WRITE TO FLOURISH
Let your pen and paper be the vehicle that transports you to your inner world,
“The past six months have sped by at lightning speed. I can barely remember the things I did the month before. And I’m noticing the parallels in my clients’ lives, too; so much to do with so little time to do it in. However, one good thing that has helped me stay afloat amongst the norm of busyness has been my journalling practice. Keeping up my early morning writing practice has been a way of recalling where I’ve been and what I’ve done. Even when I don’t feel like it, once done, there’s a feeling of, ‘Now I am ready to face the day’.
I don’t journal every day, but I do aim to sit down to my journal at least two or three times during the week. I am someone who finds it easy to dissociate from my feelings, and making journalling a lifelong habit has been really helpful for me. But even as a committed journal writer of more than 20 years, I still struggle with getting to grips with the highs and lows of emotions and feelings we are likely to run into throughout the day. So much easier, come an evening, to fling myself down on the sofa in front of another movie on Netflix, or reach for yet another glass of red wine, than to open my notebook and write.
So, this month, I’d like to introduce the technique of proprioceptive writing. It’s a way of focusing on yourself and clarifying your thinking. The proprioceptive writing approach was created by Linda Trichter Metcalf in 1976. Proprioceptive writing combines three modalities in the writing process: listening to music, a mindfulness approach, and following and probing your thoughts. It’s a way of focusing on yourself and clarifying your thinking. It provides a structure that is easy to apply for self-reflection.
Here’s how it works… Firstly, make sure you won’t be disturbed. Decide on the track you’ll listen to in the background to accompany your writing, then set your timer for 25 minutes. Classical, instrumental jazz or baroque music are recommended genres for this type of process writing. For the next 25 minutes, you will be following your train of thought and writing down everything you hear as you tune into your feelings and thinking.
After 10 minutes, stop and read over what you’ve written, either aloud or silently to yourself. This is an important part of the process to hear what you are thinking. Now you’ve listened b
