Body Map of Emotions: Paint Where You Feel It

About the technique

A body map of emotions is a drawing of where a feeling shows up in the body. It answers a simple question: where do you feel emotions in your body? You color a body outline with warm colors where a feeling makes that part feel more active, such as a hot face or a tight, racing chest, and cool colors where it feels quieter, heavier or numb. It gives clients a concrete way to notice and name feelings, often before they have the words for them.

The warm and cool scale comes from research by Lauri Nummenmaa and colleagues, who asked adults in Finland, Sweden and Taiwan to color where they felt activity rise or fall for different emotions. Each emotion produced a distinct and broadly consistent map: anger in the head, chest and hands, sadness as less activity in the arms and legs, happiness across the whole body (Nummenmaa et al., 2014). Coloring the body is also a long-standing technique in art and play therapy. Putting a feeling into words can lower its intensity (Torre & Lieberman, 2018), and a body map is one more way into those words: “my chest gets tight” can come before “I’m scared.”

The evidence is practice-based: the research describes how emotions are felt, not the body map as a treatment. It suits children, teens, adults and groups, at the start of a session or after a strong moment, and repeated maps help clients spot early body signs of a feeling and choose a coping skill sooner. The research map is an average from adults, never a correct answer. Body-focused work can be activating after trauma or for people with body-image concerns, so go slowly, let the client choose which feelings and body parts to work with, and stop to ground if distress rises. With children, any activity can lead to a disclosure of abuse or neglect: know your mandated-reporting duty before you start.