For Anneke Huyser, creating mandalas is a way to make sense of what is preoccupying her inner self. In Mandala Workbook for Inner Self-Discovery, she shares the methods she has developed over the course of a decade for creating these symbols of wholeness and balance — and teaches readers how to make their own.
Derived from a Sanskrit word, mandalas are a universal symbol of wholeness. Huyser introduces mandalas throughout history and from all over the world. They are found in almost every culture: Australian Aborigines’ dreaming, cave paintings of sunbursts and spiral shapes, Navajo shamanic ritual paintings, Hex signs, Tibetan Buddhism, Celtic circles, the I Ching and many others. Mandalas also occur in nature in the form of flowers, spider’s webs, the annual rings of trees, ice crystals, and the solar system. Kandinsky, Klee, and O’Keefe painted them and they surround us everyday as clocks, wheels, kaleidoscopes, compasses, and umbrellas.
Huyser provides practical artistic information about materials to use when creating your mandalas and provides a list of shapes, symbols, colors, and numbers and what they mean so that you can combine personal and ancient iconography to fully express yourself. Used as wall hangings, ornaments, or jewelry, mandalas are also powerful meditation tools. Reflecting on them can bring you back to your center in times of unrest. The book ends with a chapter of relaxation and visualization exercises that will help you make manifest your subconscious in the form of a mandala.
