Calm Mandalas for Anxious Days: 8 Free Printables

Anxiety doesn’t always arrive as a crisis. quite often it’s just a low hum that starts sometime after lunch and won’t switch off.  You might have the feeling that you’ve forgotten something, or that something’s about to go wrong, with no evidence for either. Maybe you don’t feel upset enough to talk to anyone about it. You just can’t settle.

The advice you get for this is usually some version of stop. Sit still. Breathe. Clear your mind. And for a lot of us, sitting still with an anxious brain feels like the single worst thing you can do. You’ve removed every distraction and left yourself alone with the hum, and now you’re anxious and failing at meditation.

This is why I love colouring in, it works better for me because it goes the other way. It doesn’t ask you to empty your head. It gives your hands something small and repetitive to do, and your head quietly follows along behind. There’s a bit of research on this: a study back in 2005 found that people who coloured mandalas after an anxiety-inducing task came down more than people who coloured a plain page or free-drew. Whether it’s the symmetry or just the fact that there’s no wrong answer, something about a mandala seems to hold attention in a useful way.

Busy Hands, Quiet Mind

The bit I’d add from experience is that it’s one of the few things left that genuinely can’t be done one-handed while checking your phone. That’s most of the value. It’s pretty darn hard to scroll and colour at the same time, and twenty minutes minus scrolling is twenty minutes of not absorbing everyone else’s bad news on top of your own.

So here are eight of them. Rather than eight interchangeable patterns, I’ve given each one a job. One for when you’ve only got ten minutes, one for when you can’t sleep, one you colour along with your breathing, one that’s designed to be finishable in a single sitting. Read the descriptions and pick whichever matches the sort of anxious you are today.

They’re all free, they print on A4 or US letter, and there’s no email signup. Take one or take all eight.

One honest note before you scroll: this is a coping tool, not a treatment. It’s helpful for a bad afternoon. But if the hum has been going for weeks rather than hours, or it’s getting in the way of sleeping, eating or working, I would always advise talking to your GP — colouring in is a nice thing to do alongside real help, not instead of it.

The colouring in matters as much as the swearing, honestly. It’s one of the last things left that you can’t do while also checking your phone. You need both hands. It’s slow and it’s methodical, repetitive and even a little bit boring (in the best way). Colouring asks nothing of you, except that you stay in the lines, and even that’s optional.

Twenty minutes of colouring does more for an over-it mood than an hour of scrolling ever has for me — scrolling just hands you other people’s bad days on top of your own.

So here are eight pages. They’re free, they print on regular A4 or letter paper, and you can grab them one at a time or all together at the bottom. There’s no email signup and no faffing about.

WARNING: NSFW Colourful Language

Fair warning that some of these are properly sweary. Don’t leave them on the kitchen table if you’ve got kids who read, and maybe don’t colour them in at work. Or do. I’m not your boss.

Click on each image to download or print PDF colouring page.

1. The Ten Minute Mandala

Large open shapes, not much detail, designed to be finished fast. This is the one for when you’re too wound up to commit to anything or when sitting down for half an hour feels like another demand. Ten minutes and a handful of colours and it’s done, which matters, because finishing something is its own small relief on a day when nothing else has been finished. Start here if you’re new to this.

3. The Mindful Breathing Mandala

Lots of concentric rings, like a metaphor for a cycle of breathing in and out. No rules,  just rhythm to stop you rushing, which is the thing anxious hands want to do. If you’ve ever been told to do box breathing and found it impossible to remember the count, this does the counting for you. Blues and greens would work well here for no reason other than that they’re cool colours and it feels right.

4. The 3am coloring sesh

For when you’re awake and you shouldn’t be. Simple enough to do by lamplight without straining your eyes, and gentle enough that it won’t wake you up further the way a screen would. Keep this one printed and in your bedside drawer so that at 3am you don’t have to go and find the printer. Pencils rather than markers work well – they’re quieter, and no smell. Winning!

5. The Open Centre

A mandala with a deliberate empty space in the middle. This design is from one of my sweary colouring page collection (minus the swearing). Write something in it before you start colouring: maybe the thing you’re worried about, or the thing you’d like to be true, or just a date – or whatever floats your boat! Then colour the pattern around it. It sounds a bit naff , but there’s something about surrounding a worry with forty minutes of careful work that changes how big it looks by the end… give it a try.

6. The Orderly One

Strict geometry, hard edges, everything in its place. This is the mandala for the flavour of anxiety where you need things to make sense,  when the world feels sloppy and you want one thing to be precise. Trying going symmetrical with your colours too: match opposite sections, repeat a sequence. give some fresh markers a whirl rather than pencils if you’ve got them, because crisp lines are the whole point of this one.

7. The Soft One

Organic and flowing rather than geometric, for when strict symmetry feels cold and a bit clinical. Some days the last thing you want is more rules. This one lets you be a little more free in your colouring — go outside the lines, blend colours into each other, or leave bits blank. It’s the most forgiving page in the set and the best one to hand to someone who says they’re “not creative”.

8. The One You’ll Actually Finish

Small, contained, and easy to finish in one sitting (about twenty-five minutes). I’ve put it last because it’s my go-to mandala. On days when everything is half-done and nothing is closed off, a page you can start and finish inside half an hour does something disproportionate for how you feel about the rest of it. Don’t overthink the colours – use whatever is closest.

Five things that make this work better

Pick the page before you pick the pens. Read the descriptions, choose the one that matches today, and don’t second-guess it. The decision-making is the bit that trips people up — brains that are a lil’ bit axious tend to spend twenty minutes choosing and never *actually* start.

Stick to three or four colours. Counter-intuitive, but a full set of seventy-two pencils turns colouring into a series of decisions, and decisions are what you’re trying to get away from. Three colours and you can stop thinking.

Put your phone in another room. Not face down, not on silent. Another room. If it’s within reach you’ll pick it up at the first dull moment, and the dull moments are exactly where this starts working.

Don’t aim to finish. Except for the first and last mandalas, which are designed for it. A half-done mandala is not a failed mandala. Treating it as a task with a completion state turns your calming activity into another thing you owe someone.

Print a few in advance. The version of you having the anxious evening is not going to troubleshoot a printer. Do it now, put them in a drawer with some textas, and let future you find them ready.

Download

Take them one at a time above, or grab all eight in a single file here. A4 or US letter both work. Regular paper is fine for pencils; if you’re using markers, thicker stock stops the bleed.

If mandalas aren’t your thing today, I’ve got gentler mindfulness pages with a bit more variety in them, and some positive affirmation pages if you want words to look at while you work. And if the anxious feeling is closer to furious, the sweary pages for when you’re over it will probably suit you better than any amount of symmetry!