503 - Papyrus Brief - Reseach & Initial Ideas

What causes stress
Stress within your comfort zone can help you perform under pressure, motivate you to do your best, even keep you safe when danger looms. But when stress becomes overwhelming, it can damage your mood and relationships, and lead to a host of serious mental and physical health problems. The trouble is that modern life is so full of frustrations, deadlines, and demands that many of us don’t even realise how stressed we are. Whatever your job, by recognising the symptoms and causes of stress, you can take the first steps to reducing its harmful effects and improving your quality of life.

The body’s nervous system often does a poor job of distinguishing between daily stressors and life-threatening events. If you’re stressed over an argument with a friend, a traffic jam on your commute, or a mountain of bills, for example, your body can still react as if you’re facing a life-or-death situation.
When you repeatedly experience the mobilisation or fight-or-flight stress response in your daily life, it can lead to serious health problems. Chronic stress disrupts nearly every system in your body. It can shut down your immune system, upset your digestive and reproductive systems, raise blood pressure, increase the risk of heart attack and stroke, speed up the ageing process and leave you vulnerable to many mental and physical health problems.

Ways to reduce stress

Using adult coloring books is not art therapy, but can help you relax, reduce stress and boost mental clarity.

What started as a niche hobby has now turned into an international trend, as adult colouring books find themselves on more and more bestsellers’ lists throughout the world. However, while this trend may be a fun way to pass the time, it’s the books’ therapeutic properties that have really made them popular. The practice generates wellness, quietness and also stimulates brain areas related to motor skills, the senses and creativity. The trend is alive and well in countries in Europe and North America. Most recently, in Spain.

When colouring, we activate different areas of our two cerebral hemispheres, says psychologist Gloria Martínez Ayala. “The action involves both logic, by which we colour forms, and creativity, when mixing and matching colours. This incorporates the areas of the cerebral cortex involved in vision and fine motor skills [coordination necessary to make small, precise movements]. The relaxation that it provides lowers the activity of the amygdala, a basic part of our brain involved in controlling emotion that is affected by stress.”
In simplest terms, colouring has a de-stressing effect because when we focus on a particular activity, we focus on it and not on our worries. But it also “brings out our imagination and takes us back to our childhood, a period in which we most certainly had a lot less stress.” This leads us immediately and unconsciously to welfare, exposes the specialist.

What relaxes me 

- The seaside

- A nice, green, woodland area

- Minimal techno

- Vinyls

- Satisfying interior

- Aloe Vera Incense

- Hot Chocolate and marshmallows 

- Rugs

- Most popular adult colouring books feature mehndi patterns and mandalas a lot, this is due to the intricate patterning and satisfying end result once coloured in - This has inspired me to think about how I can try to combine these patterns into my different illustrations, to give a simple image like a vinyl player a bit more of that imagination element though the trippy patterns.