Body Mapping with Guided Drawing
Cornelia Elbrecht AThR, SEP, ANZACATA, IEATA, IACAET
When a client comes into an art therapy session, she will usually begin to tell me why she is seeking support. If she is a recurring client, we will discuss what noteworthy or conflicting events happened in the past week or months. However, before she will go into too many details, I will look out for verbal body references such as ‘this made my skin crawl’, it was ‘heart-breaking’ or ‘I felt sick in my stomach’.
There might be a significant posture such as folded arms, or a hand protecting a shoulder, or sitting slumped over. If this seems to relate to the events my client is talking about, I will ask her to draw these body sensations in rhythmic repetition with both hands, just how they feel: tense, broken, braced, holding on, jagged, painful or otherwise. My client does not have to understand these movements, but just to track them in her body. I encourage her to bilaterally express them in rhythmic repetition, until the movement on the paper feels like the movement in her body.
The sheet of paper needs to be large enough to allow the projection of the body onto it. A small A4 format, the size of a writing pad, is insufficient; the paper needs to be preferably A2 in size offering space without being overwhelming. (The A2 size print measures 42.0 x 59.4cm, or 16.53 x 23.39 inches.)
Guided Drawing engages the story in the body rather than the story of the mind; it gives the body a voice. Adults will draw with their eyes closed, if possible, to enhance the body-focus, and use a crayon in each hand. The emphasis is clearly not on what it looks like, but on tracking body sensations.
I may suggest the idea of having a bodywork session rather than making art. Occasionally I will explain that all emotions have a physiological expression. Fear might make your heart race, your palms sweaty and your guts churn. Excitement wells up. Joy flows usually with ease. Anger is hot, intense and always rises. Grounding moves down, putting roots into the earth like a tree. Inspiration is closely linked to inhaling, taking in spirit. You might sense blocked motion such as a lump in the stomach or a stiff neck. Even a tumour is a movement.
Rather than translating the experience of, say, “fluttering in the stomach” into an image, which will then be projected onto the paper, I will encourage my client to use repetition to test and try out this inner sensation. Thus she will directly translate an internal movement into a drawn movement on the paper until she can flutter with the crayons just as “it” flutters in her stomach.
As a therapist I will make supportive sounds to ensure my client does not feel awkward about drawing with closed eyes, and that she finds her rhythm. Rhythm connects. Rhythm builds trust into the body’s knowing. (Elbrecht 2018) Guided Drawing requires this dropping into an internal dance. Without rhythm the experience remains cognitive, disconnected and informed by learnt behaviours. If my client is counting steps, concerned about what her drawing looks like, or what she should do, she is not dancing. Once she has found her inner rhythm, not too slow, not too fast but just ‘right’, she will begin to connect with her body and her needs.
In my experience, many clients in crisis, in psychological agony or suffering from post-traumatic stress, experience physical discomfort and pain. Being more associated with mental distress these symptoms may often be medically undiagnosed. Most clients are relieved when they are allowed to put their focus on these symptoms of inflammation and bracing patterns.
Van der Kolk describes how clients in psychological stress experience being held hostage by their body. They feel victimized not only by what happened to them in the past, but also how these events painfully impact on their daily lives. (Van der Kolk 2014) To be able to do something about this is deeply empowering. Levine characterized trauma by being unable to act, by feeling helpless and overwhelmed. (Levine 2010) Guided Drawing gives clients a tool to heal themselves. (Elbrecht 2018)
Because once the inner tension, the movements of emotions, of blockages or hurt have been drawn, the second part of the session is about what is needed to bring relief. Not cognitive insight, but direct physical healing. My client may need round soothing, caressing movements, or she may want to release anger, frustration and pain through lines directed to go out and away. She may want to hold bunches of crayons in her fists and throw punches. Or she may want finger paints and apply circular, calming movements to downregulate her nervous system. She may need to experiment with alternating patterns, switching between soothing and releasing outbursts. These impulses are self-directed; they follow an inner guidance, which is in direct contact with my client’s implicit felt sense and her perceived need for relief.
It is always amazing to witness that this works! Clients can apply a self-massage and experience a palpable reduction of their distressing symptoms. The therapist can structure the experience through archetypal shapes that are characteristic for Guided Drawing. (Elbrecht 2018) Drawn in rhythmic repetition these shapes offer nervous system regulation, the safe release of strong emotions, or they may introduce empowering postures and a new way of moving.
In this Guided Drawing approach it is not the specific problem or crisis that becomes the focal point, but the option to new answers and solutions as they are embedded in the body's felt sense. Such sensorimotor achievements are remembered like learning how to swim or ride a bike. They are lasting achievements that can transform even early infant developmental setbacks; they assist in finding an active response to traumatic experiences. They allow us to rewrite our biography towards a more authentic, alive sense of self.
Guided Drawing differs from well-known scribble drawing exercises in so far as it encourages the alignment with body sensations. Both the emerging shapes and their rhythmic repetition have the purpose of building trust and inner structure. This is important especially for clients who are afraid of their inside. Many traumatized individuals are afraid of their body sensations and experience them as a threat.
In Guided Drawing clients gradually find their own shapes borne out of a deepening contact with themselves. Motion and emotion can be expressed, as well as blocked motion and the way it is hindered. This new form of body language makes increasing sense as related emotions and thought forms become apparent, along with the way they constitute the body posture. For example the feeling that “the circle I’ve drawn is too small” starts to correlate to a mindset of self-limitation such as: “I need to make myself small to be safe”; or “I can hardly breathe, I need to get out of this”; or the circling motions feels like running in a circle, or like a vicious cycle.
What movement can make my client possibly feel better? If she could have a massage now, what rhythmic movement patterns would she like? If she practised martial arts, what defensive action would she need right now? And she will try out movements, again in rhythmic repetition on the paper, until she can sense a clear shift in her body. Is there less tension now? Less pain? Less numbness? Less fear? Is there more energy? More uprightness? More grounding? More hope? More courage?
This is not a cognitive process; this is not thinking up shapes, but about finding that inner guidance that will bring release and transformation. A newly drawn and enlarged circle or other figure has a definitive effect not only on my client’s body awareness, but also on her mental and emotional wellbeing.
Works Cited
Elbrecht, Cornelia. 2018. Healing trauma with guided drawing; a sensorimotor art therapy approach to bilateral body mapping. Berkeley, CA: North Atlantic Books.
Levine, Peter. 2010. In an unspoken voice; how the body releases trauma and restores goodness. Berkeley: North Atlantic Books.
Van der Kolk, Bessel. 2014. The body keeps the score. New York: Viking, Penguin Group.
AThR, SEP, ANZACATA, IEATA, IACAET
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