Bringing the Zentangle Method into Trauma Therapy: Drawing as a Pathway to Presence, Regulation, and Healing, Part 2

CZT Jennifer Marchand writes...

Encouraging a State of Flow and an Optimal Healing State

As an art therapist, we often use structured creative practices to help clients achieve a state of calm and integration, such as making mandalas. Structured and repetitive creative tasks can support shifts in brain activity away from the fast-paced thinking that accompanies daily life and toward slower, more integrative states associated with relaxation, creativity, learning, and healing. 

As attention becomes gently focused on the drawing task, many individuals enter what is often described as a flow state, a state of absorbed, effortless attention. In this state, automatic thoughts, such as tasks and worries, begin to quiet and fall to the side, and the mind becomes receptive to new information and perspectives.

This is an optimal state for trauma recovery. The breath starts to slow, the body starts to settle, and it becomes more possible to integrate new experiences and update old patterns and beliefs. The repetitive, predictable nature of Zentangle patterns can help clients achieve a flow state. Clients often describe feeling both calm and focused at the same time, an ideal state for learning, integration, and healing.

Why Zentangle Is Different from Adult Coloring

Although adult coloring is often used for relaxation, Zentangle engages the client in a fundamentally different way. Adult coloring, though very enjoyable and relaxing for many, typically involves filling in pre-existing outlines. With Zentangle drawing, each pattern unfolds one stroke at a time. The drawing is emerging. This invites curiosity, discovery, and even surprise!

This distinction is clinically important because trauma often leaves individuals feeling constricted and disconnected from spontaneity and joy. One of the most powerful aspects of Zentangle drawing in trauma therapy is its capacity to reintroduce play and exploration. 

Play is a true physiological indicator of safety. The nervous system only allows for curiosity, creativity, and experimentation when it perceives cues of safety from the environment. Trauma is the opposite of play. In trauma, we feel helpless, vigilant, shut down, and disconnected from our power. In play and creativity, we are reconnected to our sense of aliveness, vitality, and power to make something new. My clients often shift from a physiological state of fear or numbness into excitement and even pride upon completing a Zentangle creation.  

The structured patterns of tangles provide containment and predictability, while the open-ended nature of the drawing task (simply to fill in the spaces within the borders and strings) invites freedom within that structure for clients to explore in safe setting. 

The act of playful creation reinforces a state of calm and safety and signals to the nervous system that it can shift out of a state of survival and defense.

Integration with the Flash Technique

The Zentangle method also pairs beautifully with the Flash Technique, an EMDR-based intervention developed by Philip Manfield designed to reduce distress associated with traumatic memories without requiring sustained focus on them.

The Flash Technique relies on maintaining a Positive Engaging Focus (PEF) while the therapist guides brief, indirect activations of the memory.

Zentangle serves as an ideal PEF because it is:

• Visually engaging and absorbing
• Fosters a state of physiological calm
• Encourages mindful presence
• Easy to sustain over time
• An effective self-soothing and stabilization skill for clients to use outside of a session

Clients can remain immersed in the drawing process while brief “flash” exposures occur. The structure of the drawing task and the completion of patterns in the present provide continuity and predictability, helping prevent overwhelm while still allowing processing to unfold.

Cultural Responsiveness and Resonance

Another meaningful aspect of Zentangle drawing is its adaptability across cultures and contexts. Creating patterns resonates with longstanding traditions found around the world, including Celtic knots, Islamic geometric designs, henna art, textiles, pottery, and patterns in nature. Clients often begin to see their own cultural or personal meanings reflected in the designs they create.

This makes Zentangle drawing especially valuable in global mental health (GMH) settings, where culturally responsive approaches are essential. Rather than imposing specific imagery or narratives, Zentangle drawing allows meaning to emerge organically.

In my work in Ethiopia and other international contexts, I have found Zentangle drawing to be highly accessible. It requires minimal materials, can be taught quickly, and can be practiced almost anywhere.

The Relational Power of Drawing Together

There is also something deeply relational about drawing together.

When I engage in Zentangle drawing alongside my client (even over telehealth), it creates a shared experience. Rather than analyzing or observing, we are both participating in the same process, which helps to equalize power dynamics. Drawing together softens the intensity of direct eye contact, reduces performance pressure, and creates a sense of companionship. For clients with relational trauma, this can be profoundly regulating and can help build new experiences of relational safety. Drawing together and exploring new tangles is a wonderful way to begin to build the therapeutic relationship and set the tone for collaboration. 

Self-Compassion

Zentangle drawing also offers a gentle and embodied way to work with shame and self-criticism.

A core principle of the method is that there are no mistakes—only opportunities to adapt, integrate, and transform. Unintended lines and shapes can be reworked, incorporated, or built upon. As therapists drawing with our clients, we get to model this approach: when we respond to our own “mistakes” with humor or curiosity, we share with clients a new way to respond to themselves and practice self-compassion. For many, this new learning is effective because it is experienced, practiced, and reinforced in real-time.

Extending Beyond the Session

One of the most powerful aspects of Zentangle is its portability.

Clients can use it between sessions as a self-regulation tool. A single pattern, or even the memory of drawing, can serve as a cue to return to a calmer state.

In telehealth contexts, this becomes especially valuable. Clients can practice regulation directly in their own environments, strengthening the bridge between therapy and daily life.

A Living, Creative Path to Healing

Integrating Zentangle drawing with EMDR and the Flash Technique reflects a broader shift in trauma therapy toward experiential, embodied, and creative approaches.

For clients who struggle with traditional forms of stabilization, mindfulness, and relaxation, the Zentangle method offers an alternative approach that allows a calm state of presence to emerge through “doing” rather than “being.” And perhaps most importantly, combining Zentangle drawing with trauma healing reminds us that healing does not always have to be heavy. We can invite creativity, curiosity, and playfulness into the work so that the healing can unfold one line at a time.