Another response has come from someone who read over my blog posts on Zentangle and has seen my crosstrainer shoes asking, “What's the difference between the Zentangles and my doodles? I've been doodling all of my life."   It's an honest questioning from someone who wants to know.   

I often respond with, "Is your work teachable? Can you teach others to do what you do?"
At that point, I find myself in a mini-lecture with this analogy to music.


The 102 “tangles” are a form of standardized notation, much as in music, that students first learn to master. Each Certified Zentangle Teacher learns to master these 102 tangles so as to be able to teach students to make art in the first two classroom hours. Standardized tangles make classroom instruction possible. The students soon learn to recognize these tangles in a complex looking piece of art the way musicians recognize chord structure in someone else's music.


Yes, there are gifted artists who paint well without lessons, or gifted musicians who can write and play songs without reading music. But they have no method for teaching students their craft.


My father grew up in an Amish home where musical instruments were forbidden. While I was yet in grade school, I would see him bring home from his monthly excursions to the local auction barn keyboard musical instruments; a bellows organ, an upright piano, or several accordions. I would marvel as in a few minutes he could teach himself to play familiar hymns as the family sang along. His method of teaching me to solve any problem was, “If you just look at it long enough, it will come to you."  My brain was not wired like his.  I never learned to play “by ear.”


For certain gifted people no lessons are necessary to create art; not so for the general population. We need a way of learning to make art we enjoy. Zentangle makes that possible for us “one stroke at a time.”

For more than 90 minutes, Daved and I watched with amused interest.

Except for bathroom breaks, the four Certified Zentangle Teachers® shared nonstop in an excited, animated way their experiences of Zentangle Art, their insights from the last training, their experiences of teaching others, and the joys expressed by those they had newly trained. The emotional fervor of the moment forced them to occasionally reach out and touch each other, or shed tears of rapture and wonder.

 I could've sworn that these women had just returned from some fundamentalist revival meeting.

 A one point, my eyes lost focus on the scene in front of me as the women’s words faded. Suddenly, I am an 8 year old boy, watching from the top step, mesmerized, as my aunts, Maude, Fanny, and Amanda, three of my dad’s sisters, circled on the porch for a Sunday afternoon, competitively share their experiences of the latest revival meetings, of hearing the most inspiring evangelists, of giving testimony to their spiritual experiences, and of having brought others into the fold.


 This scene from my childhood has not been in my consciousness for half a century. Now it has been called forth most vividly by the four women in front of me sharing their inspiration from the latest “revival meeting” with “Brother Rick” and “Sister Maria"; thus having been inspired to go out and “teach the gospel” to others.

Profoundly touched by this experience, their lives have moved to newer, richer paths.

"In our family, there was no clear line between religion and fly fishing.” wrote Norman Maclean in his novel A River Runs Through It. One could easily paraphrase his quote to “between religion and Zentangle”.

“But……….” I can hear you protest, “There's no theological doctrine in Zentangle. No right. No wrong. Nothing that gets you sent to Hell. They have nothing in common.”

I beg to differ. Even an alien visiting this planet for the first time can see the similarities.

In your mind, picture two video screens, side by side, one shows your usual religious service, the second, a Zentangle® teacher training. No sound; only video. What do we see on both screens?

We see people entering quietly, expectantly, greeting each other with smiles, anticipating a shared experience.

People move to their places, sit down and become less animated.

The moment the leader/ leaders stand in front of the group, the group members all give their undivided attention.

Soon, they all bow their heads.

For everyone, the focus is on the space in front of them.

After a period of time, the quiet focus comes to an end, people look up, turn to each other and smile.

Later, when the entire gathered ritual is complete, and the participants continue to congregate, speaking warmly to each other of what they had just experienced.


Since ancient times, the function of religious rituals has been to quiet the body, to still the mind, to narrow the focus to very specific point in time and space, and to lower the frequency of vibration in which we exist. In that stillness, we can come in contact with the very ground of our being. In that place, we become more loving, compassionate, and creative. From that place, artists create, musicians compose, and writers write.


In the silence of our observation, Daved commented it was his thinking that creativity was about connection; connection to something deep inside, as well as in connection to others outside. I think he's onto something there. Zentangle, like religion, connects us with something deep and mystical inside, and allows us to somehow connect with the community at large in some more creative, compassionate way.


Community, whether it comes from shared creativity, or shared Christianity, has a kindred basis. For both congregations, community is a byproduct that arises from a collective transcendent experience. Zentangle, like all spiritual practices, is one path to that experience.

People do not remain neutral to seeing Zentangle art. Some are immediately dismissive, seeing the line drawings as little more than graffiti. Lifelong doodlers will see it as “what I have been doing for years”. Others, captured by the line drawings, remain with eyes fixed, not quite able to pull themselves from the art, not knowing what holds them to this art form. As a therapist, my surprise has been the strength of the emotional responses of many people, (including my own, at times), to these simple line drawings. Here are two recent examples:


A 30-year-old pregnant account executive, in the middle her session, stared downward.

"You wrote on your shoes!” She exclaimed. "My mother would have a fit. She always fussed at me whenever I would doodle on my shoes because I was so bored in class."

"But these are my shoes" I responded.

“It doesn't matter”, she replied, “my mother would still have of fit”.

“But, now you are old enough to buy your own shoes. You can write on them whenever you wish…..”   I began, thinking this was an opportunity for therapeutic intervention.
“My mother would still have a fit!” the client interrupted, “She says you’re not supposed to write on your shoes.

Cross training is essential to all athletes who want to perform at their highest potential. I’ve known that since my high school and college days of track and baseball.   Cross training is the name coaches give to those endless, repetitive, mind-numbing exercises that seemingly have little in common with one's actual skill training in a sport, yet are supposed to be essential in one’s overall athletic development.

 Our baseball team came to joke that any maintenance chore assigned by the coach was considered “cross training.”   “Push that rake, Miller, it’s cross training.”

In my 30s, I undertook running as a form of exercise. As my race distances got longer, I decided to not set running a marathon as a goal, telling myself the cross training required to do marathons was a commitment of time I would not take from the family and give to my running.

Even though I no longer do any athletic cross training, I wear New Balance cross trainers to the office Several years ago I realized I simply felt better wearing the cross trainers; even better than wearing my best Johnston and Murphy dress shoes.

Because my career requires significant creative, mental work, the only cross training I do these days is for my brain; drawing mind maps, cutting/stacking firewood for the winter, coloring mandalas, (not Sudoku, it’s – too structured, using only part of the brain.).

Zentangle, I have discovered, is one of the better cross training activities for my brain.

Creating a Zentangle art tile as cross training for the mind, requires investing an hour
- Paying attention to the ceramic point on the paper,
- Feeling the pen drag across the ridges of Italian watercolor paper,- Hearing the muffled sound of paper,
- and watching the pen move deliberately in repetitive movements; rhythmically, hypnotically entraining the mind to this narrow focus.

Then, for the next three days, my journal writing shifts:
- the handwriting becomes legible,
- the mind stays on the page,
- the writing develops focus. (this must be the “Zen” part.)
Less drivel fills space on the page, more material comes from the intuitive heart.

One April afternoon, Deborah and Marijane were in the park creating Zentangle art in anticipation of attending the workshop training for Certified Zentangle Teachers. I decided to use the Zentangle art form (my mental cross training activity) to decorate the cross trainer shoes.

An hour of focused attention….., and voilà.   Wearable art.        “How cool is that!” I tell myself, “How brave is that!”

Next:   Responses to Zentangle wearable art.