Drawing Is Like Meditation

It might just be me, but when I’m doing work that involves a lot of thinking, my head starts to feel overheated. It’s a bit like how a computer’s CPU heats up. Honestly, I have to admit—my brain’s specs aren’t exactly top-notch.

When my brain overheats, it just freezes. My mind just stops working. At those times, I take a break and let my brain rest—cool it down, so to speak. But if I repeat this overheating-and-cooling cycle too many times in a single day, by the evening both my brain and body are completely worn out.

I know the best thing to do would be to go to bed early. But it’s never that easy. I don’t feel like reading books (not even magazines!), and I don’t feel like watching movies on streaming services either. Lately, even watching YouTube videos feels like too much effort.

At the end of such a day, I sometimes open Procreate on my iPad and start drawing—illustrations, doodles, whatever. Since it’s not a commissioned piece, I can draw whatever I want. Just run the pen (Apple Pencil) across the screen. It doesn’t matter if it’s bad. It doesn’t matter if it’s messy. Drawing without thinking about anything—that feels so good.

While drawing, I realized something: it feels a lot like meditation. Drawing is like meditation. It makes me feel as if I can slip into a state of nothingness.

More than ten years ago, there was a period when I was deeply into meditation. I don’t practice it at all anymore, but drawing reminds me of how it felt back then. In recent years, with global affairs, the rapid rise of AI, and the accelerating pace of the times, the world feels like it’s constantly changing. In such an environment, there are moments when I need silence—then I meditate. Or perhaps, for me, drawing has become a substitute for meditation. What’s more, drawing feels even more relaxing and enjoyable than meditating. And strangely enough, it even seems to ease my fatigue a little.