A fellow Certified Zentangle Teacher’s (CZT) husband is a therapist who recently began a public blog, sharing some of his observations ‘from his chair‘. What’s the significance? Among his missives are several excellent posts on Zentangle and how they relate outside the work of art box.
Zentangle is truly a gift that can adapt to so many uses. It’s benefits are many. Once more I find myself expressing my gratitude by sharing with you.
Rather than just include a link that you may or may not click through, I offer up these teasers.
July 10, Zentangle Art as Cross Training
“…Zentangle, I have discovered, is one of the better cross training activities for my brain.
Creating a Zentangle art tile as cross training for the mind, requires investing an hour.
- Paying attention to the ceramic point on the paper
- Feeling the pen drag across the ridges of Italian watercolor paper
- Hearing the muffled sound of paper
- Watching the pen move deliberately in repetitive movements; rhythmically, hypnotically entraining the mind to this narrow focus.”
July 14, Emotional Responses to Zentangle Art
Verlin's Shoes
“People do not remain neutral to seeing Zentangle art. Some are immediately dismissive, seeing the line drawings as little more than graffiti. Lifelong doodlers will see it as “what I have been doing for years.” Others, captured by the line drawings, remain with eyes fixed, not quite able to pull themselves from the art, not knowing what holds them to this art form. As a therapist, my surprise has been the strength of the emotional responses of many people (including my own, at times), to the varied use of these simple line drawings. …”
July 18, Zentangle Art as a Spiritual Practice
“For more than 90 minutes, Daved and I watched with amused interest.
Except for bathroom breaks, the four Certified Zentangle Teachers® shared nonstop in an excited, animated way their experiences of Zentangle Art, their insights from the last training, their experiences of teaching others, and the joys expressed by those they had newly trained. The emotional fervor of the moment forced them to occasionally reach out and touch each other, or shed tears of rapture and wonder.
I could’ve sworn that these women had just returned from some fundamentalist revival meeting. …”