Bilateral Drawing with Closed Eyes
Cornelia Elbrecht AThR, SEP, ANZACATA, IEATA
One of the features of Guided Drawing is that clients draw with their eyes closed. Drawing bilaterally in rhythmic repetition with both hands and closed eyes is a concept foreign to the visual arts, where seeing is traditionally of core significance. It is also the one question inevitably raised in every Guided Drawing training: “Do all clients have to close their eyes when they engage in Guided Drawing?” The answer is: “of course not.” The closed eyes are a tool. Just like crayons and finger paints offer different haptic experiences, the closed or open eyes offer a different focus. The client either looks inside or outside. Is the client’s need for implicit connection with the body or explicit orientation in the world? Is the therapeutic goal nervous system regulation through self-perception or through a relational encounter?
When I dance with my eyes open, I have a social experience, which relates to my dance partner or others on the dance floor; we interact with each other through movements, interpreting the music with our bodies. When I dance with closed eyes, I do so to enhance the relationship with myself; it helps me to connect with my felt sense and to interact through movement and rhythm with myself. Depending on my focus, they are two different experiences, even when the same music plays.
Children have only a diffuse perception of their felt sense. Every parent knows this, when a child says ‘it’ hurts. Unless it is a visible wound, young children will have a hard time to tell the doctor, where it hurts. I vividly recall the different psychological state of those children who had broken legs; they could draw with ease, why they were in hospital, they all had a story. Whereas those children in the ward for internal medicine drew their family and asked only about why they could not be at home. They did not understand, why they had been removed from their care givers and what was wrong with them.[1]
Children’s orientation needs to be focused on the surroundings in order feel safe in the world. Young children depend on their care givers for nervous system regulation. They are dependent on the adults in their lives and they need to adjust and align themselves with these.[2] This process is necessary for their personal and social development. In art sessions, the therapist takes on this regulating and role-modelling function through engaging their exteroceptors, their five senses.[3] Hence children will always draw with their eyes open. They are rarely hindered in their creative process by ego-driven control. Their urge to express themselves may need therapeutic support, but once a child feels safe in the setting, they usually have no problem to engage. My youngest clients for Guided Drawing were three years old.
The urge to turn inwards happens around puberty. At this age teens’ physiology changes significantly and they become highly focused on their inner life. However, especially for those who turn up in therapy sessions, this process is likely experienced as a threat, a source of shame and embarrassment. To ask these teens to close their eyes in front of an adult in order to focus on their body would be an unbearably destabilizing experience for most. However, teens are usually filled up to the brim with unprocessed emotions. Guided Drawing can become a useful tool to discharge fear, anger, grief and shame. Drawn with eyes open, the structured release can potentially lead to increased ANS regulation, physiological wellbeing and self-esteem.
This fear of their inner world may continue into adulthood for some clients. Traumatized clients do not experience their bodies and emotions as safe. A full focus on their interoceptors, tracking their felt sense, would be way too challenging.[4] Some are dissociated from their bodies, because they find body sensations overwhelming. Others are flooded with imagery, when they close their eyes. These clients benefit enormously from structured rhythmic bilateral drawing as an empowering tool to self-regulate their nervous system. Here the Guided Drawing shapes can become an ordering embodying agent; they may give these clients agency over otherwise overwhelming internal sensations.[5] They draw, of course, with their eyes open, and the therapist may be quite directive in suggesting certain shapes for rhythmic repetition, until these clients are sufficiently attuned to find their own.
In private practice I tend to see clients, who do have a core sense of self, but who suffer from being overworked, stressed, burnt out, and they often feel disconnected from themselves. As successful as everything might be on the outside, on the inside they feel empty and exhausted. Here drawing with closed eyes becomes a relief. No longer concerned about visible outcomes, they can relax and surrender to simply being in the here-and-now. For these clients long to focus on the body. There is a real need to get out of the head, away from overthinking and analysing. Body mapping, tracking inner tension and bracing patterns, and then massaging these stress points with paint and full contact with the hands becomes a tangible and empowering stress relief.[6] These clients tend to be sufficiently stable and resourced and are able to face traumas of the past, to actively respond to them, and to map out their individual healing journey.
All client groups may benefit from Guided Drawing; however, the approach requires adjustments to each individual’s needs. Children thrive on an exteroceptive focus, where all the senses are engaged and the relationship with the therapist offers a safe environment. They keep their eyes open. The same applies for many teenagers, young adults and psychiatric clients. Some may work with a half gaze, but most will feel uncomfortable, if not threated, to fully close their eyes. This client group benefits from structured Guided Drawing shapes that allows t=hem to generate trust in their own capacity to deal with emotions and overwhelm in a structured way. It is the client group of stressed and somatosensory dissociated adults that benefit the most from rhythmic bilateral drawing with closed eyes. Here Guided Drawing becomes a re-pairing exercise, where clients deeply engage with their interoceptors. As they look inwards, they learn to track their felt sense, regulate their nervous system, and revitalize their inner flow. These clients do not require directive interventions from the therapist; rather they need encouragement to follow their own inner guidance. Through such self-guided, active reconnection they are able to create a trusting relationship with themselves.
[1] (Elbrecht, The transformation journey 2006)
[2] (Perry 2005)
[3] (Elbrecht, Healing traumatized children at the clay field; sensorimotor embodiment of developmental milestones. 2021)
[4] ibid
[5] (Elbrecht, Healing trauma with guided drawing; a sensorimotor art therapy approach to bilateral body mapping 2018)
[6] (Elbrecht, Healing trauma with guided drawing; a sensorimotor art therapy approach to bilateral body mapping 2018)
Bibliography
Elbrecht, Cornelia. 2018. Healing trauma with guided drawing; a sensorimotor art therapy approach to bilateral body mapping. Berkeley, CA: North Atlantic Books.
—. 2021. Healing traumatized children at the clay field; sensorimotor embodiment of developmental milestones. Berkley CA: North Atlantic Books.
—. 2006. The transformation journey. Todtmoos-Ruette: Johanna Nordlaender Verlag.
—. 2013. Trauma healing at the clay field, a sensorimotor art therapy approach. London/Philadelphia: jessica Kingsley.
Perry, Bruce. 2005. "Applying principles of Neurodevelopment to clinical work with maltreated and traumatized children: The neurosequential model of therapeutics." In Working with traumatized youth in child welfare, by Webb, 27 - 53. New York: Guilford Press.
AThR, SEP, ANZACATA, IEATA
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