BioGraffs is a Communication Game
of Visual Storytelling
It's a powerful way to share your perspective,
for greater understanding and connection.
What do you want from life? How does your partner make you feel? What's important to you? Why is that person acting the way they are? Why am I acting the way I am? What makes me feel sad, angry, happy?
These are all the stories of our experience.
Sometimes, it can be helpful to take a good look at them from a new perspective. To take a closer look at the stories in our heads. BioGraffs is much more than a story game - it's a way to make a visual narrative of something going on in your life or in your mind, and consider those stories with a fresh perspective.
Our brains can be complex places with multiple threads and connections, even contradictions, on any one topic.
BioGraffs is a way to slow down and organize your thinking, so you can gain clarity, and effectively share your perspective.
Watch the BioGraffs Method in action
USING BIOGRAFFS
Making a BioGraff can be powerful: you might realize some things from the new perspective you get. But there's more to the BioGraff experience.
Sharing your BioGraff is the real BioGraff superpower. Talk about it. Take a picture of your BioGraff and send it to someone that you want to understand you better. Your BioGraff can help shape a conversation so you feel more understood and more heard. For more connection and understanding.
Here you'll find some ideas for using your BioGraffs.
Or jump ahead for a step-by-step how-to on the BioGraffs method
Date Night Activity
BioGraffs can be a deeply connecting activity to do with a partner - and it can be really fun too!
Your BioGraffs set has enough cubes for you and your partner to each make a BioGraff. Pick out a title to try together. You might be really surprised what comes up!
Make BioGraffs of your favorite sexual flow and then compare - how are they the same or different?
Make BioGraffs of a conflict, and see how the other sees it
Make BioGraffs of a good day together, and then try to have it!
When you are ready to talk about your BioGraffs, take turns telling the story. Let one of you tell the whole story of their BioGraff, and let the other person focus on listening. Here's some tips for what the listening partner should try to do:
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Repeat back what you are hearing to make sure you have it right: "So you are saying you want to lie in bed talking about our plans, first. Is that right?"
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Ask questions about the BioGraff: "What does it mean that this red cube is down here?"
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Ask for more: "Tell me more about these blue cubes," or "Say more about how this feels."
To Talk About Something
Emotional, Difficult, or Complex
In a typical conversation, does it ever feel like the other person is just thinking about what they are going to say when you stop talking, just waiting for their turn? It's actually really typical of human conversation. And it can make it hard to really tell your whole story.
Your BioGraff is like a talking stick with pictures. It holds your place in a conversation, and holds attention.
With your BioGraff between you, now there is a focus. The BioGraff invites curiosity and creates the opportunity to expound on particular points in your story, without losing the main thread.
The visual can help you share your perspective about a difficult topic AS A STORY. This give both you and the listener just enough distance from what you are communicating so that you can connect on what your story is really saying. Try it out, and see how it changes the conversation.
For Parents and their Kids
BioGraffs is a way for families to talk to each other, hear each other's perspective, and understand each other better. Making BioGraffs together brings out the most reluctant talker.
Would you like to understand more about what's going on in the life of your teen? Bring out the BioGraffs and use them to share hopes and dreams, struggles, worries, concerns. BioGraffs will get your teen talking.
Getting on the same page in Life
Do have plans for the future or a big change to make with another person, like a partner, or a child? BioGraff it!
Try each making a BioGraffs about your expectations or hopes. Then compare and discuss. You might be surprised how different your ideas actually are when you thought you were in agreement. Use the BioGraffs to come to a place of more clarity.
For Great Conversation on a Friend's Night Out
Talk about the important stuff, and make sure everyone gets heard on your next friends get-together. BioGraffs quickly focuses the conversation on what's really going on for people. Use with one friend or a group. What holds you together? How can you be there for each other?
Let everyone browse the titles and find one most relevant to their lives. Allow about 15 minutes for people to make their BioGraffs. Go around the circle and let everyone share something about themselves with a BioGraffs story. Especially great if there's some people that tend to talk less in a group.
Get a set for everyone - or use other objects so everyone can make a BioGraff.
Here are some other things that can work instead of cubes:
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buttons
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cut up construction paper
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stickers (but stick them to something so they can be moved around. Like put them on pennies)
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beans, nuts, dried fruit
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candy
Self-reflection and Introspection
BioGraffs is visual journaling. What is your experience in this world? What is it like to be you? You can make a BioGraff about any issue that is on your mind, to gain clarity and understand yourself better.
Making a BioGraff generates realizations, and then prepares you to talk about about it. Or just to think about it more deeply.
Go as deep as you want. BioGraffs will be with you there. Create an image to take with you and reflect on. It's journaling without a lot of the writing part!
Neurodivergency and Differing Conversational Strengths
BioGraffs can be really helpful for neurodivergent folks who might have differing ways of communicating their perspectives, or anyone who has a hard time saying something important.
BioGraffs is a different way of organizing one's thoughts that may be particularly well-suited to some people's way of thinking.
For Psychedelic Prep and Integration
A psychedelic journey creates meaning that is difficult to put into words. Integration is a process of taking the wisdom gained in the experience and bringing into daily life, to allow the power of a transformative experience to carry forward.
BioGraffs creates a way to tie complex thoughts to discrete objects, that can be manipulated to express the ineffable. A single cube is tagged to a few words that represents an entanglement of thoughts, which is then is transformed an interrelated whole through design and metaphor. In the storytelling phase of the method, the legend will serve as a reminder of the whole, without having to have gone through the constrictive process of creating whole sentences, and maintains visually each idea's connection to a bigger picture. An good alternative, or addition, to journaling in the process of integration.
Here's how it Works:
the BioGraffs Method
BioGraffs was designed in collaboration with psychotherapists to aid people in self-awareness and connection.
Making a BioGraff can seem odd a first. Telling a story with cubes??
Maybe your therapist recommended it to you, for homework. Or maybe you came across it and thought it would be useful for your own inner journey, solo. Or maybe you want to use it with a friend or partner for more understanding and connection. You are in charge of where this takes you. The basic exercise is extremely flexible and depends entirely on what YOU want to explore.
Here are some things that the BioGraff Method can help you with, to gain clarity, understanding, and connection.
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Relationships with partners
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Communicating about difficult topics
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Family issues
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Sexuality
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Anxiety or Depression
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Trauma
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Parenting
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Grief
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Life or Career Goals
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Self Image
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End of Life
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Adolescence
Working though something with BioGraffs:
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Externalizes an internal story. Often, things that bounce around in your head for a long time look completely different when you get them outside yourself and look at them in a new way
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Slows down thinking. The mind can be a chaotic place, jumping from idea to idea; justifying, backtracking, rationalizing. The BioGraffs method helps untangle our internal stories and regard each strand separately.
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Distances us from language. Once you define the cubes, you are done with words. You can explore the ideas more abstractly
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Harnesses metaphor. People making a BioGraff naturally reach for spatial metaphors as they lay out the cubes and this adds meaning and gets at more emotional connections
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Is inclusive of alternate communication styles. For people that are less verbal, BioGraffs can be a helpful way to externalize their thoughts and feelings
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Creates space. In the sharing portion of the BioGraffs experience, the structure of storytelling and the visual aid add support to the people who tend to talk less in a conversation and keeps the amount of "floor time" more even.
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Encourages active listening. Sharing BioGraffs restructures conversation. Conversation becomes more turn-taking, which each partner focused on the perspective the other is sharing.
The Method
Making a BioGraff is a three-step process: you'll choose a story to tell, you'll think of the parts of that story and give each one a cube to represent it, then you'll play around the cubes and create designs to express meaning and connections.
Step 1 - Choosing a Story
A BioGraff is a story game where you create a visual narrative of something going on in your life or something important to you. It’s kind of like storytelling. Each BioGraff is a little story about you. The first step is to think about what story you want to tell - it helps to think of it like a title for your story. What’s on your mind? What’s bothering you lately?
With a BioGraffs set you get exclusive access to an online interactive selection tool of story titles that helps you zero in on what you want to explore.
Are you in conflict with another person? Do you want to improve the way you relate to someone in your life? Do you need to think through what’s important to you? Are you depressed, anxious, worried? Are you struggling with something in the past - a loss or trauma? Are you trying to make a big change? Making a BioGraff can help you get a new perspective.
Here are some examples of the kind of story you might tell:
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A Good Day With My Partner
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How We Argue
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What Happens When My Anxiety is Triggered
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How I Self-Soothe
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A Bad Day in My Depression
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What I Have vs What I Want
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A Vision of My Future Life
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That Bad Thing That Happened
Step 2 - Story Elements
Once you have a title, you'll think about what are the parts of the story you want to tell. You'll make a list of things - they may be thoughts, feelings, events, actions, things other people do, sensations, objects - anything that is a part of your story. You'll write them down on a piece of paper and assign each a colored cube. This is your story key.
When we have a complicated situation in life, or something bothering us, we don't usually think about it in parts. It can be a confusing swirl of thoughts in our heads - building the story key helps you unravel that big mental tangle.
Step 3 - Choosing a Story Style - the Storyboard Cards
Once you’ve decided on the story you want to tell visually, given it a title, and thought about the parts of the story, it's time to think about how to tell it. Oral stories can be told a lot of different ways, and so can visual stories.
How do you tell a story with little squares? We asked over a 1000 people to tell a story about themselves using colored cubes. Then we analyzed how they did that. What we found was that people approach this in only a handful of different ways. We call these "Storyboard Styles" and the BioGraffs set includes Storyboard Style cards to inspire you, and guide you, as you tell your own story.
Some stories look like a timeline, some are more like a bar graph. With the "Comparison" style, for example, you use the tiles to compare things, like "what I want" vs "what I get"
Metaphor
Or some stories could be more abstract, using spatial metaphors to communicate meaning about the complex ideas you want to express. What's a spatial metaphor? They are so common in language that we barely even notice they are metaphors. If you are talking about something abstract, like a feeling, and you say it is buried, overarching, surrounding, above, underlying, branching out of, encircling, enclosing, hiding, pressing down on, breaking out of of, pushing out, blocking, or hiding some other abstract thing - you are using a spatial metaphor.
So the BioGraff tiles can express complex concepts in their relationship to other tiles. People do this very instinctually as they play with the BioGraff pieces.
Sharing Your BioGraff
We suggest you take a picture of your BioGraff when you are done. You may want to refer back to it. Or you may want to share it with another person. Many people have brought their BioGraffs to their therapist or life coach to talk about it in detail.
