Art Journaling As a Form of Meditation

I decided one day to dive into meditation to help with my inability to focus. I have what I like to call the attention span of a squirrel. At the time, I was in college and I was having trouble managing the workload I was taking on each semester. 

 Other than to sit still and close my eyes, the only other advice I was given about meditation was to be present. This didn’t mean much to me as my mind was constantly running. I would find myself mentally planning on all the things I would do after meditating while I was meditating. 

Meditation, just like most habits, is a practice. I needed to find a way to train my mind. I started journaling every day. I thought it was a good way to dump all my thoughts somewhere rather than having them bouncing around in my head. I would take my journal everywhere with me and wrote whenever I had breaks in between classes or while I was sitting on the bus. Eventually I wrote so often that I ran out of stuff to write about. Sometimes I would get tired of writing down the same thoughts over and over again. I found myself consistently staring at a blank page. This caused me to overthink about writing to where I spent more time thinking and less time writing. 

I needed to do something that required less thought. I wanted to be more present. I began sketching things around me. It seemed like the obvious thing to do. If I wanted to focus my awareness on the present moment, then I should bring my attention to my current surroundings. There wasn’t much to think about. Just look straight up and draw what I see. And there it was, the silence I’ve been looking for. The wave of peace of a present mind. 

I became eager to sketch more things. Some days I would go out of my way to find interesting places to sketch. It motivated me to explore new places. Most weekends I would check out new coffee shops or hiking trails. I wanted to capture and document all the places I have been and the experiences I had. This has now become my purpose for traveling. 

Art journaling has transformed my perspective of the world. It has allowed me to be more observant and aware of my surroundings. When I look at an object, my mind breaks it down into shapes and colors. I’ll notice the different shades of green on the trees as the leaves overlap or how some of them have a yellow tint when the sun shines on them. When I’m hiking I often stop to look at the different color flowers or the birds. I see my surroundings in a perspective that always amazes me. And I’ve learned to really appreciate where I am in the present moment.