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Looking for a new way to meditate? Pick up a box of crayons. Coloring books for grownups are trending, and now there’s one especially for yogis.
Ekabhumi Charles Ellik’s The Shakti Coloring Book: Goddesses, Mandalas, and the Power of Sacred Geometry, which offers 42 black-and-white images for you to illuminate. Focusing on a single task like coloring pushes aside worries and stressful thoughts, helping you to develop the one-pointed concentration you seek in meditation.
A mandala like the one shown here “reflects the structural representation of the cosmos,” says Elena Pakhoutova, curator of Himalayan Art at the Rubin Museum of Art in New York City. “Its structure is very ordered, so it creates a framework for directing the mind to focus.” Everything from selecting your colors to the motions of filling in the blank spaces calms the mind, and when you finish a geometric pattern, you can meditate on it, observing the Bindu—a symbol for the unity of all creation—at its center. ($19, soundstrue.com)