Introducing three-dimensional body mapping as a creative method for exploring embodied experiences

Abstract

This paper introduces three-dimensional (3D) body mapping, a creative methodological innovation that advances the existing feminist method of body mapping. We developed 3D body mapping to explore how feminist concerns are lived and felt through the body, and to illuminate the forms of knowledge that emerge from these embodied experiences. We situate these concerns within feminist phenomenology and recent turns toward new materialism and more-than-human theory. We then review the body mapping literature, acknowledging the strengths of existing practices while identifying the constraints of 2D formats. Addressing these constraints, we describe the development of 3D body mapping through ‘body boards’ (like life-sized human pin cushions) with which participants can create spatial representations of embodied experience. To illustrate the method's potential, we present two case studies: one examining the embodied experience of being targeted by online misogyny, and another exploring positive body image and what it feels like to live well in one's body. These examples demonstrate how 3D body mapping elicits rich embodied knowledge and enables novel insights while addressing feminist concerns with systemic inequities and strategies for resistance and resilience. We conclude that 3D body mapping offers participants and researchers a powerful medium for examining embodied knowing.

In this paper, we introduce our creative mode of inquiry, three-dimensional (3D) body mapping, an innovative development that builds on the existing feminist method of body mapping. We developed 3D body mapping to explore how issues of concern to feminists are felt in the body, and the kind of knowledge that can be generated when we focus on these experiences. In this article, we explain why a focus on the body is important for feminist work and how this connects with epistemological concerns in feminism, specifically, feminist phenomenology and the recent turn towards feminist new materialism and more-than-human theory. We then review the literature on body mapping and explain our development of 3D body mapping through the construction of what we call ‘body boards’. We follow with two examples of how we have used this new method to date, one focused on the embodied experience of being targeted by online misogyny, the other on positive body image and what it feels like for a woman to live well in her body. Through this exposition, we explain the rationale for this method, the process we went through to implement it, and evaluate its potential for feminist research on embodied and felt experiences. In so doing, we address the call by Chadwick (2016) for feminist research to develop methods for listening to the body and recognising that the body is a site of knowledge, affect, and power.

We write as feminists located in Aotearoa New Zealand and on the northern part of Turtle Island (so-called ‘Canada’), influenced by Global North epistemologies and power structures, and also by Indigenous Māori ¹ ways of knowing, being and relating, thanks to the presence of a Māori scholar in our team. Our shared interest in feminist work springs from our different disciplinary bases (psychology, leadership, philosophy, development studies, leisure studies) and gender/sexuality/neuro/ethnic identifications, including cis, neurotypical, neurodivergent, mad, queer, heterosexual, White/European/Pākehā ² and Indigenous ³ to Aotearoa New Zealand. We are English speakers and research with other English speakers, and in the context of discussing embodiment, this shapes the kinds of discussions we can have with our participants regarding embodied feelings.

We understand feminisms as multiple, grounded in the geo-cultural contexts from which they emerge. We draw from, and locate ourselves in, scholarship that amplifies the voices and experiences of women and other people from gender minority communities, with the intention of identifying and addressing sociostructural inequities (Davis, 1981; hooks, 2000; James, 2012). We have read, and been shaped by, a range of feminist scholarship with various distinct (and sometimes intersecting) ontological and epistemological foundations, including intersectionality theory, phenomenology, poststructuralism and feminist new materialism/more-than-human theory (for an overview of these approaches in relation to psychology, see Riley et al., 2025; for an example of how concepts such as intersectionality that come from one intellectual tradition may be employed in another, see Mehrabi et al., 2025). Despite the different philosophical foundations of such work, and associated differences in conceptualising gender, this body of work orientates us to studying gender as always already imbricated within relations of power, including those produced by the interconnections between gender and other social positionings, especially racialised ones.

Finally, we value a feminist ethics of care that focuses on nurturant relationships ‘based on values of reconciliation, reciprocity, diversity and responsibility, and within an awareness of power’ (Edwards & Mauthner, 2002, p. 23). This awareness of power also recognises that care (being labour) is something that can be exploitative or abusive, thus requiring ongoing reflexivity to make sure relationships are empowering and respectful to all parties (Held, 2006).

Power relations also circulate around and through the body. For example, gendered inequity plays out in relation to resources (e.g., inequitable spending on health research), locating women's social value in their appearance, intimate partner violence statistics and constructs of embodiment. Long-standing dichotomies in Western philosophical thought – reason/emotion, cognition/body, culture/nature, stable/fluid, superior/inferior – map onto a male/female dualism that constructs the ideal human as transcending embodiment and women as less capable of that than men (Barbour, 2017). Such dualisms also invalidate embodied knowledge, including embodied orientations beyond gender dichotomies (e.g., trans, nonbinary, gender nonconforming corporealities).

In contrast, feminists have recognised the body as a site of important knowledge (e.g., de Beauvoir, 2011; Young, 2005) and where the personal and political meet in ways that make it possible for people to understand their lived experiences as socially structured (Hanisch, 1970). Part of feminist scholarship, then, has been a project of developing theory and methods to engage with embodied knowledge, to show its significance and benefit from it in terms of facilitating feminist social justice.

Feminist theorising of embodiment

In this paper, we aim to showcase the development of a method for exploring embodied knowledge. However, we acknowledge Chadwick's (2016) argument ‘that attempts to develop “embodied methodologies” cannot succeed without an adequate theory of the embodied subject’ (p. 19). We therefore start with a consideration of the theoretical frameworks that feminists have employed to explore embodied knowledge.

Global North feminists have often considered embodied knowledge through a critical adaptation of phenomenology – a philosophical project that centres the body as a site of knowledge because it mediates our experience of the world. This understanding of mediated experience includes how the personal, social, cultural and political converge along with physiology to shape embodied experience. In so doing, feminist phenomenologists can consider power and the connections between the personal and the political (Barbour, 2017).

Feminist phenomenologists also argue that a focus on the body, as shaped by social practices, reveals where resistance and agency can occur. For example, many feminist scholars contend that, in their unruliness and disruptiveness, women's bodies challenge the sociocultural idealised fiction of fixed and stable bodies (e.g., Grosz, 1994; Weiss, 1999).

Overall, feminist phenomenology has advanced the investigation of people's lived and embodied experience as knowledge-producing. This work highlights multiplicity, fluidity (and through this, a process of becoming) and a nondualistic refiguration of mind and body as embodied subjectivity and embodied knowing (Barbour, 2017; Grosz, 1994). Despite conceptualising knowledge as being produced through a situated body in an ongoing process of becoming, the focus on individual sense-making means that phenomenology-informed psychology tends to reproduce ideas of a bounded, relatively coherent subject – since the unit of analysis is the person, and their (ongoing) interpretation of their experiences. This orientation contrasts with feminist new materialist and more-than-human theory approaches that we discuss below, which imagine ‘an open system of multiple, intersecting (discursive and material) elements that momentarily actualise our object of study, including the person’ (Riley et al., 2025, p. 51).

We consider feminist new materialism and more-than-human theory approaches (FNM/MTHT ⁴ ) because they too – albeit in different ways – focus on the body. These approaches also emphasise becoming but connect it to a processual philosophy that emphasises the continual unfolding of an emerging world. This philosophical approach directs analytical attention to those forces shaping the unfolding world, rather than to its separated-out components. FNM/MTHT is often informed by the work of Deleuze and Guattari (1987) and has been significantly developed by a range of feminist scholars, including Karen Barad (2007), Jane Bennett (2010), Rosi Braidotti (2022) and Bronwyn Davies (2020).

FNM/MTHT emphasises ‘the extra-discursive … flesh, bodies … materiality … affect and emotion’ (Chadwick, 2016, p. 2). It highlights relations between affect, discourse and materiality, when materiality includes intra-acting ⁵ human bodies and elements of these bodies (e.g., blood, sweat, cells, membranes); the nonhuman but human-made (e.g., technology); and nonhuman elements of the natural world (e.g., trees). The focus is on the relations produced by these intra-acting elements, all of which are theorised as having agency since they are affected and affect each other in a dynamic open system, or ‘assemblage’. Feminist work using these approaches therefore tends to conceptualise the body not as a bounded whole but part of an ongoing, dynamic assemblage. This approach allows scholars to, for example, pay attention to how feelings can flow across elements in an assemblage. For instance, in the case of experiencing online misogyny, it encourages attention to how feelings flow through relations between other people, digital technology and misogynistic structures of power.

Such scholarship highlights how affect is central to understanding gendered inequities and to maintaining the gender order. But affect can be theorised in different ways. Some scholars understand affect as precognitive and presocial, existing beyond how we can express it, and losing its vitality when we attempt to do so (Massumi, 2002; Seigworth & Gregg, 2010). Others argue that moving affect into the realm of the unsayable, and thus unanalysable, makes it ‘politically useless’ (Tyler, 2008, p. 88) and misses the ways in which feminists can explore ‘feelings [as] how structures get under our skin’ (Ahmed, 2010, p. 216). In relation to our aim of developing a method to explore embodied knowledge, we therefore connect with feminist scholarship that does not make clear distinctions between the terms affect, emotion, feeling and sensation, except when analytically useful (Evans & Riley, 2023).

Our position on affect also aligns with Chadwick's (2016) argument that we do not need to seek methods that go beyond language, but should instead focus on those that offer a better way of listening to the body. Discussing Frank (1995), Chadwick (2016) argues that he is ‘not asking us to find the body somewhere beyond language and narrative. He is suggesting that we need to find different ways of listening to and for bodies in qualitative analyses’ (pp. 4–5). We, too, are interested in developing methods that allow us to ‘listen to and through the body’, and to explore what kind of knowledge(s) or ‘embodied ways of knowing’ (Barbour, 2017, p. 209) are generated when we do it. Below, we explain how we developed such a method, offering two case studies from feminist projects that sought to address a variety of questions using different onto-epistemological orientations, thus allowing us to explore and showcase this method for a range of feminist research interested in using the body as a source of generating knowledge.

Body mapping

Qualitative research in psychology often privileges language, limiting knowledge production by excluding nonverbal forms of expression and reinforcing the constraints of any single methodological approach. The need to find creative methods for listening to, and through, the body is also shaped by how difficult it can be for people to describe their embodied experiences. In her research with women in South Africa regarding their experiences of childbirth, Chadwick (2016), for example, reported that her participants were ‘nonplussed’ at questions of how it felt: ‘It began to seem as if there was no fully-formed language or vocabulary with which to speak about the fleshy, emotional, intensely embodied experience of giving birth’ (p. 57).

Similarly, in our interviews with women in the public eye about their experiences of misogyny, we noticed how they often struggled to talk about both their emotions and their embodied experiences. We situate these difficulties within the context of masculinised workplace cultures and broader patriarchal norms, which discourage individuals of all genders from experiencing, attending to and expressing feelings and emotions (Ibarra & Petriglieri, 2017). Such emotional expression is often devalued as a marker of feminine weakness (Berdahl et al., 2018), rooted in cultural associations of the body with weakness that ought to be transcended.

One research method for connecting people back to their bodies is body mapping. Body mapping, also known as body-map storytelling, is a collaborative, arts-based research method that visually and discursively explores the intersection of personal experience with broader sociohistorical, political and economic contexts (de Jager et al., 2016; Gastaldo et al., 2012; Orchard, 2017). It is particularly valuable for accessing embodied knowledge that may be difficult or not possible to articulate through words alone (Crawford, 2010). Participants create visual representations – often full-body diagrams – on which they depict aspects of their lives, identities and environments (Gastaldo et al., 2012; Solomon, 2007). These maps serve as expressive tools that reveal how individuals understand and narrate their embodied experiences and the circumstances that shape them (Griffin et al., in press).

Originally developed in the late 1980s to explore women's reproductive health (see MacCormack & Draper, 1988), body mapping was later adapted by others, most notably, Jane Solomon, who facilitated body mapping workshops in South Africa on the topic of HIV/AIDS. There, body mapping served both personal and political purposes – from legacy-building and meaning-making to public advocacy against the inaccessibility of antiretroviral treatment. In this way, body mapping functioned as a multifaceted tool for data generation, knowledge translation and activism, offering participants a powerful medium to communicate lived realities and challenge systemic inequities. This work was also grounded in relationality, cultural humility and compassion. It offered strength-based, cathartic opportunities for reflection and learning, connecting it with Freire's (1970) conscientisation and Brown's (2017) argument that trauma is stored in the body. Contemporary writers argue for the importance of honouring these conceptual roots (Griffin et al., in press).

Body mapping can develop understanding of embodied experiences as they are experienced, and produced, in relation with the sociohistorical, political, economic, natural and spiritual realms. The method can also be used to envisage new possibilities. For example, Mazrouei et al. (2025) used body mapping to both explore how queer, fat, disabled, trans and neurodivergent people experience physical leisure in the context of a fitness industry that validates lean and white-centric body ideals; and to support them to imagine how physical leisure spaces might be inclusive for bodies deemed ‘nonnormative’.

The key elements of body mapping are as follows: People are invited to trace an outline of their body on a large piece of paper. Then they are offered a range of art supplies (e.g., paint, pens, paper, feathers glue, coloured paper, etc.) and guided through activities to support them to visually represent their embodied experiences. These activities often take an arc of starting with questions/activities such as asking people to represent what grounds them, which helps them to feel safe and can give them the courage to do more difficult exercises later. These activity questions are typically followed by more challenging ones (e.g., about experiencing misogyny) before finishing with an uplifting activity, such as representing their strength and power. In this arc, there are two important feminist principles in action. First, trying to understand the lived experience of inequity and gendered power by surfacing and acknowledging participants’ challenges. And second, undertaking this exploration within a feminist ethics of care that is focused on protecting and empowering the participants. Body maps are also accompanied by a testimonio – an articulated story that describes the map, which is done during and/or after the workshop (Gastaldo et al., 2012).

Body mapping is a powerful method aligned with feminist values, yet researchers often report limited resources for learning the practice. Notable exceptions include Coetzee et al. (2019) and Cox et al. (2020), though, overall, researchers describe challenges. Griffin et al. (in press), for example, recount ‘crowdsourcing’ support – consulting experienced users, asking questions and networking to navigate emerging issues. To address this gap, they offered ethico-methodological reflections from several body mapping projects, identifying five key considerations: fallible accountability, flexibility, reciprocity, relationality and balance. Fallible accountability involves acknowledging that no project is perfect, but researchers must be effortful and held accountable for centring care in their design and recognising and learning from failures. Flexibility, often a response to fallibility, is crucial for providing that sense of care. Flexibility includes providing different options, such as doing a literal tracing or an abstract body shape (in the 2D traditional process), and considerations of accessibility and wider power differentials, such as not offering white paper when participants are not white and offering sheets of paper big enough to accommodate a range of body sizes. Reciprocity aims to reduce extractive dynamics and ensure participant benefit, such as providing body map copies or fair honoraria. Relationality reflects the method's inherently personal and interactive nature, requiring reflexivity as researchers’ embodied experiences intersect with participants’. Finally, balance involves maintaining boundaries, such as avoiding therapeutic overreach while still fostering connection and transformation.

Griffin et al. (in press) also argue that body mappers should ensure clear intention behind every question and prompt, and pilot their workshop with themselves. They argue that participating in their own project gives researchers essential understanding of some of the power dynamics involved, and the resources of time, emotion and energy asked of the participants. Overall, they emphasise the need to be guided by trauma-informed research principles ‘which at the core ensures that participants have autonomy and control over the body mapping process, that they are listened to, and that we are clear with expectations and communications’ (Griffin et al., in press).

Although there are substantial benefits of using body mapping in feminist research, this method is time- and resource-intensive, and demands careful facilitation to manage ethical and emotional issues. Another limitation of body mapping is its reliance on two-dimensional representation when trying to capture the full complexity of embodied experience. Scholars speaking to this critique highlight how the visual, two-dimensional format constrains the dynamic and spatial aspects of embodiment and may limit the expression of some embodied experiences (de Jager et al., 2016; Orchard, 2017). In using 2D body mapping, some of us have found it difficult to see our whole body when standing up looking down on it, while others experienced a disconcerting sense of the drawn body looking like it was in a coffin. Building on the exceptional strengths of body mapping, but speaking to these critiques, we therefore sought to develop a form of 3D body mapping through the development of what we called ‘body boards’.

Development of the body boards

We wanted to design a method that would allow people to explore their embodied experiences through a guided workshop with a 3D figure that could represent their bodies. Our thinking was that such an approach could offer enhanced opportunities for participants to listen to and through the body, including consideration of the multiple, spatial and dynamic elements of embodied knowing. The development of our 3D body mapping method was iterative and exploratory. Here, we detail key aspects of our decision-making to highlight the value of critically reflecting on these choices. Such reflection is important not only for explaining and justifying the final design of our method, but also for supporting other researchers who may wish to adapt or create alternative forms of 3D body mapping.

The artist on our team, Ric Brown, experimented with various materials and forms before arriving at the final design. Early ideas included using tailor's dummies, which offered adjustable sizing. However, the hourglass shape of these dummies reinforced normative gendered body ideals. We also considered wire torsos and wicker forms. Wire was dismissed due to its unpleasant tactile qualities and the difficulty of creating a supported structure. Wicker torsos, while potentially more varied in shape, were too rigid to be adjusted by participants to reflect their own bodies, reducing inclusivity and self-expression. We also considered symbolic forms such as Inukshuk-style stone figures, constructed from wire so that things could be placed or hung on them. These offered a nonrepresentational body shape, addressing normative/inclusion issues, but cultural consultation advised against this, citing concerns about cultural appropriation.

The breakthrough came with the concept of a ‘human pin board’, used in public art projects and inspired by toys where a hand or small feature could be pushed into a set of pins to create its shape. Ric then designed the boards to be large enough to accommodate tall and wide bodies, ensuring inclusivity. The development process involved extensive prototyping – drawing, modelling and building – to allow refinement and adaption based on practical and conceptual considerations. This work culminated in a full-scale prototype made of medium-density fiberboard (MDF) sheets with holes for the pins, pinewood supports and pine dowels (acting as the ‘pins’), which were capped to allow movement of the pins without them coming off the boards (see Figure 1). Below, we report on two studies to illustrate how these body boards functioned across different research contexts, describing the context, aims, research designs and reflections on the process.

Figure 1.

Plain body board.

Case Study 1: ‘The Felt Experience of Online Misogyny’ group workshop

Context

Online misogyny poses a serious threat to women, and those with a public profile are key targets, more so if they are women of colour (Southern & Harmer, 2019). As Manne (2018) argues, misogyny is a policing practice, enforcing patriarchal norms by strategically targeting women to silence them. These experiences often trigger immediate bodily responses (e.g., increased heart rate) and emotions like shame, fear, anxiety and terror that are enduring, particularly when threats of violence and doxxing are involved. Yet research on the affective dimensions of online misogyny remains limited. Scholars tend to note these feelings but focus on textual analysis (e.g., Berger-Correa et al., 2024), overlooking how affect operates in this context. We believed that exploring these affective flows – through FNM/MTHT and a feminist ethics of care – could surface understudied experiences and inform strategies for resistance.

Research design and participants

In line with good practice, we participated in our own pilot study. This involved a 1-hour online preworkshop designed to facilitate rapport and positive group dynamics for enjoyable working, explain the process and address any questions or concerns, practice representing embodied feelings and experiences visually and complete the logistic planning for the workshop. Several days later, we undertook an in-person workshop with one person using the prototype body board and others using the traditional 2D method (allowing us to undertake a group workshop and compare between the 3D and 2D methods). The workshop was facilitated online by Aly Bailey (an experienced body mapper), supported by Sarah Riley in person. A range of art supplies were provided, with particular attention to how they might work with the body board, including clear Perspex boxes and fine mesh bags to put objects in that could be hung or pushed into the pins; luggage labels to write or draw on and then hang; and objects that might represent a range of affect, including tinsel, wool, shells, feathers and wire wool.

We started the workshop with two activities designed to create a safe, participant-enhancing space: ‘grounding’ and ‘support shadow’ (the latter, a symbolic representation of the social supports a person has that might include people, organisations or spirituality). These activities included instructions such as

What first comes to mind when you think about a sense of feeling grounded, decide where on your body map best represents a sense of feeling grounded, choose how to represent what makes you grounded (e.g., symbol, word, colour, texture, image).

And ‘what or who supports you in your life, represent that around your body’.

We then turned to more emotionally challenging activities related to misogyny, with questions that aimed to elicit embodied knowledge or feelings. For instance, ‘In relation to feeling misogyny, how does your body respond or react, can you take yourself back to a particular moment as it started to play out, what were the feelings in your body?’ Such questions took participants to a concrete experience, allowing them to connect with the memory of how it felt, and then represent that embodied experience of misogyny on their board/paper. We then continued developing reflection on the embodied experience of misogyny with carefully planned questions designed to elicit specific forms of embodied knowing, starting in the centre and then working outwards, upwards and downwards through the body.

After each activity, we discussed what we had done and why, which gave people opportunities to look at each other's work and to collaboratively reflect on similarities and differences. We finished the workshop with an uplifting activity, focusing on our strength and power (‘Where do you find your strength and courage, what is your power symbol and where would you put it?’). Although we had carefully planned these activities, we remained flexible in the workshop, for example, if we took longer than expected with one activity, the facilitator let us; equally, we did not force an activity that did not seem to be connecting for someone.

The workshop was audio recorded, and photographs were taken throughout. It lasted 3.5 hours including lunch and a debrief. We provided lunch, which was not recorded, giving participants an opportunity to step back into the everyday. The debrief occurred after the body mapping was finished and was designed to both explore the overall experience and help participants transition back to their daily context after a potentially emotionally intense journey. Later, we wrote individual reflections to capture other aspects of our experiences of doing the workshop that were not already recorded.

Reflections

As a process intended to enhance participants’ capacity to ‘listen’ to and through their body, our experience shows bodies have a lot to communicate when given the opportunity. Reviewing our data, which included the discussions that took place during our body mapping workshop, the photographs taken and subsequent individual reflections, we could see that the method can generate powerful affective and embodied impacts and knowledge. Not only in response to one's own body map but also others’.

The workshop enabled us to express feelings of shame, fear, vulnerability, grief, shock and alienation, and we felt overwhelmed, weighed down or close to tears at times. Our reflections also highlighted feeling empowered, validated, relieved, strengthened, more resilient, better supported by others and having a greater sense of compassion for ourselves and others. Thus, there was something of an emotional arc or even roller-coaster to the method, and preparing participants in advance for that possibility is important.

The sequenced process of the method also allowed us to focus on different experiences, different parts of the body, their sources of strength and support and where and how sources of harm are experienced. In embodied terms, through this method, we developed a heightened awareness of where and how misogyny – entangled with racism and white privilege – shaped our embodied experiences. Our sources of embodied strength and resistance also became evident on the maps and accompanying testimonios.

A particular value offered by the 3D body board was the diversity of materials with which participants can engage to surface their affective and embodied experiences. ‘Natalie’, ⁶ who used the 3D board, for example, used wire wool, crepe paper, rocks, wool, a metal hook, masking tape and bags into which various objects were placed. She also pushed back the pins in particular places – her neck and her mouth – as a means of making visible her experiences of misogyny. Although participants using the paper-based maps did employ three-dimensional materials such as shells, feathers and (battery lit) candles, their use of these materials was, in contrast, more limited, with many of their insights drawn onto the paper.

In terms of the knowledge this method generates, the maps themselves make visible and open to further analysis how deeply and viscerally felt the experience of being subjected to misogyny and/or racism can be and, simultaneously, how and from where women find strength to resist such efforts. As an example, consider the body map in Figure 2, which was produced by Natalie using our 3D body board. In this, the black crepe dangling above her ‘body’ was intended to represent the sense of being surrounded by a malevolent force. She reported

I was literally muttering to myself ‘it's the white supremacist capitalist patriarchy’ as I was hanging up those bits of black crepe around my body. I felt weighed down but also powerful about being able to see it for what it is.

Figure 2.

Misogyny body board at the end of the workshop.

Natalie also explained how the bag above her ‘body’ (which included a glass eye and bits of purple tinsel-like pipe cleaner) represented feminist knowledge, resistance and solidarity, acting as an ever-present resource to disrupt and diminish that malevolent force.

Her body board also changed over time, facilitated by the 3D design since pins could be pushed in and out, and objects (e.g., tinsel, wire wool) could be woven over the outcome of previous activities, moved or removed. As the pins were moved in and out, and objects hung or draped over them or previously placed objects, we witnessed the representation of a ‘becoming-target of misogyny woman’. Natalie's affirmative and energised body board presence was eclipsed by items representing misogyny. This dynamic temporal 3D process allowed us to see, and affectively feel, the harmful impact of misogyny. This processual shift, evident in the changing body board, contrasted with the 2D versions, for while more things could be stuck or drawn on them, our capacities to remove, cover or swap out for something else felt more limited.

The 3D board also had agency within this process of exploring Natalie's embodied experiences, shaping our feelings and understanding of misogyny. For example, one of us experienced shock and sadness seeing the consumption of Natalie by this malevolent force. Natalie, too, identified how making visible her experiences changed how she understood them. In her testimonio, she stated how making and reviewing the board created a validating sense of legitimacy of her experiences, which in turn became incorporated into her ongoing development of strategies for resisting and finding strength (see Figure 2).

In her testimonio, Natalie stated the experience and end result:

[The experience] allowed me to make visible to the world what I’ve experienced. It gives those experiences a kind of legitimacy they didn’t have when they were just circling around inside my head and my body. That feels validating. It reinforces that my personal experiences are a function of a politics in which I am not alone. I also feel that I understand more clearly the forces that are seeking to crush me, how they seek to get at me and the sources of strength I have to fight back against them.

The body board thus provided actionable knowledge for Natalie. It also has potential value in validating the experiences of others and, in so doing, empowering them too. Accordingly, photos of completed body boards, along with their accompanying testimonios, are knowledge products of the 3D body mapping method. These can be deployed as resources for further analysis, for teaching, in art exhibitions and to inform advocacy efforts to secure attitudinal or policy change.

Coda: Reflections on 3D and 2D body mapping and group work

More than the 2D paper body maps, the 3D ‘body’ had a presence in the room. We could stand in front of it and look at it from different angles. It had the feel of a human-like person, giving the impression of taking on a life of its own and, in new materialist terms, thereby having agency. This was an overall strength of the method in terms of enriching our ability to listen and reflect on what the body could tell us.

However, we also had an unexpected nonaffirmative outcome from the body's presence. In the context of studying misogyny, Natalie reflected, ‘seeing “my body” looking so small in relation to thinking about misogyny made me feel like I was much more vulnerable than I’d previously considered myself to be’. This finding contributed to our study's investigation of the impact of misogyny, creating a boundary-contact moment (Ahmed, 2014) between the body board, Natalie's sense of self and misogyny as a policing force that diminishes women (Manne, 2018). ⁷ This example highlights how important it is for facilitators to allow space for participants to articulate oppressive experiences so that they can be explored sensitively, reducing the potential for harm as well as enhancing possibilities for further insight.

The need for careful facilitation was also highlighted in relation to the complexities of doing body mapping (2D or 3D) in a group. People worked at different speeds and responded differently to the questions. Facilitators therefore need to find ways to be flexible and address individual differences (see ideas in Griffin et al., in press). And while there were benefits of being able to explore similarities and differences across experience, one of us reported holding back on representing everything they were thinking because they did not want to go into a particularly vulnerable space in a group (despite trusting that group).

Case Study 2: The ‘Living Well in Your Body’ individual workshop

Context

A recent strand of body image research focuses on positive body image. In this work, researchers have sought to identify and measure constructs that might be part of positive bodily self-constructs, such as body appreciation and functionality (e.g., Alleva et al., 2017; Tylka & Wood-Barcalow, 2015). Few studies use qualitative methods, and these mostly rely on interviews. A substantial contribution to this subfield is Piran's (e.g., 2017) feminist phenomenological work that identified a series of protective factors for girls and young women living within a broader toxic body image culture. These factors connected to five dimensions: body connection and comfort, agency and functionality, attuned self-care, experience and expression of bodily desires and resisting objectification.

Our aim was to enrich this literature by using the body boards to explore the embodied experiences of people who identify as experiencing a positive body image, an important issue given the widespread toxic body image culture that many people negotiate (Riley et al., 2023).

Workshop design and participants

We recruited people who identified as experiencing positive body image or who ‘lived well in their body’, the latter being an accessible, everyday phrase that also connected to positive embodiment literature. Three people volunteered. They were aged 30, 33 and 56, all cis-women living in Aotearoa New Zealand, with ethnic identifications as English, Irish and Māori. They participated in an individual online preworkshop induction and subsequently in an audio-recorded individual workshop with the body board (structured as above with a set of activities, each followed by reflection). There was one researcher-facilitator (Sam Heaney), whose reflections are below. See supplemental material for the preworkshop (1) and workshop outline (2).

Reflections

The use of body boards to create body maps proved an effective tool for exploring positive embodiment or ‘living well in your body’. It was clear both during the body mapping sessions and from the analysis that the process generated rich, nuanced accounts that captured different elements of an individual's lived experience. Participants, too, described the process as positive and enjoyable.

The body board workshop offered a unique space for participants to explore their experiences deeply. The opportunity to use different materials to create a 3D body map seemed to prompt participants to tune into their embodied experiences, rather than focusing on their cognitive understanding of them. They described reflecting on experiences that they rarely or consciously thought of and often discovering meaning through the body board before putting it into words. These comments align with phenomenological research that expects, and values, participants to engage in ongoing interpretation of their lived experiences, including during a research project. For example, at the beginning of the workshop, participants pushed their body onto the pins to make the physical imprint of their body. One participant noticed her initial urge to perfect her shape by making it symmetrical but, attending to that impulse, she instead chose to leave it. She reflected that this process helped her recognise how accepting her actual body shape, rather than ‘correcting’ it, was an important part of living well in her body. Although 2D body mappers also wrangle with notions of perfection, the physical upright and humanoid shape seemed to enable a more direct identification.

In another example, the act of representing how experiences are felt in the body led to new, more enhanced ways of experiencing those feelings, with one participant saying, ‘it wasn’t till now … like by focusing on this kōrero [discussion] and this conversation, and the significance of that, then I could actually … feel it’. This example reveals how, through the process of remembering, representing and reflecting, body mapping enabled participants not just to represent past experiences but to produce new embodied ways of knowing those experiences.

The sensory aspects of the art supply materials also supported participants in expressing their embodied experiences and associated feelings. For example, choosing materials that felt ‘soft’ or ‘warm’ aligned with the experience of self-compassion that they wanted to express. In one instance, the materials did not sit on the board how the participant initially envisioned, with a ball of string coming slightly undone; this change prompted the participant to reflect further, noting that the experience of positive body image did not feel closed off but open. These reflections came about through interactions with the body board, materials and body mapping process, and perhaps might have been less likely with a 2D version, given that mistakes when drawing might have been connected to an invalidating sense of being bad at drawing. This surmise comes from participants noting how the materials and body board freed them from the pressure to make a map that was artistic or involved ‘good’ drawing. As one participant explained, ‘the tactile, sculptural aspect felt more intuitive and less performative, somehow’.

Supporting our intention to do feminist work, the 3D body mapping process also allowed participants to connect their experiences to the wider societal contexts that shape them. For instance, participants spoke of external norms and expectations in relation to physical appearance, and their journey of learning to resist these narratives, which ultimately supported their sense of a positive body image. This connection between lived experience and the wider social constructs that shape it aligns with feminist phenomenological work.

The 3D body boards also helped to address some of the limitations of 2D body mapping. Where 2D body maps can limit how people express the spatial and dynamic aspects of embodiment, the body boards enabled participants to engage physically and fluidly with their body maps. When one participant began discussing part of her board that was positioned near the base, she moved to sit on the floor beside it, and the facilitator sat with her. Sitting together shifted the atmosphere, consequently feeling less formal and allowing for a relaxed environment where both the facilitator and participant could be curious and explore this external representation of the participant's embodied experience.

The one-on-one format seemed helpful in facilitating depth and openness. The schedule had time frames for each activity, as part of careful planning, but these were treated flexibly, allowing the sessions to unfold in a way that felt natural, conversational and at the participant's pace. One participant reflected that they voiced more than they would have if they were in a group setting, describing it as a ‘quieter, more spacious kind of reflection’.

It was anticipated that participants may feel pressured in a one-on-one setting with the facilitator watching them. So, the plan was for the facilitator to sit facing away from the body board, keeping occupied on her laptop to provide participants with a sense of privacy while they undertook the activities while also knowing that there was help available if they wanted it. Being available but not watching appeared to provide a comfortable space for participants, as one noted, ‘I didn’t feel watched or rushed … having that sense of distance, but also knowing you were there holding the space, created a spatial buffer that made it easier to settle into the process’.

While the process was effective overall, there were some practical limitations. Sometimes participants found it difficult to form the body shape they wanted if the pins did not move easily (requiring the pins to be lubricated before use). The photographs of the boards tended to lose their depth, and so the completed body maps had more impact in person. The materials provided may also influence what participants can express, so we invited them to request materials or bring their own ones they wanted to include. One participant did this.

Overall, the method encouraged people to slow down; notice sensations, emotions and experiences; and develop a rich understanding of those embodied experiences and how they form part of their living well in their bodies. Working with the body board provided a tangible way to explore positive embodiment, allowing participants to represent their experience of becoming someone who could identify as ‘living well in their body’, as well as express and develop new forms of embodied knowledge about their experience. See Figure 3 as an example that led to the themes of ‘enjoying the body’, ‘journey to authenticity’ and ‘practices of resilience’ in the phenomenologically informed thematic analysis.

Figure 3.

Body board created by a participant in the ‘Living Well in Your Body’ project.

Conclusion

Body mapping is an arts-based and participatory qualitative method involving the illustration of the whole or parts of the body, often accompanied with a testimonio (i.e., narrative) and traditionally done two-dimensionally on paper. In this article, we expanded the possibilities of feminist inquiry offered by this method by introducing 3D body mapping. We offer this 3D body board method as a novel creative way to explore embodied knowing – a tool to tap into embodied knowledge that is felt, seen, heard and moved through physically, temporally and emotionally.

We have shown how 3D body mapping allowed us to explore how issues of concern to feminists (using two different project examples) are felt in the body, and the kind of knowledge that can be generated when we use the boards to focus on these experiences and ‘listen’ to the body. The case study examples showed how 3D body boards allowed us to elicit and value embodied knowledge while also addressing feminist concerns about systemic inequities, as well as strategies for resistance and resilience. 3D body mapping thus offers both participants and researchers a powerful medium through which to communicate lived realities and challenge systemic inequities.

Our examples also showed how 3D body mapping worked to elicit in-depth embodied knowledge and create opportunities to spark new and even unexpected ways of knowing. 3D body mapping is, by design, a catalyst for embodied communication that goes beyond the bounds of verbal-reliant focus group and interview data. The body board process offered an opportunity to slow down and feel sensations, emotions and experiences, and develop a deeper understanding of how phenomena (e.g., misogyny, racism, body image) are experienced in and around the body, while requiring very little artistic talent to do so.

While we recognise the significant value of the 2D body mapping method, the 3D boards offer a new experience – the ‘presence’ of an upright body in the room. This seemed to facilitate strong identification and dialogical relations between self and body-board-self, which enabled flows of affect and knowledge. The advantage of 3D also included the way that the representations of experience on the boards could be dynamically manipulated over the workshop through moving the pins and weaving and overlaying objects to make those representations dynamic and nuanced.

We suggest that the data produced from 3D body mapping are amenable to a variety of qualitative approaches and analyses. In this paper, we focused on the method of data production but touched on how it could be analysed differently depending on the epistemological and ontological framework used. For example, Case Study 1 explored the process of becoming, with a FNM/MTHT approach, as an unfolding process of affective forces being made visible through the method, whereas Case Study 2 was used to explore the process of becoming someone who was able to identify as having a positive body image within a broader toxic body image culture. There are other possibilities too, multimodal discourse analysis for example, for analysing these data in terms of available discourse shaping people's understanding of themselves and others.

While 3D body mapping offers exciting opportunities to surface embodied experiences that are often hard to articulate, we also want to emphasise the importance of an ethics of care in deploying this method. Body mapping is a deeply relational process that requires care, flexibility, thoughtfulness and responsiveness (see Griffin et al., in press). As noted in our reflections across our various projects, the method generates a range of challenging or painful reactions. Feelings of overwhelm, shame, fear, vulnerability, grief, trauma, shock, alienation and tearfulness are part of the process – potentially even when doing affirmative topics such as positive body image. For example, one of our participants described intimate partner violence and living in a women's refuge as part of her journey to living well in her body. Body mappers thus have a responsibility to act with care, and we have outlined some of the processes through which this can occur, including careful preparation, flexibility and understanding some of the power dynamics and vulnerabilities by doing the process yourself.

Supplemental Material

sj-docx-1-fap-10.1177_09593535261438135 - Supplemental material for Introducing three-dimensional body mapping as a creative method for exploring embodied experiences

Supplemental material, sj-docx-1-fap-10.1177_09593535261438135 for Introducing three-dimensional body mapping as a creative method for exploring embodied experiences by Sarah Riley, Suze Wilson, Tracey Nicholls, K. Aly Bailey, Rochelle Stewart-Withers, Samantha Heaney and Ric Brown in Feminism & Psychology

Supplemental Material

sj-docx-2-fap-10.1177_09593535261438135 - Supplemental material for Introducing three-dimensional body mapping as a creative method for exploring embodied experiences

Supplemental material, sj-docx-2-fap-10.1177_09593535261438135 for Introducing three-dimensional body mapping as a creative method for exploring embodied experiences by Sarah Riley, Suze Wilson, Tracey Nicholls, K. Aly Bailey, Rochelle Stewart-Withers, Samantha Heaney and Ric Brown in Feminism & Psychology