By Patricia Isis PhD, ATR-BC, LMHC-QS, ATCS
“This book invites readers to a delightful new way to wake up to our lives. No matter what you’re doing – digesting, doubting, deep thinking, or divorcing – there’s a doodle for it. The author knows how to bring out the artist in each of us as she teaches us to hold our experience and ourselves in loving awareness. So go ahead, doodle it!”
Christopher Germer, PhD
Faculty, Harvard Medical School
Author, The Mindful Path to Self-Compassion
Mindfulness and doodling together serve to empower memory and concentration while safely revealing patterns of thoughts and feelings. The Mindful Doodle Book provides the mental health professional with simple, flexible, fun ways to access selected ordinary and extraordinary life experiences.
The exercises in this book are designed to inspire the mindful doodler through a variety of real life scenarios.
There are times in our lives when we find ourselves at a crossroads. It could be amidst several decision options or paths that we are considering. Stand up and feel all four corners of both feet on the floor. You are taking a stand in this one wild and precious moment of your life. Notice your body, any sensations, emotions, and thoughts. Allow everything. If you are comfortable doing so, close your eyes. If not, look at an object in the room that is stationary to promote balance. Picture in your mind's eye, all the possibilities around you. Ask yourself inside for an answer. Print out the doodle prompt below for inspiration or doodle your own from scratch.
Efficacy of a Single Session Mindfulness-based Art Therapy Doodle Intervention
This mindful art therapy doodling intervention has been shown to be helpful in improving mindfulness practices for group workshop formats in the general community. Trained art therapists may also want to explore implementing mindful doodling with specific emotions, sensations and triggering (or charged) life experiences as an intervention in clinical practice for a variety of settings for diverse clients.Non art therapists could utilize this resource as a diagnostic intervention within their scope of practice.
Teacher wellbeing is essential for sustainable professional practice, yet regional educators face heightened stress and limited professional development access.
This study examined a single-session Mindfulness-Based Art Therapy Doodling Intervention (MBAT-DI) designed to strengthen teachers' psychological resilience resources. Thirty-five regional teachers in Victoria, Australia participated in a two-hour online MBAT-DI workshop combining mindfulness practices with guided doodling exercises. A within-subjects design measured state mindfulness, self-compassion, and classroom-management self-efficacy. Following stable baseline scores, the intervention was associated with improvements in mindfulness, self-compassion, and classroom-management self-efficacy, with greater gains in mindfulness decentering among more experienced teachers. Overall, the findings suggest that brief mindfulness-based art therapy doodling may provide a practical, time-efficient, and accessible approach to supporting the wellbeing of regional school teachers.
