Happening Now, The Visceral Self: Writing Through the Body

Writing in the Dark’s Next 12-Week Seasonal Intensive for Embodied Writing is Happening Now ... Please Join Us

Georgia O’Keeffe, by Alfred Stieglitz (public domain)

It’s not always easy to write through body rather than simply about it (or, worse yet, with no real awareness of the body at all). I wrote about that in depth yesterday, in this post: Let Everything Happen to You. Because when we do write through our bodies, the prose wakes up—its pulse quickens. It comes alive.

My own body was long a stranger to me. But once I learned to engage my body in my writing process, my writing began to leap up from the page. It became three-dimensional.

I love the quote below about acting, and could easily substitute the word writing in place of acting throughout it:

“Acting activates every cell, never, neuron, and everything that happened to your DNA a million years ago as well as everything that will happen a million years from now. If we didn’t believe that, we wouldn’t be interested in acting. If acting didn’t include something more than we could ever comprehend, we don’t think we would want to pursue it. Acting is so incredible that it gives an audience the potential to experience anything that will ever happen in the history of the world. That is why we call acting the human condition. It takes an incredible amount of intensity and passion to truly be an actor. ― Paul G. Gleason

Embodied writing can certainly be as alive, as human, as the quote above describes. That’s because we all live in bodies, and we perceive the world through our bodily sensations. Our physical selves, and our ability to perceive through the physical self, holds the key to writing that stands apart. Writing that is capable of both holding and revealing truth.

Bodily awareness is also key to releasing and writing our stored stories. Our bodies remember. Our cells hold records of the past, awareness of the present, and imaginings of the future. These embodied sensations form the basis of writing electrifies the primal exchange continually experience with the world.

But how can we better hear and tell the stories our bodies hold within? Important fragments of our stories, along with prescient reflections of of the outer world, can be found by paying greater attention to our physical selves.

Starting April 3, Writing in the Dark’s next 12-week seasonal intensive will explore embodied writing for all genres. Together, we will journey slowly and intentionally through the seven chakras as we deeply explore:

• Embodied literary readings to inspire us.

• Paired yin yoga poses and breathing exercises to increase physical awareness (poses offered focus on honoring the body and are appropriate for all levels with variations available as desired).

• Short guided meditations to prepare you to write.

• Powerful structured writing exercises designed to gently unlock your awareness of the stories held within.

By weaving this strong container of inspiring readings, gentle yin yoga poses, guided meditations, and structured writing exercises, The Visceral Self intensive helps participants access the visceral stories that are sometimes more difficult to tell, as well as the ordinary sensations that, when precisely observed, can awaken our prose in ways no other process can.

What’s Included in The Visceral Self Writing Intensive

Paid subscribers receive:

• Full access to all twelve Visceral Self posts, each of which will include readings, paired yin yoga poses, written meditations, and structured writing exercises.

• Access to interactive participation in our bustling comments section where, each week, participants share questions, insights, and snippets of work in progress, and where Jeannine and Billie actively participate, as well.

Founding subscribers also receive:

• Weekly recorded Voice Memo meditations.

• Monthly Live Salons on Zoom which will include guided candlelight meditations as well as a celebratory group reading on Zoom when the intensive is over.

All participants take away:

• A storehouse of valuable embodied craft principles and specific tools to apply long after the the intensive is over.

• A collection of new work in progress (scenes, fragments, poems, flash) that you can continue to develop on your own. 

• An archive of embodied readings, paired yin yoga poses, meditations, and writing exercises that you can repeat as desired.

• A deeper understanding of the ways in which embodied writing techniques enliven our prose, and tools for engaging the body in your writing practice.

What is the Cost?

Paid subscriptions are only $50/year or $4.17/month paid annually, and full-access founding memberships are only $80 and include all the interactive Zooms, Voice Memos, Video Notes, and more. We hope you’ll join us now! Or in April! We’re just excited to write with you.

More Details on The Visceral Self Writing Intensive

Visceral means “relating to the viscera,” or your internal organs. It also means “relating to deep inward feelings rather than to the intellect.” We will follow visceral writing techniques wherever they lead us, including the Big Ones: sex, birth, illness, trauma, pain, recovery, etc., as writing through the body offers the opportunity for creating clarity, cohesion, and beauty from disparate memories that course beneath the surface of our daily experience.

Research has shown that writing literally (meaning on an actual physical level) heals. Writing through the body can help us access greater openness and art. The Visceral Self intensive is designed to honor both spiritual and scientific understandings of the mind-body connection.

What People Say About Writing in the Dark Intensives

• I have learned much from you in the last year, through your weekly posts and seasonal intensives. The depth and quality of your content is unmatched on Substack (IMHO). That, plus the network of subscribers you have garnered is why I look forward to Wednesdays! (And Mondays for Lit Salon and Thursdays for the new Threads!) I have been involved in workshops that cost more but provide less. Thanks for all you are producing and the community you have created in an effort to bring the out our best writing selves.

• As always, there's more to these exercises than I first anticipate.

• I’m thoroughly enjoying this challenge and truly appreciate all the ways you’re helping each of us become more thoughtful and evocative writers.

• It's actually been super helpful to work through the exercises in quick succession, like a little writing course... But so much more inspiring and thoughtful and generous and fun than any I've taken before. THANK YOU Jeannine, you are brilliant.

• These assignments are like magic.

• Your post gave me a giant AHA moment. You’ve unlocked my understanding of tension and storytelling in memoir.

• This post was wonderful. Love the first quote especially. I had a couple of deeper realizations with this exercise.

• Reading all the comments on my writing today, so full of enthusiasm and encouragement, really made my day! One of the things I will treasure most about this challenge is learning to trust myself and others with my writing.

What to Expect From The Visceral Self:

• You can expect to receive thoughtful craft essays that cover these elements in new and inventive ways, along with structured prompts and meditations and a yin yoga pose, via email every Wednesday, so that you have a full week to complete each exercise before the next one arrives.

• You can expect every exercise to invite you to engage your body and to revel in language and expand your understanding of how embodied writing techniques supercharge our prose.

• You can expect to be encouraged to participate each week—which is a very lively experience—or work at your own pace, or start the challenge later or repeat it, or whatever works best for you, because all of the posts will be tagged and permanently archived in order.

• You can expect, if you work every exercise, to complete the challenge with up to 12 original, interesting, and intriguing scene/fragments that you can either work into a complete story or expand or revise into separate pieces or use as scenes in some other work in progress. And you can expect these scenes/fragments to differ greatly from anything you might have written otherwise.

• You can expect (to the point above) to be encouraged to embrace zero-waste writing, where everything interesting can become something more than itself now or later.

• You can expect to be invited and encouraged to record your experiences as part of the process—and you can, if you share your thoughts in the chat or comments, expect to find me and Billie Oh there, participating in the conversation.

• You can expect each exercise to be accompanied by a detailed introductory craft essay with links to resources for further reading on the specific task for that week.

• You can expect the exercises to be clear, doable, and scaffolded over the 12 weeks in a way that allows you, if you like, to “arranges the bits” toward an interesting suggestion of wholeness.

• You can expect, over the 12 weeks, to amass not just a collection of scenes/fragments, but also an array of highly usable craft tools you can apply forever.

•  You can expect to be introduced to several specific, potent literary approaches to deepen and illuminate your relationship with language.

• You can expect to make discoveries about yourself and your life, even through the lens of fiction.

• You can expect to be introduced to some less familiar readings as well as some crowd favorites.

• You can expect exercises that are specific and directive and clear, but also a bit feral and unpredictable. You can expect (as always in WITD) exercises that honor the truth of living in bodies that breathe and move and laugh and cry, while also living in a world that breathes and moves and laughs and cries, while also having unruly minds that are constantly escaping to the past and the future even when what we most need is to attend to this exact moment in order to live lives that are, as Mary Oliver said, “particular and real.”

• You can expect to be imperfect, and for that to be perfectly okay.

• You can expect to come out of this challenge with new ideas about what writing can be, and how it can feel.

• You can expect to come out of this challenge with new ideas of who you are, who you are becoming, and what is possible for you as a writer.

I’m sure there’s more—I know now from the experience of the Essay and Story Challenges that these thing evolve and change along the way. For now, anyway, these are the main points, and I’m happy to answer questions if you have them! Just throw your thoughts into the comments or respond via email to this post. I can’t wait to start writing with all of you in April—hearing your voices, celebrating this thing we do, this thing called language. Oh, and feel free to share this post with anyone who might like to join us!

Love,
Jeannine

P.S. Who Are Your Guides?

This original curriculum was by Jeannine Ouellette and one of her adult children,

Billie Oh

.

Jeannine is the author of the The Part That Burns, 2019 Annie Dillard Award Winner for creative nonfiction, 2018 Narrative Story Contest Finalist, 2017 Masters Review Emerging Writer Awardee, 2016 Proximity Essay Contest winner, 2015 Curt Johnson Fiction Awards honoree, two-time Pushcart nominee, published author of several educational books, founder of Elephant Rock, and, most of all, passionate teacher of writing. In addition to teaching through Elephant Rock, Jeannine serves as a writing mentor for the Association of Writers & Writing Programs Writer-to-Writer Program and teaches writing through the Minnesota Prison Writers Workshop, and teaches Writing for Public Health and narrative health forums at the University of Minnesota. Jeannine is also a 200-hour RYT certified teacher.

Billie has been practicing yoga for twelve years and is a 200-hour RYT certified teacher. The heart of their teaching philosophy is to honor the body. They believe in the power of asana (shapes) to bring the mind, body, and spirit into alignment. Their teaching is rooted in functional yoga, emphasizing bodily sensation rather than aesthetic appearances. They are passionate about expanding accessibility and approachability in yoga spaces. Billie's movement and meditation practice translates on the page in fragmented and experimental literary works that explore the intersection of brain, body, and identity. Their writing has appeared in a variety of magazines and literary journals including Calyx, where their essay, “Bent: Daughterhood Recalled Through Skin and Bone,” was first-runner up for the 2019 Margarita Donnelly Prize for Prose Writing.