The Body Journey:  Writing as an act of acceptance and healing

We are all inside our life journeys inside a body – bodies that are fighting to make it the long haul, bodies often challenged to make it to the next phase of life.  As a writer and author, I know writing has been an important part of my healing process, and important for the writers inside our writing community. Our bodies are orever adjusting to a changing world and our evolving spiritual self inside this world. If we are dealing with a terminal illnessBecause so many of my writers want to find a way into in this six week course we will explore what we didn’t get to in the first body course, beginning with The Voice – the larynx and the tongue, and how use our voices in the world as writers.

We will explore our masculine and feminine sides, the right and left sides of our bodies and how breath can remind us of who we are and who we are becoming.

Within this course, we will explore how to write an ode, rhythm and lists and questions – we will able to explore illness within these prompts as well as expansion. Virginia Woolf wrote in her essay on being ill, “Illness is the great confessional . . . Things are said. Truths blurted out which the cautious respectability of health conceals.”  We will also explore pain the bodyand reconciliation with the body, and how the body changes and reacts through time.

Writing through our bodies is an act of resiliance and reconciliation and even protest.

It’s an act of forgiveness and self blessing.

Accepting our Bodies

“To effectively write from our bodies, we must first accept our bodies”, said author John Lee. “Before that, we have to come out of denial on how much we rely on our brains.”

We started out as mystical thinkers in our childhood, and when we return to the bodies, we return to the mysticism, and a whole world of story reopens to us, page by page, creating a body mythology by tapping into our organs.  In this course, we will use parts of the body to access our stories – tongue and the throat, the sacrum

“I entered the space of feminism, and I entered the space of my body,

by writing in it, but also the world enters me through that space of my body,

for better or worse, and through the writing as well.

So I think that’s kind of what were here about—

how were at home in it and how we are not at home in it and alienated from it.

-Anna March

Who is this Workshop For:

Our six week themed workshops are designed for all writers as a writing practice, and also to authors and experienced writers seeking to create content for memoir. This workshop creates a weekly practice, and heart connecting support of a community of writers all taking the same course. This themed workshop may also resonate for anyone who has had any physical challenges or is facing physical challenges. Our bodies are on a long journey with our souls, and our spiritual journey is connected to the body. In the end, all our physical challenges offer us a unique wisdom and a new lens of compassion – for ourselves and others.

I write to inhabit my body more and also to hold myself

to what I’m calling for or trying to call for in the world,

which is to be more integrated,

and to stop being ashamed of your body. .

— Anna March

The Desire to Write 

For hundreds of years poets and writers have described the creative process as a physical urgency, a sense that things will fly apart if they don’t get the pencil to the page in time. Memories are stored in our lungs, lower back, liver and hearts.  They live on our skin, our feet, our mouths and our sex organs…..

“every organ embodies a purpose and has an influence

that goes far beyond its biological function.  

As every organ contributes to your life story,

it embodies a specific theme,

holding its important piece in the cosmos’ great mysteries.”

— Nancy Mellon, Body Eloquence

TOPICS EXPLORED IN THIS CLASS INCLUDE THE FOLLOWING:*

LIVER 

The liver stores our blood and distributes it through the body -in Chinese medicine it’s linked to rage and anger. The liver is for clearing out, & if imbalanced, vision becomes blurred. The liver holds our stories – often called “the teenager” – it might whisper revenge tactics in your ear.

SEX ORGANS 

Finally we are beginning to approach raw honesty when writing about sexuality. Sex is mostly awkward, and teaches us so much about connection.

HEART

The Heart is the emperor, the Ruler of our Bodies, and the basis for all our stories. ​It generates the strongest electromagnetic field, and has an intelligence of its own. Using heart to write a story creates a bridge for the reader.

*topics subject to change

About Literati Academy Workshops

By participating in these live classes, you learn the art of writing by practicing, deeply listening,

reading out loud and hearing what is good in your story reflected back to your by students.