Mandala Drawing: Expressive Power of Art

Mandala is a Sanskrit word meaning literally “circle” or “completion.” In the most general sense, this term can be used for any design showing complex geometrical symmetry, such as a spiderweb, arrangement of petals in a flower or blossom, sea shell (e.g. a sand dollar), image in a kaleidoscope, stained glass window in a Gothic cathedral or labyrinth design on its floor. The mandala is a visual construct that can be easily grasped by the eye, since it corresponds to the structure of the organ of visual perception. The pupil of the eye is itself a simple mandala form.

In ritual and spiritual practice, the term mandala refers to images, which can be drawn, painted, modeled, or danced. In the Tantric branches of Hinduism, Buddhism, Vajrayana, and Jainism this word refers to elaborate cosmograms composed of elementary geometrical forms (points, lines, triangles, squares, and circles), lotus blossoms, and complex archetypal figures and sceneries. They are used as important meditation aids, which help practitioners to focus attention inside and lead them to specific states of consciousness.

Although the use of mandalas in the tantric branches of Hinduism, Buddhism, and Jainism has been particularly refined and sophisticated, the art of mandala drawing as part of spiritual practice can be found in many other cultures. Examples of particularly beautiful mandalas are the nierikas, yarn paintings of the Huichol Indians from Central Mexico, portraying visions induced by ritual ingestion of peyote. Elaborate sand paintings used in the healing and other rituals of the Navajo people and the bark paintings of the Australian Aborigenes also include many intricate mandala patterns.

The use of mandalas in spiritual and religious practice of various cultures and in alchemy attracted the attention of the Swiss psychiatrist C. G. Jung, who noticed that similar patterns appeared in the paintings of his patients at a certain stage of their psychospiritual development. According to him, the mandala is a “psychological expression of the totality of the self.” In his own words: "The severe pattern imposed by a circular image of this kind compensates the disorder and confusion of the psychic state - namely, through the construction of a central point to which everything is related." (Jung 1959 b).

Our own use of mandala drawing was inspired by the work of Joan Kellogg, who was a member of the team at the Maryland Psychiatric Research Center in Baltimore, MD, conducting psychedelic therapy. When she had worked as art therapist in psychiatric hospitalsinWycoff and Paterson, New Jersey, Joan had given hundreds of patients a piece of paper with an outline of a circle and painting utensils and asked them to paint whatever came to their mind. She was able to find significant correlations between their psychological problems and clinical diagnosis and specific aspects of their paintings, such as choice of colors, preference for sharp or round shapes, use of concentric circles, dividing the mandala into sections, and respecting or not respecting boundaries of the circle.

At the Maryland Psychiatric Research Center, Joan compared the mandalas the experimental subjects were painting before and after their psychedelic sessions, looking for significant correlations between the basic features of the mandalas, content of psychedelic experiences, and outcome of therapy. We have found her method to be extremely useful in our work with holotropic breathwork. Joan herself saw the mandala drawing as a psychological test and described in several papers the criteria for interpretations of their various aspects (Kellogg 1977, 1978). In our work, we do not interpret the mandalas, but use them in the sharing groups simply as a source of information about the breathers’ experiences. We will describe the work with the mandalas in a later section of this paper.

An interesting alternative to mandala drawing is the method of “SoulCollage” developed by Seena B. Frost (Frost 2001). Many participants in holotropic workshops, training, and therapy, experience psychological blocks when they are confronted with the task to draw or paint. As we mentioned earlier, this usually has its roots in some traumatic experiences that they had as children with their teachers and/or peers in art classes or in their generally low self-esteem that makes them doubt their abilities and paralyzes their performance. “SoulCollage” helps these people overcome their emotional blocks and resistances; it is a creative process which anyone can do, since it uses already existing paintings or photographs.

Instead of drawing and painting utensils, participants receive a rich selection of illustrated magazines, catalogues, calendars, greeting cards, and postcards. They can also bring their personal photos from the family album or pictures of people, animals, and landscapes they have themselves taken. Using scissors, they cut out pictures or fragments thereof that seem appropriate to portray their experience; they fit them together and glue them on pre-cut mat board cards. If they participate in ongoing groups, they end up eventually with a deck of cards, which have deep personal meaning for them. They can take these cards to a friend's house, to sessions of individual therapy or support groups, or use them as decorations in their home.