Body Mapping for Difficult Life Experiences

Activity Information

• Instructions
  1. Identify a difficult experience you have had or are going through currently. For example, this could be an illness or health diagnosis, struggle with grades or finances, breakup or argument with a family member, or fear about your future.
  2. Create a body map by drawing an outline of a body that captures a reflection of your own body. This could be an average, fat, or thin body; a distorted body with a giant head and tiny body; a body with disjointed pieces, for example. You might consider drawing your body in a particular posture, such as with hands on hips or hunched at the shoulders.
  3. Use the supplies to draw and/or cut out images and words from the magazines that reflect and affect the stories that comprise your difficult experience and where and how it lives in your body.

   

  Here are some ideas to get you thinking about what to map onto your body:

  Where do your challenges, pain, shame, and apologies related to this experience live on your body?

  Where do self-love, sources of strength, joys, and celebrations related to this experience live in your body?

  What emotions, positive and negative, do you feel related to this experience and where do they live in your body? Write the names of the emotions on the body map or draw an image that captures them. What color is it? What texture is it?

  What metaphors can you use to visually capture the emotions related to this experience? For example, a fire coming out of the heart could represent a burning desire. A river flowing out of the eyes could represent how grief lives in your body. An ‘X’ over the mouth could represent how your body has been silenced.

  Consider different interactions with others, jarring moments, or turning points that make up the story of this difficult experience. Where do they show up in your body.

  What are thoughts and feelings related to this experience that occur outside or around the body itself? Who or what is on the outside looking in? What messages from others impact the body? How do you think the body appears to the world?

  If you were to make a “key” for the map, what would it include? What does each color/texture/visual represent?

  What is the title of your body map?

  View Body Map Example

• Reflection Questions

  If you were to explain your map to someone, what would you tell them?

  How does your body map affect and reflect what it means to be going through your difficulty experience?

  How does your body map illustrate what it means to be a woman, dis/able-bodied, BIPOC, queer, or gender non-binary, for example?

  How do your privileges or lack of privilege impact how you experience your challenge?

  How can you use your map to (re)story this or other challenges you may face in your life?

• Exercise Alternatives
  • Use a large art paper roll instead of a small piece of paper to make a life-sized body map.
  • Instead of making an individual body map, make a community body map along with those who have experienced a shared difficult experience.
  • Rather than using paper for the body map, sew a doll or repurpose Barbies or action figures.
  • Instead of focusing on one specific “difficult experience,” create a body map that reflects one’s life experiences and body over a lifetime.
• Additional Resources

  Suggested Readings:

  The Body is Not an Apology: The Power of Radical Self Love 

  Alternative to The Body Keeps the Score 

   

  Support Resources:

  DUhelp 

  DU Red Folder 

  DU Employee Resources 

  Call Blackline 

  Project LETS 

   

  References: 

  Malchiodi, C. A. (2020). Trauma and expressive arts therapy: Brain, body, and imagination in the healing process. New York: Guilford Publication. 

Author(s)

Erin K. Willer, Ph.D. 

Director of Faculty Innovation, 4D Experience 

Professor, Communication Studies 

University of Denver