spent the afternoon coloring mandalas. It was a very peaceful, sacred, and creative time for us. My son colored a mandala from Fincher's first book, while my husband and I worked on mandalas from Coloring Mandalas 2. My husband is an artist, and chose a blank circle to create his particular mandala. I found it interesting that there is an eye in the center of his mandala, especially since it's believed that the "I" is at the center of a mandala. The center is the place of "Christ within", the "Higher Self", or spirit. My mandala and the colors I chose represented, to me, the spectrum of light as demonstrated in a rainbow. Ou