Just like mindful sewing or colouring, calm calligraphy is growing as a wellbeing activity. When the printing press was invented centuries ago, people feared the end of handwriting and handwritten lettering like calligraphy. Now we are in the digital age, calligraphy really might have become a dying or lost art. But it is alive and well, seen in many different styles and forms. Sometimes black lettering alone, sometimes decorated with colour letters or illuminated borders.
One way calligraphy is known to help wellbeing is by training the mind to focus and concentrate on the page before you. Is concentration something you struggle with? Or perhaps you are a very focused person. I usually concentrate well on what I’m doing, but sometimes I can be easily distracted. And in the past I have experienced how anxiety can erode concentration, leaving you unable to focus for long on anything other than the anxiety itself.
Concentration is so important in stilling and slowing our racing minds. Maybe the speed and pace of 21st century life make calligraphy particularly inviting. It takes us back to a slower way of living, when scribes painstakingly wrote books out by hand. For us, copying decorative lettering or simply experimenting with pen and ink for a while can slow us down, instilling in us a new outlook on life – seeing that creativity is worth waiting for, taking time over.
And calligraphy can create a feeling of order and harmony, all fitting into place. Writing out even, balanced lettering with not a single stroke of the pen or rush out of place is satisfying and can clear your mind.
There are sometimes physical health benefits too. Older people or people with some health issues have found that calligraphy can ease aching joints in their hands. It’s a way to exercise and stretch hand muscles as well.
Calligraphy might seem too exact to be calming, as you stress over a misplaced letter or feel frustrated by a spoiled page. It could be nerve-wracking. But I’ve thought this about zentangling as well, and I know many people find even the most intricate zentangles very calming to do. It’s clearly the very demands of calligraphy and zentangling that help ease overthinking by taking over the mind to such a degree.
And there are all different possibilities with calligraphy – using letter stencils for a change, trying different pens or brushes with bottled inks, or using different lettering styles and scripts. You might like decorating initial letters by adding colour or entwining flowers, leaves or other motifs around the letters. You might gild your work with gold pen or ink. You may find that copying lettering is the most relaxing, or you may like to add colourful borders and motifs to “illuminate” your calligraphy, as it is called.
Do you find calligraphy calming? It would be great if you have thoughts to share. Just go to Medley’s Facebook group https://www.facebook.com/groups/359291215486002 Thank you.
Medley 