Neurographics Exercise: A Creative Way To Process Emotions
One of my favorite teaching modules
Creativity can feel intimidating. Pinterest searches and TikTok reels can leave our minds snapped open and frozen. With so many options for creating art, it’s hard to decide where to go about starting. Like too many cereals in the cereal aisle or coffee options at Starbucks.
After experiencing this freeze response one too many times, which left me feeling frustrated and beaten down before my pen even hit the paper, I developed what I call a “Container Series:” art exercises done within the safety of a traced circle on a page. Removing the “limitless possibility” model from creativity instantly makes it more accessible. Sometimes, we don’t need to know we can melt crayons with a hairdryer and paint the sky purple with turkey feathers. Sometimes we just need a damn circle to fill so we can get on with it.
Yesterday, I taught the intro class to my creativity course: “Wild Power.” Witnessing these brave women release intrusive thought patterns and the negative emotions they evoke — and transmute them into works of art is always a powerful experience.
I believe everyone should have access to creative tools for coping. These practices are FREE (well, pen, paper, and cereal bowl) and far more generative than drinking, doom scrolling, or shopping.
The exercise I’m sharing today in snippets is an introduction to Neurographics: A meditative drawing technique for processing emotions through visual patterning.
This practice takes 5-10 minutes. All you need is
a piece of blank paper
a pen or a pencil
a bowl for tracing that fits on the page
Trace the circle onto the page
Identify an intrusive thought.
Think about an invasive thought loop that tries to sabotage you throughout the day. Everybody has one. If you don’t, feel free to borrow one of mine:
- I am not enough
- I can’t do anything right
- I’m not a good person
- I’m not worthy of love
Got it? Great. Now write it down.
Draw irregular, wavy, intersecting lines from one side of the circle to the other. (Make sure they overlap in places. You’ll see why below!)
While you do this, INFUSE each line with the energy the thought boils up inside you. Focus on RELEASING that pattern through the instrument of your hands and the pen you are holding. Imagine the negativity LEAVING your body. EMPTY it out. Let it go.
ROUND OUT each place where the lines intersect inside the circle. See the video below. You are visually “softening” the harshness this thought pattern brings about in you. You are disrupting the sharpness of the release, which mirrors what you’re doing in your head.
Fill in the rounded nodes with a pen, pencil or pencil color.
Add details to the spaces you just created. Lines, colors, NEW patterns.
CONGRATULATIONS! You just regulated your emotions using art, and started to LITERALLY “change your mind” about this sabotaging thought loop!
I hope this helped! I’d love to hear from you in the comments or please feel free to tag me on social media so I can share your work in my stories! Happy Thursday babes! So much love for you,
Rosie