Healing doodles

Neurographic Art as a therapeutic method of coping with death, trauma and depression

Apr 07, 2025

Some years ago a fellow blogging lady from Australia messaged me she was coming to North America. “Let's meet in Niagara Falls on the Canadian side,” Anne-marie suggested. We started making plans.

And then the borders closed and the pandemic happened. She stayed in Australia.

That same year in October, when she was supposed to be travelling through the United States and into Canada, her 19-year-old son had a tragic accident and died. From that abrupt moment onward, Anne-marie’s life changed irreversibly.

Loss by death - whether through illness or accident, expected or unexpected - is unfortunately familiar to many of us. Heartbreak when a loved one is yanked from us so suddenly is particularly overwhelming, unleashing intense and volatile emotions which are sometimes difficult to navigate.

We've all been there.

Anne-marie is a professional writer and emerging artist. Looking for a way to cope with her grief, she immersed herself in the creative process. She lobbied government intensively for three years and achieved legislated change to greatly improve motorbike rider education and training in South Australia, decorated the tree Harry crashed into, published numerous articles in a variety of publications, all while caring for her younger son, maintaining her relationship with her partner and working to support herself and her family.

And then she joined an art group.

Anne-marie discovered the healing properties of Neurographic Art. Never shy to express her creativity, she displayed her whimsical neurographic pictures on Instagram and in other places on the world wide web, and inevitably found a group of like-minded people who were inspired by her inner strength and imaginative endeavours.

Anne-marie and I maintained contact online outside of the blogging world, and of course she was aware of some of my own struggles over the course of the years which included two deaths inside my immediate family, and another two in the extended family on my partner’s side.

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Whimsical art

A few essays ago here on Room with a Door I shared my love for whimsical art. I named the artist and showed some of his pictures. You can check out the article here: Absurdly ingenious, whimsically bizarre and utterly impractical.

I grew up drawing and doodling; most of my childhood was spent in the company of blank paper and colourful markers and pencil crayons. My love for writing developed later and only really flourished 20 years ago when I became a first-time mom and started blogging.

Today, many of you know I have an artistic streak. I like creating with my hands and make jewelry with crystal beads and donated materials which I upcycle.

I also work with birch bark, inspired by my mom's many birch trees which shed their bark annually and litter the yard with silvery curls.

In recent years, while submerged in youth sports as the children grew, my creativity unleashed mostly in writing and less in physical art.

But this has changed since I began the jewelry business around the time of my brother’s cancer diagnosis, and will change even more now as I march confidently toward the empty(ish) nest.

Meanwhile, my artistic streak has intensified, in part because I participated in a Neurographic Art workshop led by Anne-marie from Australia.

Art and the Nervous System

The term neurographic is derived from neurology, the branch of medicine which deals with the nervous system: the brain, the spinal cord and the peripheral nerves.

We've all seen pictures of what the nervous system looks like, or at least, how we imagine it to look like.

This type of image is what inspired the neurographic arts to develop and evolve.

Neurographic Art

Neurographic Art was developed by Russian psychologist Pavel Piskarev in 2014. Its intention is to engage brain networks to promote personal growth, self-awareness and emotional well-being. Often referred to as a therapeutic art form, Neurographic Art involves drawing freeform lines, also known as "neuro lines," to connect the conscious and unconscious mind, potentially leading to positive changes and enhanced mindfulness.

I didn’t know about any of this until I came across an Instagram post by Anne-marie who invited her followers to participate in her workshop. Nalda, the host of The Grief Hub, invited Anne-marie to be a guest presenter.

I’m glad I signed up for the experience. Not only am I back to doodling and drawing like I once did as a child, I'm benefiting from reduced stress and a more focused attention span.

My experience with the Neurographic Art workshop

The workshop was scheduled for Saturday afternoon on April 5. A small group of bereaved ladies scattered across the world participated in this event. Anne-marie was in Australia, others in Croatia, Canada and the USA. (I may be missing some locations.)

The workshop was free and held over Zoom. Anne-marie began by introducing herself and her personal situation and invited others to do the same. This was voluntary and I didn't speak, but I left a message in the accompanying chat box to briefly state my own situation.

Some of you know my dad died in 2020 and soon after, my younger brother Silvio succumbed to Glioblastoma, a ghastly cancer of the brain. He was 50 when he died and left behind his now 17, almost 18-year old son, and a partner whom I consider to be my sister-in-law, who loved him the way he deserved to be loved. (Silvio was divorced from his son's mom.)

Anne-marie began the art-part of the Zoom session with a brief introduction about the ins and outs of neurographic art. She explained how this activity benefited her in her grief over Harry and shared some of her art which she had created using this technique and method. If you’d like to look at some of her creations, you can check out her portfolio on her Instagram page here:

Art for Harry by Anne-marie

And then she began the lesson, inviting us to join in.

How to create Neurographic Art

Tools

blank, unlined paper, preferably from a sketchbook (computer paper is too slippery)
black marker (sharpie) or pen
coloured pencils, markers or paint (watercolour, acrylic, etc)

I had a black sharpie and a black soft-gel pen, some art paper provided by my daughter from her own sketchbook and a few coloured pencils.

The lesson

Begin with a line from one end of your paper to the other, making sure it is not a straight line. No ruler needed!

Next, another wavy line which intersects the first line.

The point of neurographic art is to avoid harsh right angles. Everything in your picture should be soft curves.

However, when you intersect two lines, inevitably you will get some angles, and that's ok. You can soften these angles with circles, swirls or anything else your hand will draw.

Don't overthink it, Anne-marie repeated several times. Simply let your mind direct your hand to where it wants to go. (I'm paraphrasing.)

As Anne-marie doodled her drawing on Zoom, she held it up occasionally so we could see what she meant. The rest of us worked on our own pictures and looked up occasionally to check in with the others.

We doodled. (More samples below)

At one point, Anne-marie decided to reduce the talking and turned on some music. We immersed ourselves in our art, feeling the powerful connection between us despite the geographical distance.

At first, it felt a little odd. The only person I knew was Anne-marie and I never even met her in person. But soon, the chatter and stories emerged from the other ladies and our doodles took shape and evolved into Neurographic Art.

The atmosphere turned into an easy, light-hearted friendship circle.

What happens during the doodling

Here are some observations - in hindsight - about the neurographic doodling experience:

I had no plan in mind. I did not set out to begin with a particular image in my head. I had no idea what the first line and then the second would represent, if anything, and simply started to doodle.

Additionally, I also had no one (departed) person in mind. My brother’s and father’s passing happened some years ago, and neither made a prominent appearance in my mind during the workshop. I simply drew lines, swirls and circles as I half-listened to the chatter coming from the computer screen, looking up occasionally as people shared their results.

After a short while, a strange sense of calm washed over me. I first became aware of it when I scanned the many tiny circles I drew which now left gaps and geometric angles all over the place. As I focused in on colouring the gaps, my brain shut off the surrounding activities; the family coming and going behind me, the Beagle barking at people outside a window, the smells of dinner cooking next door drifting in from the open window beside me.

All I wanted to do was colour in the gaps and not miss any of the empty spaces.

I understand now why some people call Neurographic Art a meditative practice.

The other thing I noticed was that my abstract shape began to look like a bird. I didn’t set out to draw a bird, and for all intents and purposes, it does not even resemble a real bird in its abstract manifestation, but the longer I drew and doodled, the more I thought it looked like a bird.

Later, when the session concluded, I asked my partner what he thought of my picture. He said he saw a bird. The next day I asked my daughter, and she thought it was a jellyfish.

But the longer I look at my picture, the more I see a bird.

Including the names of departed loved ones

At one point during the webinar, Anne-marie mentioned her son's name and wrote it into a space on her page. She held it up for us to see. I noticed a lot of angles in the name Harry. She did too and said so, and immediately began to soften the angles with flares and circles.

I looked back down at my own page and noticed I had unintentionally drawn an S.

S for Silvio (my brother).

I don't know how to explain the neurological aspect of this result and simply accepted it for what it was. Unlike H for Harry, the letter S was full of curves already so I enhanced it with more circles which resulted in more gaps which resulted in more filling in the gaps.

Softening the angles created by the lines softens the volatile intensity of the emotions such as anger, hopelessness or despair.

I can appreciate how this activity perpetuates a calming of the nervous system. The laser-focus on the gaps which need colouring in, the angles which need softening, seems to rewire the connective pathways in the brain.

I can easily see now why this type of activity - drawing and painting - spoke to Anne-marie. By softening the harsh lines or filling in gaps around circles, the heart-wrenching pain of grief begins to dissolve, a little at a time. In its place, a happy moment, a fun memory, a kind word or loving action may surface, making you wonder how you could have forgotten that thing.

I am so grateful for having participated in this workshop with Anne-marie and Nalda and to have ‘met’ the other artistic ladies in our circle.

Room with a Door