Body Drawings: An Artistic Mindfulness Practice
What is a body drawing and why would I want to make one?
Describing what neurodivergent or autistic burnout is like by writing or using a symptom checklist can leave out parts of us that don’t communicate with words. A body map or body drawing is one way to explore how it feels from a mindful and somatically aware perspective. Body drawings can also be a way to record what you notice while doing a body scan. Sometimes the images that arise are more evocative than words, especially when alexithymia or shutdown are making verbal processing difficult.
How to Make a Body Drawing
The basic idea is that you're depicting different sensations that you're feeling in your body.
Start with a body outline (like a gingerbread person) or a stick figure. Or you can freehand it, using the page like a mirror that you're drawing what's happening in your body on to.
Then take a moment to take a deep breath and kind of drop into your body and notice what you feel.
Depict what you notice on the page using colors and shapes on the part of the body where you’re feeling it.
Then pause and feel into that sensation that you just put down on the page. See what you notice there.
Repeat steps 3 and 4 until your drawing feels complete.
If you want, take a little time to journal and record your observations:
Other ideas:
Do body drawings separated by time and notice the changes or patterns.
Think about how you feel in different states and do a separate body drawing for each state.
Experiment with using different materials to depict what you notice.
Try using different modes of expression like movement, music, or poetry to depict what you notice during a body scan.
