writing from my body

morning musings on the idea of embodied writing

image generated with DALL-E

I have been attempting to write tweets from my body.

a lot of it is just sitting and waiting if something arises that feels punchy. something that feels true.

sometimes I am wrong and I publish something that I thought was from the body but as I look at it, I have some twisty feelings in my stomach.

but that's ok. that is how I will learn.

i've written so many things from my head that one extra thing won't hurt. I am willing to take the punch of inauthenticity so I can calibrate.

it's also about knowing when to stop. when I am writing and I am starting to feel like I am making words happen, it's time to pause.

caffeine definitely makes it easier to override this signal and just keep going. i still have coffee, but I am just mindful of this pattern.

cacao on the other hand makes me quite emotional and it's easier to write things that feel real. when i really spend some time with the drink, it's almost as if the warm earthy liquid penetrates my heart, rips it open, and allows me to feel things as they actually live in there. and that can inspire writing that feels like it flows out of me, instead of being forced down on paper.

another red flag in my body is feeling like I am writing to convince someone. the nebulous critical reader that my mind creates to ensure I have something to benchmark against, something that will help me ensure I don't get misunderstood. the self-censoring part that is looking to please the masses.

when I sense it arising as I write, I try to pause and come back to my body.

what is my body saying?

there's often a low-level contraction accompanied by 'I want to be seen', 'I want to be understood' parts.

often moving my head helps. it really feels like a lot of 'writing from head' can be shifted by physically moving my head around and breathing into the tension.

I like to think of my head as my executive control centre. It's always on, looking out for things, has the capacity to go on and on, especially as I wire it up with stimulants. i appreciate my head for its endurance, for it's relentless thinking machinery.

but it can get a little loopy sometimes. it tends to linearity and gets caught up in an optimisation frenzy.

see, just now I got distracted by a thought, that led to picking up my phone, that made me spend 5 minutes scrolling around on google maps, looking for god-knows-what in the future.

taking a breath and opening up my presence back out into the world. my knee hurts a bit. I forgot about it when i was on google maps.

there's rain outside and it looks beautiful but I did not look at it when I was in my phone.

there's even a rose and a candle with flickering flames in front of me. it's beautiful. my eyes like looking at it. i feel goosebumps all over.

my body is back online.

my head has this desire to conclude this post somehow, give it a little satisfying bow. just like the teachers required back in school. i remember the sensation of feeling like I know exactly what to put in an essay to get a good grade. to please them. to make them sigh with relief knowing that this girl followed their advice.

make them feel good about themselves and in the sway of that make them love me.

well my body feels finished here. it's a good piece because it feels honest about what my body feels as I write. it feels seen perhaps.

I write from my body to make my body feel seen.

inhale. exhale. relief.

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hi again! or welcome if this is your first time here.

after a year-long break from writing, being on substack feels right once again. i want to use this space as an outlet for sharing my reflections in a more raw and vulnerable way, with those who want to know how i make sense of my experiences.

themes that are alive for me and will most likely write about: relational rigor, non-coercive mode of being, intentional communities, embodiment, masculine/feminine dynamics, and energy work.

thank you for being here! 👋 🧡