About Body Stories

Our bodies speak to us; they hold our stories, secrets, and memories. Every story you want to write is already alive in your cells. Our bodies are storerooms for everything that has ever happened to us. Allen Ginsberg talked about images coming down from the brian and air coming up from the lungs and the images and air meeting in the throat, where words come. But our stories are also entwined in our hips, our knees, our teeth and our sternum. Your stories live in your heart and your lungs and your eyes. All stories and poetry are about the body, because we use our bodies to understand ourselves and the world.

Writing through the body and about the body puts us in touch with something bigger than language, the whole life journey through to our own mortality.

Your Body on a Journey

In this 6-week somatic writing course, writers are invited to tap into the Hero’s Journey of their body -which includes all of it: birthing, coming of age, breaking, hunger and celebration. During this course, you will also practice literary and poetic techniques. Your body is a personal navigation system, an antique map, a key to the stories that want to find their way into your books,  essays or blogs.

“Writing is for you, you are for you;

your body is yours, take it. . . . Women must write through their bodies,

they must invent the impregnable language that will wreck partitions, classes, and rhetorics,

regulations and codes . . .”  

— Hélène Cixous

Bodies Break & Suffer

Bodies eventually break or break down –  they age, they break or they experience grief.  How a body response to all the trials takes on many forms. Bodies also teach us – they emerge with wisdom for how to move through the world in a new way. This is something we can trust will happen at some point, from injury, cancer, or the natural aging process. You can also trust there is a wellspring of wisdom residing in your cells.  Our physical challenges and limitations are also a source of  creativity and grace.

Together, over six weeks, we will write our trials and triumphs of the the body through guided exercises and literary inspiration.  – step by step, hip by hip, heart by heart. We will call the body back to the page and activate its pulse, breath and passion.

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 Hero’s Journey, which is connected to our spiritual journey. informing every story we write. In the end, all our physical challenges offer us a unique wisdom and a new lens of compassion – for ourselves and others.

Our bodies are the texts that carry the memories,

and therefore remembering is no less than reincarnation.

— Katie Canno

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*:

HUNGER – Our physical & sexual hungers drive many of our life decisions. In Chinese medicine the stomach is the catalyst. We will explore the all of hunger through the body, including how hunger assists us to make major changes in our lives.

BOUNDARY – Our human skin is not just our boundary keeper, it’s the threshold through which we experience the world. It’s a guard that keeps watch on and around our body. Its strategy is to enhance pleasure and avoid pain. It protects our body and our souls.

CELEBRATIONS– Bodies celebrate through sensuality, sexuality, dance, walking, hiking and moving inside nature. Celebrating is an important gift to the body and is an important part of healing. In this class we will explore the moments in our lives when our bodies bloomed.

*Topics are subject to change as the class curriculum develops

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.