Embodied Drawing
A body based healing system for emotional expression
In Embodied Drawing we get curious about how our emotions live in our bodies, sensing their shapes, colours and rhythms and expressing them on the page rather than trying to find words to explain them. By closing the eyes and letting go of the need to make beautiful images you let the body speak which can bring a deep sense of release and relief.
This is all about the process and not about the outcome. Turning towards your feelings and scribbling on a page without any care for what it looks like feels really good and is incredibly satisfying! You also do not have to consider yourself creative in any way to do this, all you need to bring is curiosity and an open mind.
What to Expect in an Embodied Drawing Session
You will have a big piece of paper taped down in front of you and a range of art materials to choose from, typically chalk and oil pastels. Hilary will introduce shapes for regulating the nervous system, and using both hands with eyes closed or gaze lowered you will start to scribble those shapes and patterns on the paper noticing how it feels on the inside with no care for what it looks like on the page.
Through meditation and visualisation we will then connect to how you feel inside, observing the feeling - or felt sense - as a colour, shape or movement and finding marks on the page that somehow seem to match those sensations.
It might be fast zig zags that release frustration or small gentle circles that allow sadness to be acknowledged, there is absolutely no possible way of getting it wrong, your body will know exactly what it needs and wants to do, and Hilary is there to help you learn to trust that.
If we use paints you’ll also use both hands and this can be very calming for the nervous system, allowing all the feelings from the session to be soothed.
At the end we may reflect on the process and notice how you feel now. Mostly people leave their images behind, feeling lighter and brighter for letting their feelings be felt and released.
“This work lives in sensation, in presence, and in the subtle currents beneath words, where meaning is felt before it is spoken.”
Drawing in this way just feels good!
In the same way that dancing, running, shouting or singing does, Embodied Drawing can shift a bad day, a difficult mood or an uncomfortable feeling that you’ve held deep inside for a long time.
We often feel things that we can’t explain, maybe you feel ‘not quite right’, or a bit ‘wonky’ or ‘like everything is too much’, you know that you’re not okay but you can’t quite say why or how. This is the ‘felt sense’ that we talk about and finding ways to express it helps these hard to describe emotions move through the body and be released often without any need to understand them.
Research has shown that trauma is held in the body and rhythmic repetition (such as repeating drawn shapes) is one of the many embodied ways it can be released. By trusting your intuition and the feelings in your body rather than your ability to find the right words you begin to feel the liberation of expressing how you REALLY feel.
“I have to say that I was blown away by Hilary’s course, it was truly transformational for me.
— CS
Feedback
“I have never felt very comfortable talking about my issues but this gave me a way to access feelings that I had always blocked. It was a genuinely moving, safe, and revealing experience for me, I can already feel the benefit in my life.”
— JF“Hilary is an incredible, gentle and skilled facilitator and I immediately felt comfortable with her and the group.”
— AW“There is something really powerful about going inwards and listening and then expressing it visually. I experienced some really profound emotional and psychological shifts during the session.”
— HCFrequently Asked Questions
These questions pop up regularly, but please feel free to get in touch if you have any further queries.
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No, not at all. This is not about creating something beautiful to look at. You just need to show up and bring your curiosity.
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We usually have around 6-8 people in a group.
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People do often feel emotional during a session because expressing how you feel on the paper acts as a release. Tears of any kind are always welcome and tissues are readily available. I will also show you shapes to draw to help calm the nervous system if you need to take a moment to rest.
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No, Embodied Drawing is not art therapy but it can be deeply therapeutic. Once you’ve got the hang of it you may find it to be a useful practice to use at home to help navigate your inner world, much like journaling and free-flow writing.
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Okay, if you’re not familiar with this term, then don’t freak out. What we’re talking about here is literally a sense that is felt in the body. You know when you say something like “My sense is that he’s lying to me” or “I feel like I’m on the edge of burnout”, those are usually in response to something that you are feeling in your body but which doesn’t yet have words. Sometimes this sense communicates to you through sensations in the body that are subtle and other times not subtle at all, and sometimes it is just a hard to describe ‘feeling’.
It is this felt sense that we work with a lot in both Embodied Drawing and Process Painting.