KNOW THE TRUTH AND SET YOUR BODY FREE

                               Laura Cerwinske, 2011

ANGER, SORROW, ACHES AND PAINS?

HOW RADICAL WRITING CAN REVEAL – AND HEAL --

 YOUR PHYSICAL BODY

In a beautiful college commencement speech several years ago, the entrepreneur-turned-environmentalist Paul Hawken offered these profound and inspiring words.

The first living cell came into being nearly 40 million centuries ago, and its direct descendants are in all of our bloodstreams. Literally you are breathing molecules this very second that were inhaled by Moses, Mother Teresa, and Bono. We are vastly interconnected. Our fates are inseparable. We are here because the dream of every cell is to become two cells. And dreams come true. In each of you are one quadrillion cells, 90 percent of which are not human cells. Your body is a community, and without those other microorganisms you would perish in hours. Each human cell has 400 billion molecules conducting millions of processes between trillions of atoms. The total cellular activity in one human body is staggering: one septillion actions at any one moment, a one with twenty-four zeros after it. In a millisecond, our body has undergone ten times more processes than there are stars in the universe, which is exactly what Charles Darwin foretold when he said science would discover that each living creature was a "little universe, formed of a host of self-propagating organisms, inconceivably minute and as numerous as the stars of heaven."

From this we are reminded that the healing process, an idiosyncratic manifestation of physical, emotional, and spiritual energies, is as unpredictable and individual as it is exquisitely organized. Healing can begin at any site of mind or body and at any point in the cycle of Creation and dis-integration. Any puncture or “hole” in our well-being—whether physical, emotional, or spiritual—leaks life force from our whole being. By restoring any aspect of our being, we increase our wholeness, that is, improve our integrity, our health. In metaphysical terms, to make whole is to make holy, and to make holy is to heal.

A Course in Miracles teaches that “Healing is always certain. It is impossible to let illusions be brought to truth and keep the illusions,” The creative writing course RADICAL WRITING guides us in identifying not only the underlying sources of our anger, sorrow, aches and pains, but also give us a means to safely bring them to light and heal. When the teacher and medical intuitive Caroline Myss was asked during an interview on the subject of health and healing about why people heal and why they don’t, she responded,  “Have you ever thought about the role of truth when it comes to healing? How can a dishonest person heal?”

RADICAL WRITING is designed for exploring the subconscious to find the “truths that set us free.” Through these guided creative writing courses, we learn exactly where within our bodies unresolved emotions reside and what messages specific pains, discomforts, or other physical reactions are sending us. This awareness informs us about how we habitually project past feelings onto present situations and what our bodies do to protect us from feeling them.

To consciously deal with feelings, we can either write about them to see where the discomfort leads, or we can write about how unprepared we feel to deal with them. It is perfectly acceptable to be physically or emotionally unable to handle a subject. It is not bad, wrong, or a failure of any kind because it is simply the truth of our position at that moment. And that very truth, in and of itself, is liberating...and therefore healing.

Learn more: http://www.radicalwriting.com

and see Laura's earlier blogs on writing, creativity, and healing here

A YEAR WITHOUT HIM

 WHEN PUBLISHING LEGEND J-C SUARES DIED A YEAR AGO, 

A TREASURE OF CREATIVITY VANISHED FROM OUR LIVES

The cartoons not sketched. The books not created. The laughs not shared. The toasts not made. The obscenities not thrown. The jokes not cracked. The rages not stormed. The languages not spoken. The food not savored. The drinks not poured. The cigars not smoked. The clothes not tailored. The cars not bought. The antiques not acquired. The art not admired. The dogs not ruffed. The cats not scratched. The horses not ridden. The polo not played. The rounds not boxed. The music not relished. The home not loved. The family not gathered. The friends not called. The insecurities not hidden. The kisses not thrown. The admiration not showered. The love not made. The wife not adored.

The disbelief still fresh. The sorrow we still feel. It’s been a year without him.

ANGER, SORROW, ACHES AND PAINS?

HOW WRITING REVEALS THE POWER

OF YOUR EMOTIONS

TO SHAPE YOUR ANATOMY

The nervous system is the ultimate anatomical vehicle

of consciousness, the channel for all feeling and thinking. 

It gathers all sense impressions.

Caroline Myss

Every thought or feeling you have, every behavior you act out requires a specific biochemical combination formed in the brain. Your attitude – positive, negative, or indifferent -- designs and activates your body's neurochemistry.  These expressions produce biochemical reactions that have dynamic manifestations. In other words, belief begets effect, thought precedes energy, you are what you think.

Biologically speaking, how does this work? Emotional reactions are produced either by the central nervous system (brain and spinal cord), peripheral nervous system (the network of nerves that extends throughout the body), or the autonomic nervous system (the electro-chemical system the operates primarily on adreneline and is designed for spontaneous reaction, without cognitive appraisal, to any threat, real or imaginary).

Anatomy is the foundation for human relationship.

What happens in our interior, those connections that maintain the structure of personhood, eventually happens outside as well.....

Human relationships are somatic interactions of emotional pulsation and behavioral form -- inside us, outside us.

Caroline Myss

Feelings and emotions differ. Feelings are unconditioned, unprogrammed, generalized states, whereas emotions are conditioned programs of behavior with established neural pathways for action. Both feelings and emotions follow the rules of water, acting as messengers that signal behavior. Their fluid ingredients organize and categorize behavior according to “the flow of thought, the tides of feelings, the waves of intuition, the ocean depths of feelings, the waxing and waning of images.” Hormones are, in essence liquid anatomy, a watery form at the root of behavior in the animal world. Secreted by the brain into the blood stream, they are “liquid behavior” waiting to crystalize into muscular behavior. They keep the quick fires of epinephrine burning, the continuing heat of the pituitary, or the continuing transactions of the brain with the neural transmitters. In this way, life's emotional experiences create form and shape which, in turn, gives emotions, thinking, and feeling an avenue for expression and satisfaction or the opposite, inhibition and pain. “With our shape we interact with the world and create relationships. As we reach out to others for contact, love intimacy, cooperation, we may create relationships that serve to reinforce or compensate for our individual shape.”

How then can writing affect not only our cognition, but our anatomical form itself? Conscious self expression – visual, verbal, musical, physical – leads the light of awareness into our thoughts and alters the neural pathways by which the hormones are directed. Writing processes, such as RADICAL WRITING, which are concerned only with undirected, free-flowing expressiveness, restore energetic circulation to aspects of your neurological makeup that have been impeded by judgment and/or trauma. The healing key to such writing is the result of the pure acts of observation and listening. The power these actions generate promotes subconscious shifts which lead to physical and emotional balance. Such healing requires no external effort to fix or change anything. In fact, to attempt to fix a situation or to direct such change is to disrupt the innate subconscious mechanism for restoration.

Because the human body is a self-restoring organism at every level of biological organization, from DNA upward, there is no biological reason for allowing yourself to suffer. Carl Jung believed that disease begins when a personality’s story is denied. Similarly, symptoms can be interpreted as the initial notes in a story written on the body by suppressed responses to life events and surroundings. It is in the nonjudgmental telling of your stories that healing occurs, and writing in the way RADICAL WRITING teaches provides just such a mechanism for allowing the chaos and emotional blood of your life to move through your body as a conscious messenger rather than belligerent symptom.

Only by rediscovering your story with the dispassion provided by guided techniques such as RADICAL WRITING can you honestly retell the story, expose its deeper roots, uncover new meanings, and create conclusions different from the self-fulfilling prophecies that have been directing your unconscious script. There is no power greater than the truth. Its role in healing is fundamental. The courage to know the truth and allow its telling is the first step in recovering the wholeness that health represents.

For more information:

http://www.radicalwriting.com

http://www.lauracerwinske.com

 

How Creative Writing Propels Personal Growth!

Baseball great David Ortiz was the once-ferocious hitter who could not hit anymore. His futility grew week after week and left the Boston Red Sox wondering if he would ever be formidable again. When Ortiz was beyond weary about being unproductive, he decided it could not hurt him to try to an altogether different approach to resolving his problem. He decided to play the carefree 12-year-old he once was. He simply woke up one morning and told himself “to act like a kid and just go and play baseball, that’s it.” Ortiz stopped taking extra batting practice, stopped obsessing over videotapes and stopped listening to every tidbit of advice. Not long afterward, he became a solid hitter again.  He is still playing today, years later, near retirement, but still playing....like a kid.

The point of this story is to demonstrate the power of the left brain, the side of our neural anatomy that works analytically, logically, processes everything as if it were measurable data. Today research has shown that when trying to solve a problem—any type of problem -- it can be greatly beneficial to go offline, mentally. That is, rather than fixating on analysis, a more productive approach is to engage the right brain and allow your thoughts to wander. The result: fear diminishes, new ideas flow, and your personal growth surges.

The left brain is the seat of scientific, logical, or linear thinking which is based on the objective weighing of fact and detail. The left brain calls on a mode of seeing devoid of imagination, and therefore incapable of refreshing the conscious mind and anxious body. Right brain thinking, on the other hand, is nonliteral, nonlogical, instinctual. It draws on the imagination and is therefore imbued with imagery color, texture, and detail. Determinations, such as Ortiz’s to return to an “instinctive” way of playing, are invigorating. They interrupt futile repetition and propel personal growth by introducing new energy and ideas into stagnant situations.

Creative writing workshops, such as RADICAL WRITING, allow the hand, work with the right brain to allow your fingers rather than your head to do your thinking. The result is an immediate intimacy with your thoughts in a safe, supportive creative environment. By writing out feelings in the free and exaggerated way RADICAL WRITING teaches your become fluently self-expressive. The writing stimulates awareness and thereby perpetuates personal growth. This act of writing purely for self-expression alchemizes your mental activity and provides fuel for liberation, creativity, transformation, and healing.

Right-brain writing, which is to say creative writing, provides direct access to the imagination. As it expands your awareness, your instincts grow keener. You relax in making choices and decisions. You breathe easier. RADICAL WRITING makes creative writing as fluid as a reflex. RADICAL WRITING makes personal growth effortless. RADICAL WRITING holds up to you a forgiving mirror in which, like David Ortiz, you can go out again and play.

 For more information on creative writing go to:

http://www.radicalwriting.com

http://www.lauracerwinske.com