Body Mapping: Giving Shape to Your Experiences

For trans and gender-diverse young people, body mapping can offer a powerful way to explore identity and express experiences that may be difficult to articulate or feel safe sharing. But its value extends far beyond gender: body mapping invites all of us to reflect on our bodies, our lives and the worlds we inhabit.

We spoke with Ryan Biskupović-Goulding (any/all), a mental health nursing lecturer and PhD researcher in Ireland, whose work focuses on improving healthcare experiences for trans and gender-diverse young people. Drawing on their clinical background and research into the barriers young people face when accessing care, Ryan used body mapping as a tool to help young people express their experiences, make sense of their identities, and challenge the systems and structures shaping their lives.

For folks who might be completely unfamiliar with the concept of body mapping, how would you describe it? What can it do?

Ryan: Rooted in art therapy, narrative therapy and memory work, body mapping emerged in South Africa in the early 2000s. The Memory Box Project supported parents living with HIV/AIDS to preserve their stories and keepsakes for their children, at a time when many feared they would not live to see them grow up. As treatments became available, body mapping then developed as a way for people living with HIV to express their experiences, identities and hopes for the future through art and storytelling.And now, body mapping is a creative way to engage with people living with all kinds of different trauma. It’s very flexible. You can adapt it to whatever you’re trying to do.

What made you decide to use body mapping?

Ryan: Having seen that it’s sometimes difficult for adolescents and young people to have the vocabulary to express complex situations and complex emotions and feelings, I was trying to figure out what would be the best way to do that without just sitting across from someone and interviewing them—because I find that youth don’t necessarily want to be looking across at you while you fire questions at them!

So based on that, I was looking at creative methods and then I saw Matty [Dr Matty Kennedy] presenting in Canada on his body mapping piece. I thought, “that looks really interesting. I might rob that!” So I went and had a look into it and started exploring whether the research shows youth being able to express themselves better through creative means. And it seems there are a lot of creative and arts-based methodologies and research that are coming to the forefront to give people different ways to express complex things—because it’s not just adolescents. Adults a lot of the time can find it difficult to get the words for it.

And when we’re looking at gender identity, gender expression, and the way we present to the world and how our bodies interact with the world, body mapping fits quite nicely with that.

So I looked into that to see whether it had been done with trans people outside of Matty’s work and I came across a particular protocol by Gate et al. 2023. So they created a phenomenological approach to explore experiences of trans and gender-diverse people. And in it, there is a detailed protocol for a step-by-step process.

What’s the process?

Ryan: Step one is where you sit and talk with the person. Some were very much open and comfortable with the idea of sitting and closing their eyes and visualising and trying to locate in their body where these feelings were coming up, what they felt like the different feelings associated with that kind of physical embodied reaction. For others, we actually had to focus a bit more.

“…you don’t have to have the right vocabulary. You don’t have to have the right words. You can say whatever, describe it whatever way you want. There’s no judgment.”

If it was a case of “I find it really difficult to visualise things,” we talked through different experiences out loud, drilled into those, and tried to find the feelings associated with them. Then, we workshopped what those feelings would look like: If you could associate a colour with that, what might that be? And so, moving it away from trying to visualise it internally to more external expression. And again, it’s setting it so that the young people and adolescents and youth know—you don’t have to have the right vocabulary. You don’t have to have the right words. You can say whatever, describe it whatever way you want. There’s no judgment.

And that takes as long as the person wants. It is completely at their discretion. The person needs to be in control of how long it will take because we don’t know how long someone will need to fully embody these experiences.

And then step two: outlining the position. We ask: if you imagine your actual body existing in the context of healthcare, what position would that take? Is it standing up? Is it lying down? Generally, youth didn’t have any issue with that. They were able to decide whatever position it was. And then they lay down on the canvas. Their parent or guardian would then outline the position that they were in.

We had a range of different positions. People turned over in a fetal position, people tucked in on themselves with no definitive like hands or arms. Ones where people were standing up straight with their middle fingers out! Just whatever the person essentially was trying to convey with that positioning in the context of healthcare. And that in itself tells a lot too.

Step three is the longest but usually the most fun bit for participants. It’s essentially where the participants get to engage with all the material that’s provided. We had chalk, crayons, glue, stickers, paint, markers, pens, pencils, thread, fabric, clay— the list goes on. There was paper and stuff that they could cut out and fold. They can go and engage with whatever they want. I purposely tried to make it as broad as possible so that they wouldn’t be limited by what was in front of them so that they could be as creative and expressive as they wanted to be with the materials.

“We’re talking about embodied experiences that people are feeling very deeply and internally. It may be the first time that they’ve been able to represent this in some way.”

During that phase, there was an art therapist there with me. The art therapist supported the participant—if they had any questions about a particular technique to get a certain result… I would sit back and I was there more for observation.

And then step four was what Gate et al. call an “interrogation of the body map”. I am not fond of that term because I feel like it’s almost putting someone on the stand and they have to defend what they’ve done. But I just called it an unstructured interview and a chat. So we’re both sitting there looking at the body map and we go through each of the pieces and we talk about what they mean and represent. Then, if I hear something, I’ll explore it a bit further. So, I might say, “that particular piece of thread on your arm, you mentioned that was to represent your self-harm, can you tell me more about that?” And then they’ll generally talk about experiences of mental health services, and then we’ll delve a bit further.

Again, it’s completely up to them how long they take. We had people spend four hours; We had people spend an hour. It varies, and that’s something that I make very very clear to the participants in advance. You can fill as much or as little of the entire body map as you want. You can draw one line and say you’re done and that’s it. And that’s absolutely fine. So very much putting the autonomy into their hands around, I get to decide when I’m done. It’s the same with the interview then—they’re welcome to finish that whenever they want. We don’t have to talk about everything.

Then they’re invited to take pictures of the body map, or do whatever they want with it. Some people may just be like, “no, this is too much to have in my house with me”—but it’s about giving people the choice and the decision about whether they wanted to refer back to it or just get it down on paper and then move on. Participants whose workshops were part of my PhD kindly let me keep their original body maps for my research.

How else did you make it a comfortable space where people felt supported?

Ryan: Participants can take breaks at any point throughout the entire workshop. I did set up a kind of sensory zone with weighted blankets, fidget toys, bean bags, this kind of stuff so people could go and take a break, because this can be distressing.

We’re talking about embodied experiences that people are feeling very deeply and internally. It may be the first time that they’ve been able to represent this in some way. And representing something artistically versus representing it verbally can have different impacts on people, because there is that more physical element of creating it, and it almost seems a little bit more real. So that was a big piece that I wanted to make sure was there so that people were supported during the process.

In advance, I created collaborative playlists so that the youth could decide what music they wanted to listen to—if they wanted to listen to music. Some didn’t, some did. So I brought speakers and we had computers in some of the spaces, so they got to decide what music. Some of them actually created the playlist but listened to it on their headphones only. Some of them wanted it played out loud. And some of them didn’t want anything at all. And that was fine. They just chatted away to us while they were doing it. And that’s absolutely cool, too. It’s very much whatever the person feels comfortable with.

“The adolescents’ body maps did focus more on their internal experiences, but there were pieces of systemic oppression that you could see in them.”

So the young person could choose whether the parent or guardian was present at any stage throughout the workshop. They had to be there for the outlining of the body, but then outside of that they could ask the guardian to leave at that point if they wanted to. But that’s a dynamic decision—they can ask them to come back later. Some of them had the guardians stay for the creative piece and asked them to leave for the interview piece. Some of them asked them to leave for the creative piece and not come back at all until the end.

Finally is where it was actually conducted. We offered different choices. One was in the university, the other was that we went to people’s houses, and then other options were external spaces to either of those. So that again was just another example of choice given to the person instead of us just deciding everything for them.

Can you share an example of how body mapping has helped people express or uncover feelings, experiences or insights about their bodies and lives that hadn’t emerged through conversation alone?

Ryan: Yeah, absolutely. So during that initial stage one, where we did the embodiment piece, we would have discussions and there were some things framed and positioned. But then when we got to the creation of the body map, things would naturally change path. People would say, “this is how it felt” when they were having that initial discussion but when in reality it became the creative expression, some things weren’t there anymore because they had been transformed into something else. So there was one person who was talking about a kind of restriction and they had this idea of a wall and they couldn’t really necessarily speak too much to it. But then when they got to creating it, they realised that it was something located in their chest. Then they realised it was more so a cage.

When we were able to talk about it afterwards they were able to articulate in a bit more detail, like what does that cage actually mean? Why is it positioned there? This allowed people that opportunity to initially reflect but the flexibility to change it as they went through that creative space. They’re having realisations as they were going through creating it and then coming out the other side being like, “Yeah, I think that actually is more representative of this.” Because this original idea that they had isn’t actually the final product. There were pieces where some of the adolescents were like “I just feel like that needs to be there. I don’t know why, I just have this feeling and this is the feeling, but I don’t know exactly why that feeling is there but it just feels important.” And that’s enough in itself that that piece is important to the person.

I think it’s about allowing that space to explore the feelings and not necessarily having to have a reason.

What about a collective body mapping experience and the role that could play in movement building? How has that been or could it be used?

Ryan: The way I conducted it was on a one-to-one basis. Originally, I was looking at group-based workshops where each person would still work on their own body map but it would be in a group and we would have a group discussion afterwards. I ultimately chose to do one-to-one because I felt it just allows the person to have the space for themselves and really say, “your perspective is just as important as everyone else’s.” But [Dr Matty Kennedy] did a group-based piece and it just depends on the way that you want to do it—there are different approaches to body mapping.

You could have everyone create their own and then come together and have a group discussion on what—based on all of these experiences—is the list of priorities that we have as a group. But you have to be very careful because people are sharing their personal experiences and if one person is then saying, “well actually I don’t think that’s important”, you have a situation then where people could get offended. But you could say to people, “look we’re not we’re not counting out anything, we just want to see what the largest consensus across everyone is. What are some shared experiences that we’re seeing that we could address in one specific priority output?”

I suppose, making people aware of that in advance and just making sure that people, when they’re signing up, know that they’re going to discuss their experiences and people may have different viewpoints.Alternatively, you could consolidate everyone’s individual experiences, then come back to the group and present them as, “This is what we found based on what everyone has said. This is the consensus”. So taking it away so that someone isn’t there saying, “well I think this,” and then someone else is like, “no.” You’re going away and doing that analysis. And when you come back then, you’re saying, “This is what we found based on what everyone has said. Do you think this is accurate? Is there a way that we need to then position it?” Because then you’re getting people to position overarching themes as opposed to individual experiences.

Making sure that people feel like their lived experience is respected is the biggest thing when it comes to groups.

How did you make sure that it wasn’t an extractive process, especially considering folks might be diving into experiences that are traumatic for them?

Ryan: I think it is trying to position as much power with the young person as possible and making sure that they are comfortable with sharing what they feel comfortable sharing. One of the biggest pieces is just making the person aware that you can represent something visually but you don’t have to talk about it. That can be just for you if you want it to be just for you.

I’m not here to “interrogate” this body map. I’m here to just have a chat about what you would like to talk about in relation to your experience. And I think positioning that is really important and making sure that the person understands that and really is able to feel that in the moment.

Additionally, we had a pre-meeting with both the guardian and the young person online in advance just so the young person could meet me and the art therapist, and they weren’t coming into a room being like “who the hell are these people now? I’ve got to bear my heart and soul to them!” I know, how are you going to build rapport in a quick, 20-30 minute Teams meeting online? But it just takes some of that anxiety and mystery out of it, I think.

We all wore pronoun badges during it and then I bought pronoun badges and gave one to each of the young people as well to wear and they could take it away afterwards too, just to give them that sense of safe space.

Another thing is really explaining to the young person what actually is going to happen with this information: that I’m going to be using this as part of my PhD; This is going to go around to different conferences and be presented and go into journal articles and be used in different spaces. And making sure that you use young person-friendly language so that they understand what is actually going to happen with their data, because then they have the ability to choose exactly what they share.

“I think it has a really unique opportunity to make people actually understand and engage with someone’s lived experience or embodied experience on a much deeper level.”

Another piece is involving the young people in the analysis. So that bit of the “interrogation”, having them there to talk it through and make sure that their perspective is forefronted is super important as well. Because I could have just taken those away and done a visual analysis on it, which is a perfectly valid research process, and based it on my perspective of what I thought it meant, but I didn’t want to do that. I wanted to make sure that it was coming from the young person, that it was their perspective and we were sitting together to find that.

I was like, “You’re doing all the work! I’m just sitting here asking you questions. You’re the one that’s actually making all of this possible.” So, giving them their kudos, saying you are, as you said, basically a researcher in this space because you’re creating the piece that, without it, we wouldn’t have anything to talk about. You’re deciding, where and when and how this is being done. You’re forefronting interpretation of all this. I’m just here for the ride!

We had such a long conversation with Ryan that we had to stop there for now—but stick around for part 2 where we get into what types of things the young people Ryan worked with included in their body maps, and the systemic issues that they unveiled, which many trans and gender-diverse people would likely relate to.

Inspired to give body mapping a go? Get started with our activity guide here: Body Mapping Activity Guide

And here’s the Comotion body mapping playlist: