Can coloring really help your nervous system? Here’s what I found
When I tell people that coloring is at the center of the emotional regulation methodology I created, Color Mending®, I get one of two reactions.
The first is immediate recognition. “Yes! I color when I’m stressed, and I don’t know why it works, but it does.”
The second is polite skepticism. “Coloring? Like, for kids?”
Both reactions make complete sense. And both are worth taking seriously.
Because the answer to “can coloring really help your nervous system?” is: yes, with important nuance.
The research shows measurable effects. The mechanism matters. And what Color Mending does with coloring goes further than what most people assume when they first hear about the tool.
In this blog, I’m breaking down what I actually found.
What the research says, and what it doesn’t
Let me be straightforward about this, because I think honesty about research is more useful than hype.
There is a solid and growing body of research on coloring and mental health.¹ Across multiple studies and a systematic review, adult coloring, particularly structured designs like mandalas, has been consistently associated with reduced self-reported anxiety, lower cortisol levels, improved mood, and increased focused attention.
A 2016 study published in the journal Art Therapy measured cortisol in 39 healthy adults before and after 45 minutes of art making, including coloring. Cortisol, the primary stress hormone, decreased significantly.² Skill level made no difference. The effect was the same whether participants considered themselves artists or not.
A 2022 systematic review and meta-analysis specifically examined mandala coloring and state anxiety in adults across eight studies and found consistent anxiety-reducing effects compared to free drawing.³
So the research says: coloring measurably reduces stress and anxiety in adults. That is real. That is documented.
What the research does not tell us, and what most wellness content skips over, is why it works. And the why is where things got really interesting for me.
Three reasons coloring affects the nervous system
Based on what the research shows, here is my read on what is actually happening when coloring calms you down.
1. It induces a state of focused attention
Coloring occupies a specific cognitive sweet spot.⁴ It requires enough attention to keep the mind from wandering to anxious thoughts because you are choosing colors, staying within lines, noticing patterns, but it does not demand so much cognitive effort that it becomes stressful. This is sometimes described as a “flow-adjacent” state.
In this state, the brain’s default mode network, the system responsible for self-referential rumination, worry, and mental time travel, quiets down. Not because you have suppressed anything. Because your attention is genuinely occupied with something else.
This is why coloring feels different from trying to “think your way out” of stress. The mechanism is attentional, not cognitive.
2. It lowers physiological stress markers
The cortisol findings matter here.² Cortisol is not just a number in a lab study. It is the primary chemical signal through which your body’s stress response operates. When cortisol drops, the nervous system’s threat-response state begins to downregulate. Heart rate slows. Breathing deepens. Muscle tension eases.
This is a physiological shift, not just a psychological one. The body is actually moving into a different state.
And that shift matters for what I’ll explain in the next section.
3. It creates a low-demand sensory anchor
This one is less discussed in the research but shows up clearly in practice.
Holding a coloring tool, applying pressure to paper, choosing and switching colors, these are repetitive, predictable, sensory-grounded actions. They give the nervous system something concrete and manageable to do.
For people whose baseline is high mental load and low body awareness, this kind of simple sensory engagement creates a brief window of presence. The body is doing something. The mind slows to meet it.
That window is not just pleasant. It is useful.
What is all of this missing?
Here is what I want to be super clear about:
I did not build Color Mending because I read studies showing coloring reduces cortisol.
I built it because I had spent six years surveying thousands of people about their relationship to their emotions, and what I kept finding was that the same gap showed up everywhere: people could not accurately read what their body was signaling. They felt things intensely but could not locate them, name them, or understand what those feelings were actually communicating.
The research on coloring and stress reduction explains one layer of what coloring does. It does not explain what coloring can do when it is used intentionally as an interoceptive tool.
That is a different thing entirely.
The layer the research doesn’t capture
Interoception is your body’s sensory system for internal signals: thinks like heart rate, muscle tension, gut sensation, breath depth, and temperature.⁵
It is the biological foundation of every emotional experience you have. And for most adults, it is underdeveloped. Not because something is wrong with them, but because no one ever taught them to use it.
When interoception is underdeveloped, emotions feel like they arrive from nowhere. Or they arrive late and loud, with no middle ground. You feel controlled by them rather than informed by them.
Coloring, used the way most people use it, helps the nervous system downregulate. That is valuable. But it does not build interoceptive skill. It does not help you read what your body was signaling in the first place.
That is the gap Color Mending was built to fill.
What Color Mending does differently
Color Mending is a two-step process.
The first step is intuitive coloring. Intuitive coloring begins with a body scan: moving attention through your body to find the noisiest sensation present right now. Not an emotion label. Only finding the physical sensation itself. Specifically, where it lives, what it feels like, how loud it is.
Once you find that sensation, you color it out onto a piece of paper using any shape and color that feels right. Not a picture of the emotion. The raw sensation, externalized.
The second step is then taking the Color and Shapes Charts and decoding what you colored. Each color and shape that appeared is a clue. The charts translate those visual cues into accurate labels: what emotion is present, what it is pointing toward, what the body was actually trying to communicate.
This is interoceptive training. The coloring is the vehicle. The body signal is the destination.
The stress-reduction effects the research documents — the cortisol drop, the focused attention, the nervous system downregulation — those happen here too. But they happen as a byproduct of a practice that is doing something more specific: building the skill of reading your own emotional signals from the inside out.
The nervous system calms down. And in that calmer state, the body’s signals become clearer. That is the window Color Mending is designed to use.
Oaky. So, can coloring really help your nervous system?
Yes. The research is real. The effects are measurable. And you do not need to be an artist, a meditator, or anyone other than yourself to access them.
But if your goal is not just to calm down, if your goal is to actually understand what your body is telling you, then coloring needs to be paired with intentional interoceptive practice.
That is exactly what Color Mending is.
Want to try the Color Mending process for yourself?
The Coloring Bet is a 21-day program where you learn the Color Mending process from start to finish, one day at a time, until reading your body’s signals starts to feel like second nature.
→ Join The Coloring Bet and start putting the science into practice.
New here? Learn more about interoception: What Is Interoception? The Body Sense That Shapes Every Emotion.
References & further reading
The following sources directly inform the content of this article. For readers who want to go deeper into the science, each is worth your time!
1. Flett, J.A.M., et al. (2017). Sharpen your pencils: Preliminary evidence that adult coloring reduces depressive symptoms and anxiety. Creativity Research Journal, 29(4), 409–416. (One of the early peer-reviewed studies establishing measurable mental health benefits of adult coloring.) https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/10400419.2017.1376505
2. Kaimal, G., Ray, K., & Muniz, J. (2016). Reduction of cortisol levels and participants’ responses following art making. Art Therapy: Journal of the American Art Therapy Association, 33(2), 74–80. (The landmark study measuring cortisol reduction in healthy adults after 45 minutes of art making, including coloring. Skill level was not a factor in the outcome.) https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/07421656.2016.1166832
3. Støre, S.J., & Jakobsson, N. (2022). The effect of mandala coloring on state anxiety: A systematic review and meta-analysis. Art Therapy, 39(4), 173–181. (Systematic review and meta-analysis of eight studies finding consistent anxiety-reducing effects of mandala coloring in adults compared to free drawing.) https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/07421656.2021.2003144
4. Perkins, A., et al. (2025). Mechanisms of anxiety reduction during adult coloring: Mindfulness, flow, enjoyment, and distraction. Mindfulness, Springer. (Research identifying flow and enjoyment — rather than mindfulness alone — as the strongest predictors of anxiety reduction during coloring, and introducing anxious mind-wandering as a key variable.) https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12671-025-02586-9
5. Barrett, L.F. & Simmons, W.K. (2015). Interoceptive predictions in the brain. Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 16(7), 419–429. / Mahler, K. (2019). Interoception: The Eighth Sensory System. (The foundational sources establishing interoception as the sensory system underlying all emotional experience, and the evidence that interoceptive awareness is trainable at any age.) https://www.nature.com/articles/nrn3950
