Hello.
I thought I would share a little therapeutic drawing activity (with my added twist). This can be just a fun art activity to do with your kids, your friends, or applied (by a trained art therapist) in the therapy room to aid in self-regulation and trauma recovery.
Firstly, read a little more about bilateral (this just means “both sides”) drawing for trauma reparation by art therapist Cathy Machiodi here. Also another article here. Highly recommend. It will help make much more in-depth sense of this activity. One part I really love is where Malchiodi writes about using bilateral drawing in trauma therapy: “Making marks or gestures on paper with both hands simultaneously creates an attention shift away from the distressing sensations in the body to a different, action-oriented and self-empowered focus”
This activity can be useful for self-regulation in therapy as well as being an enjoyable creative exercise for anyone anywhere.
This activity requires:
This is how Step 3 might look. Bilateral squiggles.
blank paper
a variety of coloured pens or pencils
human with two hands
Step 1. Warm up by ‘drawing circles’ in the air with both arms held out straight. This physical motion of using both arms already promotes cross-hemisphere use of our brains, allowing someone doing this activity to ‘loosen up’ and get ready to engage in drawing (looking silly, but at least if you’re doing it with someone else you can probably laugh at each other in the process)
Step 2. Select two different coloured pens. Take the lids off and hold one pen in your left hand, and one in your right.
Step 3. Put both pens to paper! at the SAME TIME. It is really a brain workout. The goal: Just make scribbles/ squiggles using both hands.
Step 4. You can finish the activity there- both sides of the brain have been engaged, you’ve probably challenged yourself, and hopefully had fun. OR….
Step 5. Now that you have two squiggly images, you can use markers to fill in the gaps and shapes made within the scribbles. Think about using a variety of different colours. Think about adding ‘funky’ patterns- dots? lines? stripes? zig-zags? This part can take as long or little as you like- I found when I was colouring that I wanted to keep going, and could have spent much longer on this part.
There you have it! Grab some paper and pens, engage both sides of your brain (tapping into logic and emotion simultaneously) for a reset, a chill-out, and become Captain of the Funk Squiggle
