The Inner Child emerged as something the group wanted to explore more deeply. Although its importance had been discussed during the first workshop, it was strikingly absent from the body maps created by co-researchers. This absence prompted questions about how experiences, expectations and wider social influences might shape our connection with playfulness, vulnerability and ways of knowing through the body.

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Clay was chosen to explore these ideas. Its tactile, messy and malleable qualities invited touch, movement, experimentation and play. Rather than beginning with a need to explain experiences through words, co-researchers could work with the material — squeezing, shaping, pressing, moulding and responding to what emerged.

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Something shifted through these encounters. Co-researchers described experiences of playfulness, focus, intuition, happiness, freedom and lightness. The clay did not simply provide a material through which existing ideas about recovery could be represented; making created opportunities to experience and explore recovery differently.

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These experiences raised wider questions about the place of bodies, materials, play and creativity within recovery. What might become possible when recovery is not approached only through talking about past experiences, but also through opportunities to make, feel, experiment and practise different ways of being?​