Welcome to the world in which some people very gently brush the soft white bellies of squirrels.

Visceral Self: Writing Through the Body | Week One | A Very Ordinary Moment, Brought Alive

Visceral Self: Writing Through the Body dates to note for founding members (you can manage/upgrade your membership here). And for all paid members, we’ll also be hosting impromptu silent group writes on Zoom (times announced soon). We’re excited to write with you!

🗓️ 🕯️TONIGHT!!! Wednesday April 3, 8 - 8:30 PM Central Time, Live Candlelight Yoga Nidra Meditation on Zoom for Founding Members (Zoom link emailed an hour ahead)

🗓️ 🕯️Wednesday May 1, 8 PM CT, Live Candlelight Yoga Nidra Meditation for Founding Members on Zoom (Zoom link emailed an hour ahead)

🗓️ 🕯️Wednesday June 12, 8 PM CT, Candlelight Yoga Nidra Meditation for Founding Members on Zoom (Zoom link emailed an hour ahead)

🗓️ 🕯️Friday June 21, 1 PM CT, Celebratory Live Solstice Salon for Founding Members on Zoom (Zoom link emailed an hour ahead)

Good morning, and welcome to the world, the world in which we all live and then die.

Welcome to the world in which rain falls, miraculously, from the sky, and where overwintering fires burn slowly beneath the snow even during the cold months.

Welcome to the world where, when I was nine years old, a freckled boy named John in my third-grade class—a boy who wore brown pants and liked to laugh and was, in fact, quite jolly—made up a rhyme about me that went like this: Jeannie, Jeannie with the ten-foot weenie, showed it to the boy next door, he thought it was a snake, cut it with a rake, and now it’s only six-foot-four. Welcome to the world where a rhyme as catchy as this can come alive in your head just as it did in mine, just as if you yourself were right there beside us on that dusty asphalt in 1977.

Welcome to the world in which some people very gently brush the soft white bellies of squirrels—and then brush their tiny brown foreheads—with toothbrushes until the squirrels enter a state of bliss and then, with their teeny-tiny squirrel hands, they grasp the toothbrush to demand more, all of which you can see for yourself on YouTube.

Welcome to the world that contains a condition called Takotsubo cardiomyopathy or "Broken Heart Syndrome,” where the heart muscle becomes suddenly stunned or weakened in the event that someone stops loving you, or some other very bad thing happens to you, as it did to me one day in 2018, a thing so bad I still can’t talk or write about it even though my heart mostly beats again.

Welcome to the world where a new baby’s raspy cries and the arrhythmic heaving of her bird-boned shoulders—still covered in that delicate layer baby fur—can inspire you to cry with and for her.

Welcome to the world where bread bakes and also burns, where dogs leap and writhe with happiness to see you, where a soft sweater makes most things better, and where our bodies contain all of these realities, and so many more.

Welcome to The Visceral Self embodied writing experience.

[Ed Note: In case you are very new here and/or have somehow missed our 47,321 recent mentions of this Visceral Self intensive for writing through the body and want to orient yourself to what’s going on here, have a look at this detailed description of the intensive and this short video about Writing in the Dark, where you can “meet” Billie and me and introduce yourself, and maybe even check out this page of love notes from our beloved WITD members!]

MEANWHILE, we are so glad you are here to explore the beauty and difficulty of “sensing” with us, and the even more puzzling challenge of articulating that sense in words on a page, which is also a form of building worlds on a page.

Perception and sensation are where we will begin, are the gateposts we must pass through in order to write through the body. And, crucially, writing through the body is different from writing about the body. There can be overlap, yes, as you might have noticed in some of the snippets I shared above. But some wholly embodied writing, writing that crackles with sensory aliveness, may never mention a body at all. And in both cases, we will perceive the body, written or unwritten, by experiencing its sensory data through our own body.

It’s not complicated.

It’s actually simple. So simple that yesterday, in the comments on the final invitation to join us in this intensive, I wrote that this intensive would definitely be interesting, but also …

Maybe [it will be] one part boring, one part elusive/strenuous, and one part trembling + shimmery, which is the nature of how I experience the discipline of embodied writing!

I know it sounds funny to promise some boredom. But I really think it's crucial. We have to stay with the sensation through some boredom if we want the payoff. I hope that makes sense.

It’s funny that I said “I hope that makes sense,” because we are going to spend so much time considering and engaging and honoring and celebrating and enhancing and amplifying and articulating our senses during this intensive.

So while I didn’t mean the notion of “making sense” to be clever, or to have a double entendre, it kind of was, and kind of does. Consider these definitions of the word sense:

Here, too, is some text from the Wikipedia page on “sense”:

A sense is a biological system used by an organism for sensation, the process of gathering information about the surroundings through the detection of stimuli. Although, in some cultures, five human senses were traditionally identified as such (namely sight, smell, touch, taste, and hearing) many more are now recognized. Senses used by non-human organisms are even greater in variety and number. During sensation, sense organs collect various stimuli (such as a sound or smell) for transduction, meaning transformation into a form that can be understood by the brain. Sensation and perception are fundamental to nearly every aspect of an organism's cognition, behavior, and thought.

Thus, we are, more than anything else, making an effort to “come to our senses” in order to write through the body.

Before we dive into the first reading and exercise, some housekeeping based on questions we’ve been hearing as well as points of clarification

Billie Oh

and I have identified these past few weeks during our preparations. Hopefully these bullet points will answer most of your questions, but, if not, please let us know in the comments and we will continue to address and clarify as we go. We are here to help, and want this experience to be useful, clear, safe, and fruitful for you. In that vein, some answers to questions:

Who the heck is Billie Oh? Billie is my (Jeannine’s) youngest adult child, adoptive parent to Z, whose name comes up a lot here, and a frequent collaborator at Writing in the Dark. They, like me, are a 200-hour RYT certified teacher and a writer. You can read their full bio at the very end of yesterday’s post, or check out their newsletter, Dumpster Yoga.

How much time will the exercises take? The exercises, in and of themselves, won’t take a lot of time. Maybe ten or fifteen minutes, usually. Bringing the fruits of the exercises into your daily life doesn’t require a time commitment, either, but it does require effort and attention.

Will we have a yin yoga pose every week? Almost every week, but, because this curriculum is tailored to a journey through the 7 chakras, we’ve built in a few weeks as intentional “breathers,” including today’s intro, then again at week 5, week 9, and weeks 11 & 12, where we offer something a little different.

Will we get a meditation every week? Yes, you will receive a brief written meditation each week. Since these are written meditations, some of them will be akin to mantras that you can read to yourself, silently or out loud, and return to through the week.

Will we receive a recorded meditation every week? Recorded meditations will be provided each week, and—except for this week’s recording, which is for ALL paid members, these are generally for founding members, as are the Live Zooms and any video recordings. Founding memberships are only $15 more than annual subscriptions, and are, to be honest, worth it. The reason we offer this tier is because we have a long-term vision for a vibrant creative circle of friends who help us and each other make this place into something more beautiful than we can now imagine. If you would rather just read posts, that is amazing. We’re so glad you are here. Billie and I are both introverts. We really get it! We just want to make a giant circle of artistic friends anyway. If you ever want to change to a paid or founding membership, you can do it here.

Can we share our work in the comments? Yes, please do share if you like—we very much hope you will! That’s how the intensive works, and Billie and I will be hanging out there, too, cheering you on. However, please know you are never required to share anything. This experience is for you, first and foremost.

Will you give us feedback on our work? I will read every comment and will also participate enthusiastically in the comments section. But I won’t give “feedback” in the traditional sense of that word because this is decidedly not a critique workshop. It’s an embodied creative writing experience offered through a newsletter. That said, you will feel my presence throughout the next twelve weeks as I offer observations, encouragement, and insights, and directly answer questions.

Can we share highly personal material? We do share personal stories here. We believe in the healing power of the word. That said, you should always use your best judgment regarding what feels safe for you to share. You can always pause, always wait, if you are unsure. There is nothing courageous about sharing before you are ready, and nothing cowardly about giving yourself time and space. We are in this for the long haul. We work hard to ensure that this a safe space, and we believe that discernment by and from all is part of what keeps it safe. We do not require certain trigger/content warnings (we appreciate what the

The Trauma-Sensitive Editor

’s wrote on this topic the other day), but we do appreciate everyone’s effort to be sensitive and responsible. We ask that you care for yourselves and each other, including taking the time to offer a heads up at the start of your share/comment if/when you feel it would be kindest to do so. Let’s do our best to take care of ourselves and each other.

When will I get the Zoom links? Zoom gatherings (and all audio and video recordings) are for founding members, and links will go out via email to all founding members a couple of hours before Live Zoom events. Note that we will not be recording Zoom yoga nidra meditations during this intensive, because we don’t want to record participants in a meditative state. We will, however, as mentioned, offer audio meditations each week, like the one included in this post.

Will this be hard? We think it will be gentle and supportive, even if/when the awakening of the senses feels challenging. We encourage you to go at your own pace and take breaks as needed. You can trust yourself to know when you need to pause. And you can reach out to use with questions anytime, either in the comments or by email to jeannine@writinginthedark.org.

And now, finally, for this week’s embodied writing material—the reading, written meditation, recorded yoga nidra body scan, and writing exercise.

We are so excited! We can’t wait to see you in the comments, and, hopefully, also tonight at 8 Central for the Live Zoom Yoga Nidra session. Thank you so much for writing in the dark with us in this very special way.

Let’s begin. ❤️