Zentangles: Meditative Art Practice for Dementia

Today in our TimeSlips session, we added in another art form to experiment with. We made some Zentangles, which is a meditative art practice that enables you to make abstract pictures using different patterns. Simply put, it is meditative doodling. You take a blank square, draw in some guidelines, and then fill the square with any patterns you dream up. Then you can shade the finished square in with plain pencil if you want, but today we colored them with colored pencil. I took everyone's finished Zentangle and mounted them on colored note cards so everyone got to take home a handmade card they can use in the future.

This was a really great art exercise as it was accessible to the people in different stages of dementia and their caregivers were able to create as well. I think it was a relaxing and fun process for all of us.

There are many different art forms to be used in helping people with dementia, the key is finding things that are easy and abstract.

Zentangles are a great meditative art practice no matter your artisitic ability. Try it out, you will really like it! Then you can use your Zentangles for handmade cards, tags for Christmas gifts, or take a bunch and frame them in a large frame.

Blessings,

Rev. Katie