Mandalas....

Has anyone tried coloring mandalas -- they're sort of like what you'd see when you held that thing (whose name I can't think of right now for the life of me), but when you held it up to your eye and as you turned the bottom the shapes of colored glass inside would shift and form new shapes? Along with hubby's birthday gifts, my daughter sent me a book of mandalas -- along with a box of colored markers. The artist/illustrator who did the book says it's active meditation. Thirty minute mandalas, she says. (Can you guess where this is going?) Now, I've always found repetitive action soothing (excluding housework, of course), and I do relax while working on the mandalas in the book -- until....I start wondering if my 30 minutes are up. I guess I need to stick with it and practice actively meditating for a full thirty minutes. (How long do you think I'll be able to resist setting a timer?)