Hello again…
from the other side.

Being connected to our bodies calls forth the natural resources of being alive on the planet. Our bodies are like an orchestra, constantly tuning for each day we are alive. When we listen deeply to our body, we are honoring and listening to the body’s language. Our bodies speak to us; they hold our stories, our secrets, and our memories. Every story you want to write is already alive in your cells.  And the body wants you to tell your stories, which are entwined in your hips, your knees, your teeth and your sternum. Your stories live in your heart and your lungs.

Writing through the body and about the body puts us in touch with something bigger than language – our own mortality. When we face that, our creativity becomes a rushing river.

Author Snowden says “this is a time to say yes to the grammar of the gut.”

In this 6-week course, I am inviting writers to tap into their body to create their deepest stories, while also learning literary and poetic techniques – dialogue, odes and attention to detail. Your body is a personal navigation system, an antique map, a GPS to the stories that want to find their way into your books,  essays or blogs.

Story is about connection. Your body is the vehicle to connect you to the creative life force, to the magic that is waiting to be mined.

Your body will break down, it will get disease, it will age, it will wilt. This is something we can trust will happen at some point, from injury or the natural aging process. You can also trust there is a wellspring of wisdom residing in your cells.  Our physical challenges, our illnesses and limitations are also a source of wisdom, creativity and grace.

Together, over six weeks, we will write our stories through guided exercises – foot by foot, hip by hip, heart by heart.We will allow our bodies to be the pen and the canvas. We will call the body back to the page and activate its pulse, breath and passion.

Author John Lee says “the call to write is a call that’s received in the body first.”

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.

Nancy Mellon, author of Body Eloquence, tells us that

“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.”

Dr. Rafael Campo, a doctor, professor and poet, teaches poetry to med students and to his patients, and is certain that writing our stories has the power to heal:

“Some of my colleagues in the biomedical world want to explain us entirely in terms of our genes and our physiology. I resist that.  I really still want to embody, in my own work, this ancient notion that language and how we tell the story of who we are—particularly of how we suffer—and how critically important that is as a definition of being human, of living as a human being.”