The Circle: Mandala, Wholeness, and the Art of Healing in Therapy and Ritual
How circle drawing, Jungian mandala practice, and expressive arts reconnect body, mind, and spirit.
Healing Is a Circle, Not a Line
In therapy, in ritual, and in art, the circle has long stood as a symbol of life’s great mystery — unity within movement, continuity within change. It is the most universal of forms, appearing in the sun and moon, the cells of the body, and the iris of the human eye.
In the realm of therapeutic and creative practice, the circle offers more than geometry; it offers a wholeness practice — a way to integrate emotion, embodiment, and consciousness. When we draw, move, or meditate within a circle, we are not merely creating art; we are revealing the ancient pattern of harmony that underlies both psyche and cosmos.
From Carl Jung’s mandala drawings to contemporary art therapy research, the circle continues to serve as a powerful bridge between science and soul — between what we can measure and what we can only feel.
1. The Circle as an Archetype of Wholeness
Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung (1875–1961) discovered the profound significance of the circle while observing his patients’ spontaneous drawings during analysis. He found that many of them, without instruction, began to sketch circular patterns at times of emotional crisis or transformation.
Jung called these drawings mandalas — from the Sanskrit for “sacred circle.” To him, they symbolized the Self, the organizing principle of the psyche that unites the conscious and unconscious.
“The mandala is the psychological expression of the totality of the Self.”
— C.G. Jung, The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious (1959)
Through this lens, creating within a circle becomes a way of visualizing integration. It helps the psyche re-establish order amid chaos, providing a sacred space for parts of the self to communicate and cohere.
For Jung, the circle was not merely a metaphor — it was an experience of psychic centering, an act of bringing fragmented aspects of being into wholeness.
This is why in transpersonal and expressive arts therapy today, the circle remains a core therapeutic container — a visual, spatial, and emotional boundary within which healing unfolds.
2. The Circle in the Body: A Somatic Path to Integration
Modern somatic psychology and neuroscience confirm what Jung intuited: healing begins in the body.
Psychologist and expressive arts pioneer Cathy Malchiodi (2018), in her article Expressive Therapies Continuum: Three-Part Healing Harmony, describes a “bottom-up” process that begins with sensory and kinesthetic experience, then moves toward affective (emotional) and symbolic (cognitive) integration.
“Embodiment is an implicit form of intelligence,” Malchiodi writes, “in direct contrast to the prevailing notion that the mind is the main source of intelligence.”
Drawing or moving in a circle naturally activates this bottom-up intelligence:
The kinesthetic level begins with motion — the rhythmic movement of hand, breath, and body.
The affective level engages emotion as colors and lines express what words cannot.
The symbolic level emerges as imagery takes form, revealing meaning from within.
Finally, the creative level integrates them all — a synthesis of body, feeling, and awareness into a coherent whole.
This sequence mirrors what Malchiodi and Vija Lusebrink identified as the Expressive Therapies Continuum (ETC) — a clinically supported framework that explains how creative processes can regulate emotion, foster insight, and restore coherence in trauma recovery.
Thus, the circle practice engages every level of being — body, heart, mind, and spirit — guiding the participant through movement, feeling, and reflection into the stillness of integration.
3. The Science of Circular Form and Safety
Recent research in neuroaesthetics has uncovered why humans respond so profoundly to circular and curved forms. Studies by Bar and Neta (2006) and Vartanian et al. (2013) demonstrated that rounded shapes activate the orbitofrontal cortex — associated with pleasure and safety — while angular shapes can trigger the amygdala, associated with threat perception.
In simple terms: we feel safer in circles.
This neurological preference mirrors our instinctive comfort in enclosed yet open spaces — womb-like, protective, yet expansive. In therapeutic settings, the circular frame of a mandala or the arrangement of a group in a circle reduces social hierarchy, fosters equality, and enhances the sense of communal safety and belonging.
The Active Kreative Approach utilizes this intrinsic neurobiological response by integrating sacred geometry and circular drawing into therapeutic sessions, encouraging participants to enter a state of flow and self-regulation.
Research in art therapy supports this: mandala drawing and coloring have been shown to reduce anxiety, lower physiological arousal, and promote mindfulness (Curry & Kasser, Art Therapy, 2005; Gürcan & Atay Turan, European Journal of Cancer Care, 2021).
In other words, the circle’s shape itself — before meaning or metaphor — soothes the nervous system.
4. The Circle as Ritual and Sacred Geometry
Beyond psychology, the circle is among humanity’s oldest ritual symbols. Across ancient traditions, it has signified the divine order of the cosmos, the cycle of life, and the unity of all beings.
In Tibetan Buddhism, intricate mandalas are created from colored sand as offerings and then ritually dissolved — a meditation on impermanence.
Indigenous Medicine Wheels of the Americas map the four directions and the balance of body, mind, spirit, and emotion.
In alchemy, the Ouroboros — the serpent swallowing its tail — symbolizes eternal renewal.
In Celtic spirituality, circular knots represent life’s interconnected threads.
These are not simply artistic motifs; they are ritual technologies of consciousness — embodied ways of perceiving wholeness.
When brought into modern therapy or creative facilitation, circle practices serve a similar role: they restore sacred order to experience. They remind participants that endings are beginnings, that every dissolution contains the seed of rebirth.
To draw or dance in a circle is to enact this truth — to step inside a living mandala where the boundaries between self and cosmos momentarily dissolve.
5. The Circle as a Therapeutic Process
In art therapy, the circle provides a structure that mirrors the psyche’s need for containment. The process often unfolds through four phases:
Engagement: The participant begins by tracing or creating a circle — a symbolic act of opening sacred space.
Expression: Through colors, symbols, and forms, emotional material surfaces safely within the boundary.
Reflection: The participant observes the image, discovering patterns, metaphors, or emerging insights.
Integration: Discussion or journaling follows, grounding meaning and closing the circle of experience.
Therapeutically, this process engages both hemispheres of the brain — right-brain creativity and left-brain reflection — leading to a state of neural coherence. It supports emotional regulation, cognitive reframing, and deepened self-awareness.
As Jung observed in his own mandala practice during a period of inner turmoil, the circle “gave order to the chaos of the unconscious.” In this sense, every mandala or circular drawing becomes both mirror and medicine.
Psychologist and expressive arts pioneer Cathy Malchiodi (2018), in her article Expressive Therapies Continuum: Three-Part Healing Harmony, describes a “bottom-up” process that begins with sensory and kinesthetic experience, then moves toward affective (emotional) and symbolic (cognitive) integration.
“Embodiment is an implicit form of intelligence,” Malchiodi writes, “in direct contrast to the prevailing notion that the mind is the main source of intelligence.”
Drawing or moving in a circle naturally activates this bottom-up intelligence:
The kinesthetic level begins with motion — the rhythmic movement of hand, breath, and body.
The affective level engages emotion as colors and lines express what words cannot.
The symbolic level emerges as imagery takes form, revealing meaning from within.
Finally, the creative level integrates them all — a synthesis of body, feeling, and awareness into a coherent whole.
This sequence mirrors what Malchiodi and Vija Lusebrink identified as the Expressive Therapies Continuum (ETC) — a clinically supported framework that explains how creative processes can regulate emotion, foster insight, and restore coherence in trauma recovery.
Thus, the circle practice engages every level of being — body, heart, mind, and spirit — guiding the participant through movement, feeling, and reflection into the stillness of integration.
6. Healing as a Spiral of Return
Healing is rarely linear. It unfolds as a spiral — a recurring movement between release and renewal. The circle teaches this non-linear wisdom: that progress is not about straight ascent, but about returning again and again with greater awareness.
Each time we engage in circle drawing, meditation, or ritual, we revisit our center from a new vantage point. We spiral inward toward depth and outward toward connection.
This cyclical motion mirrors the natural laws of rhythm that govern our physiology and the universe — heartbeat, breath, seasons, moon phases, and the turning of galaxies.
To align with these rhythms is to live in harmony with the larger field of life — what transpersonal psychology calls expanded consciousness.
7. The Circle as Wholeness Practice in Active Kreative
The Active Kreative Approach embraces the circle as a unifying framework for transformation — bridging therapeutic methodology, creative exploration, and ritual experience.
Within its practice, the circle is both container and mirror:
A somatic tool for grounding through movement and breath.
A symbolic field for emotional and spiritual reflection.
A creative pathway for cognitive insight and meaning-making.
A ritual act of reconnection — to self, others, and the greater whole.
Drawing upon transpersonal psychology, art therapy, neurographic art, and sacred geometry, Active Kreative uses circular drawing and movement as practices of integration and embodied awareness.
Participants often report feeling “centered,” “balanced,” or “reconnected” after such sessions — outcomes supported by art therapy research that links creative flow to parasympathetic regulation and improved emotional resilience (Haeyen, Frontiers in Psychology, 2024).
In this way, the circle functions not as decoration but as medicine — a geometry of healing that reorganizes the nervous system and reawakens the sense of wholeness.
8. The Circle Within: Revealing What Has Always Been
When we draw the circle into meditation, art, or ritual, we do not create it — we reveal it.
It already exists in us:
in the cells of the body,
in the iris of the eyes,
in the orbit of the stars.
The circle is both the form of the world and the form of the soul.
To trace its line is to remember the pattern we were born into — the ancient intelligence of connection.
Each mark of the hand, each breath in rhythm, each repetition in movement becomes a quiet act of remembering:
You are not separate. You are part of the circle of life.
Conclusion: Returning to the Center
In therapeutic and creative practice, the circle calls us back to what is essential. It brings the scattered fragments of self into dialogue and teaches that transformation is less about striving and more about returning — again and again — to presence.
Jung’s mandala, Malchiodi’s continuum, and contemporary ritual arts all converge here:
the circle as a living practice of embodied wholeness.
When we draw, dance, or meditate within the circle, we align with a universal rhythm — the pulse of life itself.
In that movement of return, we rediscover what healing has always meant:
to be whole, to be connected, to be home.
References
Bar, M., & Neta, M. (2006). Humans prefer curved visual objects. Psychological Science, 17(8), 645–648.
Haeyen, S. (2024). A Theoretical Exploration of Polyvagal Theory in Creative Arts and Psychomotor Therapies. Frontiers in Psychology.
Jung, C. G. (1959). The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious. Princeton University Press.
Malchiodi, C. A. (2018). Expressive Therapies Continuum: Three-Part Healing Harmony. Psychology Today.
Curry, N. A., & Kasser, T. (2005). Can Coloring Mandalas Reduce Anxiety? Art Therapy: Journal of the American Art Therapy Association, 22(2), 81–85.
Gürcan, E., & Atay Turan, S. (2021). Effect of Mandala Art Therapy on Anxiety in Adolescents with Cancer. European Journal of Cancer Care.
Vartanian, O., et al. (2013). Preference for Curved Contours: A Neurophysiological Perspective. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience.
