Following the river’s meander with therapeutic art making

“We speak as if meandering were a deviation from a truer path. But the river knows no other way. To ‘correct’ its curves is to erase its identity.” - Bayo Akomolafe

The medical model of talk therapy often requires the therapist to work with their “clients” to achieve their goals, work towards a destination, get from A to B. I struggled with this imaginary straight and linear line we had to facilitate for the people we help. Until I sat with Bayo’s concept of “meandering”, he reminds us the river bends- not toward resolution, but toward the impossible labour of staying with the wound.

Our traumas and wounds are excess, curves that cannot be straightened. Our healing should also mirror that. I am a devotee of art therapy as a healing method as the creative process allows for meandering in the mess, and staying with the troubling.

Meandering is not delay, it is nature’s intelligence. Therapeutic art making is very much like a river that knows to bend, a tide that knows to pause, a root that knows to search sideways for water. Here is what that living intelligence can teach us.

River logic.
A river does not conquer a boulder. It curls around it and keeps flowing. Meandering asks us to meet difficulty by turning a little, softening pressure, and letting meaning arrive along the curve. Art making follows this river logic. What feels blocked becomes a shoreline that shapes new paths, not a wall that ends the journey.

Tidal time.
The ocean teaches that in and out are both holy. Meandering honours rise and rest. Art making follows this rhythm, it swells, then quietens. Insight comes in its own weather. We learn to trust the return rather than forcing a constant high tide. Health can look different in fast seasons, and slower ones.

Mangrove stance.
Mangroves hold soft ground with many roots. Meandering grows many points of contact, body, memory, Country, community, more than human kin. Strength comes from spreading relation, not from hardening. Art making belongs to this swamp of support, tender and resilient.

Mycelium knowing.
Underfoot, fungi move nutrients along hidden lines. Meandering trusts what works out of sight. Care travels through small connections, a colour remembered, a scent from a bottle of slime, a shape from a dream. Not everything that heals announces itself. The unseen network still feeds.

Eucalypt shedding.
Gums slip their old skin to keep breathing. Meandering gives permission to let labels, roles and perfect plans fall away. New bark gleams where the sun touches. Art making becomes a place where identities are composted into soil for what is becoming.

Fire and seed.
After fire, some seeds open. Meandering does not hurry regeneration, yet it honours the heat that cracked us. Art making lets ash and sprout sit side by side, not as a neat lesson but as a truthful landscape.

Migration sense.
Birds cross oceans by listening to stars and currents. Meandering invites that kind of navigation, less map, more attunement. We turn towards a direction by feeling and intuiting. We rest where there is food. We fly again when the wind rises. Therapy becomes a seasonal journey to begin again.

Rain on country.
Rain does not argue with dust. It arrives, lingers, and leaves its scent on earth. Meandering welcomes those moments of grace without trying to bottle them. We learn gratitude without possession.

In this way, therapeutic art making does not push toward a single answer. It travels like water, breathes like tide, roots like mangrove, networks like mycelium, and gleams like new gum bark in morning light. Meandering returns us to a pace where bodies can settle, relations can gather, and the next right bend can show itself without force.

*Disclaimer: This educational post is by no means a substitute for an art therapist. Please seek help from a professional and credentialed art therapist to explore feelings, develop healthy coping mechanisms, and work toward improving overall well-being.