Reflective Motion and a Physical Canvas: Exploring Embodied Journaling in Virtual Reality

In traditional journaling practices, authors express and process their thoughts by writing them down. We propose a somaesthetic-inspired alternative that uses the human body, rather than written words, as the medium of expression. We coin this embodied journaling, as people’s isolated body movements and spoken words become the canvas of reflection. We implemented embodied journaling in virtual reality and conducted a within-subject user study (N = 20) to explore the emergent behaviours from the process, comparing its expressive and reflective qualities to those of written journaling. When writing-based norms and affordances were absent, we found that participants defaulted towards unfiltered emotional expression, often forgoing words altogether. Rather, subconscious body motion and paralinguistic acoustic qualities unveiled deeper, sometimes hidden feelings, prompting reflection that happens after emotional expression rather than during it. We discuss both the capabilities and pitfalls of embodied journaling, ultimately challenging the idea that reflection culminates in linguistic reasoning.