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

TURNING TO THE RIGHT BRAIN FOR CREATIVE GROWTH

Listening to the Right Brain  paper on  masonite  Laura Cerwinske, 2014 

A HOME RUN FOR 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, go to:
http://www.radicalwriting.com

http://www.lauracerwinske.com

Creative Writing Workshops – What Do You Gain!

As the authors of the stories we tell ourselves – about ourselves and everything around us – we have the power to recast, reframe, redirect, and reinterpret the action in our own personal dramas, whether we acknowledge this power of not. The most significant benefits to creative writing workshops such as Radical Writing are the power and focus they bring to our ability to act in the world. Radical Writing shows us how we have been serving, consciously or unconsciously, as the novelists of our own lives. The discovery of our fictions and their “re-visioning”  (i.e. revising by seeing differently) makes us conscious authors of scenes past, present, and future. Creative writing processes like Radical Writing offer power-building tools that enlarge our focus and make us more effective at applying our personal power.

Our subconscious minds record every thought and every feeling we have, whether mundane or profound, subtle or overt. The act of simple observation of these thoughts and feelings releases them into conscious awareness. Radical Writing enables us to return to a state of pure responsiveness within the sanctuary of the page or keyboard where we can express ourselves in uncensored abandon.

A sanctuary is a place for worship and cultivation of spirit. It is a place of safety and refuge. At times this means a place of order and tranquility, a retreat away from disharmony. At other times it means a place to indulge in creativity, to seek meaning in life, to do the work of transformation, which often calls for descent into pain and chaos. A sanctuary is a hallowed setting in which the work of transformation can be undertaken safely, a hallowed ground in which to embrace our shadows. Radical Writing provides just such a sanctuary.

When stepping from the world of one belief system into that of another, we must feel protected, enveloped in a climate of reassurance. Our old stories have provided us only with illusions of safety. Now you can look to your writing as a safe place to create new stories, unbound by the familiar restraints or old parameters. The process allows us to forego the expectations we typically have when we are talking or interacting.

The more we consciously cultivate awareness, the keener our instincts grow. We relax in making choices and decisions. We breathe easier. The resulting shifts in our tastes, interests, and perspectives erase “blocks” to creativity. We achieve a level of fierce focus that is instrumental in bringing about manifestation. Like all creative acts,  Radical Writing is full of surprises.

Learn more about Radical Writing and Laura Cerwinske’s other courses at http://www.radicalwriting.com