The Magic and Neuroscience of HowDoodle Doodling Experiences!

Curiosity

Playful curiosity is the beginning of everything! It all starts with a question… Why am I doodling this? What could it mean? If we want answers, we have to ask helpful guiding questions.

Curiosity is also the opposite of judgment which blocks us from creative thinking and forward movement.

Curiosity activates the part of your brain that is important for motivation, reward, and pleasure. Cultivating curiosity means the learning can be rewarding in and of itself!

Calm

A mindful approach melts away stress, anxiety, overwhelm, and overthinking.

When you are not calm, you are at some level of flight, fight, or freeze mode. Your brain has perceived that you are in some kind of danger and triggered your nervous system. Your brain simply falls back on what it knows while energy is flowing to your limbs to take care of the danger.

Mindfulness practices tell your brain that you are ok again and that your body no longer has to be in emergency mode. Resources are now available for new thoughts, new insights, and new ideas. More of your brain starts working for you.

Mindfulness is also being present in your body. There is so much wisdom in your body! Some even say that the solar plexus is your abdominal brain. And the heart has its own brain!

Connection

You will be able to hear your own inner voice and you can share in deeper ways with others.

There is so much information at our fingertips and in our face. Doodling provides a space between what we take in and put out to ensure we do things in a way that is right for us and those we work with.

The same conversations won’t yield different results. Teams doodling together have new, meaningful conversations that lead to deeper understandings and new ideas!

Clarity

We live in a word-based society. These words make up the habitual thought patterns in our brains. New or unexpected things can easily send us into those habitual thought loops in our limbic brain. Our brain senses danger and we can spiral into fear.

Doodling increases blood flow to your prefrontal cortex which regulates emotions and fears, is a place where you experience empathy, and is associated with intuition. It connects you with your higher decision making ability to see some risks are worth it!

In other words, images get below the word-based thought patterns to reveal blocks and build new mindsets. New “aha” moments arise when we pause and see things differently through visual shapes and colors!

You will learn how to look at images in this way so that you can make the unconscious conscious, step out of reactive behaviors, and proceed with more clarity.

Creativity

The doodling process builds the perfect container for creativity to flow. When we see different things, we think new thoughts, and our imaginations provide us with new ideas!

Your brain is the keeper of all your thoughts, experiences, skills, fears, talents, ideas, etc. When we activate more of our brain, we let it go to work for us, putting everything together creatively into solutions we can be excited about.

Inspiration starts as waves in the back of your brain in your visual cortex where all your visual input is processed. When we are relaxed, when we don’t try so hard to figure things out, when we open up to curiosity, when we stimulate the same part of the brain by doodling, inspiration is almost inevitable.

When you have new creative ideas driven by inspiration, your chances of following through are greatly increased. And when you string together a chain of inspired actions towards a goal, you have success and enjoyment in the process!