When Colour Flows

Khush Raho with Sangeeta

Most people think that watercolour painting takes very little effort. The truth is actually quite the opposite. When I returned home after abdominal surgery, I wanted to get back to my painting table as soon as possible. When I finally did, I was taken aback by how impossible and difficult something that had come so naturally just a few months earlier had become.

I had been painting watercolours for almost ten years—starting with representational work, landscapes, and people, before moving into a purely abstract practice. To most people, it seems easy. In fact, I once gifted one of my abstract sunflower paintings to a friend, and it inspired her to start painting with watercolours herself. But when she finally sat down to paint, she realised just how deceptively difficult the medium really is.

Back at my painting table, I was overwhelmed by the despair of not being able to reconnect with something that had become such an important part of my life—the tactile experience of water, pigments, brushes, and paper. I couldn't understand what my weakened abdominal muscles had to do with my arms and hands. After all, I was only sitting in a chair and painting. But there it was.

What I had not fully understood until then was how much that daily practice had been doing for me, far beyond the making of art.

When we pick up a brush or a pencil, we are not simply creating something. We are entering into a quiet dialogue with our inner self. Our breathing changes. The mind settles. The body's energy begins to reorganise itself around a single point of focus. The hand becomes a bridge between the inner world and outward expression. Thoughts dissolve. The heart begins to speak in shapes, shades, and textures that bypass words altogether.

This is not creativity for its own sake. It is energetic medicine, gently lifting the body and mind into a higher frequency where healing becomes possible.

Then it struck me like a lightning bolt. What I had truly lost was not watercolour painting itself. It was the feeling of holding a brush, the joy of playing with colour. And that, I realised, I could find again.

So I decided to use a completely different set of colours and brushes. I went to the hardware store and bought half-litre cans of the primary colours—yellow, red, and blue—along with black and white house paint. I also picked up a selection of house-painting brushes, starting from one inch wide. With these, I began painting on whatever packaging material arrived at home. That became my new canvas.

I simply enjoyed playing with colours, brushes, shapes, strokes, and textures.

This exploration had no goal. It was never about creating something to be displayed in public. It was about allowing energy to move through me and onto the surface. Stuck emotions found release. Unexpressed feelings took shape. During those daily sessions, however long I was able to sit or stand, I could feel myself beginning to heal as the energy flowed through me and onto the page. My soul was finding its way back.

This practice is for everyone. You do not need training or talent. Before you begin, simply pause for a moment. Feel the weight of the brush or pencil in your hand. Notice the blank sheet of paper before you. Then begin. Allow rather than control.

That conscious, present beginning is where healing starts. When life throws obstacles in our path and prevents us from doing what we love, it is not the end. It simply asks us to adapt and discover another way to express our soul's purpose.

I never did return to making watercolours, much as I tried. Instead, I painted on every piece of packaging material that came into the house—newspapers, Amazon boxes, shipping cartons from a new washing machine or fridge. I used them all, and eventually I even exhibited some of these upcycled works.

So, do not be disheartened when you are stopped from doing something you love. Flow around the obstacle, just as water flows around the rocks in its path as it runs downhill.

Namaste. Small rituals. Profound healing. Until next time—Khush Raho! Stay happy, stay healthy.

(Sangeeta Bhalla

 is an Energy Healer, Instructor, and Therapeutic Aromatherapist. She can be reached at www.sangeetabhalla.net )