Tag Archives: Johnnie Mazzocco workshop leader

First Chakra – The Root Chakra – Tribal Power

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Yesterday, I wrote about how, if we follow the flow of ideas that come from Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s theories on achieving flow and Candace Pert’s findings about how our emotions originate in the exact locations of the seven main chakras and that our bodies are our subconscious minds, we can utilize the chakras to banish writer’s block, achieve flow, and tell our untold stories.

For example, the First Chakra rules our Tribal Power and Tribal Consciousness, which is about our identity in relationship to our Tribe, which could relate to our family of origin or to some other group or community that’s present in our lives. Deep down, the Root Chakra has to do with identity and a feeling of security and connection to others and to the world.

In our writing, by considering our characters’ place within his or her tribe, or by considering our own, we can begin to uncover important information about human behaviors and motivations.

Below is a brief explanation of the Root Chakra and some ways we might integrate its attributes into our writing.

First Chakra – Root ChakraRed Sphere1
Location
Deep in the pelvis, between the tip of the tailbone and the genitals

Primary strengths
Tribal/family identity, bonding, support and loyalty that create a feeling of security and connection to the world

Primary fears
Physical survival, abandonment, loss of order

Positive manifestations and qualities
Abundance, good health, connection with body, willpower, determination, leadership, independence

Negative manifestations and qualities
Vanity, self-importance, inability to make decisions

Lesson
Accepting that we cannot be in control

Aspects we might consider for our characters or ourselves
Quality of family ties, sense of security and abundance, fears around abandonment and survival

When we take the time to sit quietly, think about the aspects of the Root Chakra, and do a meditation to clear it, imagining its corresponding color in the form of a pulsating orb, we can open ourselves up to not just a deeper examination and understanding of our characters, but ourselves, as well.

Try the following meditation and exercise, and let me know what you come up with.
Feel free to post it below this post, or email me at:  johnnie@johnniemazzocco.com.

 

Meditation
Close your eyes and do a short visualization of the Root Chakra: A red, pulsating orb just in front of your tailbone. Imagine it expanding and contracting and spreading out to each hip. Sit with this pulsating, strong and powerful energy for as long as you can, breathing deeply, for 5-10 breaths. Count to ten slowly on both the inhale and the exhale for each one. When you’re ready, let the energy begin to recede and return to its original size. Maintain its presence in your body as you open your eyes and begin the following writing exercise.

Writing Exercise
Fiction Writers
Think of a character you’ve created, maybe one you’ve been working with recently. Now, put that character on a train, heading to see his/her family for the holidays. Think about the character’s relationship with this space: Is this a regular occurrence – to be on a train heading to his/her childhood home? Or is this the first time? Whoh will the character see once she reaches her destination? How long will he be there? Who will this character see, and what feelings does she/he have around each person? Your character can be sitting quietly or moving around in the space. She/he can be contemplating the impending meeting or thinking about something else entirely. Show your character’s experience in the space, what happens in the waiting, and how this reflects in his/her thoughts and behaviors. It’s up to you whether or not you write to the actual arrival and meeting of family members.

Creative Non-fiction Writers / Memoirists
Pick a tribe. This can be your family of origin, or it can be another community that has a strong presence in your life. Consider the following questions:
What’s your reality within this tribe right now?
Are you in harmony or conflict with this tribal reality?
What, or who, within this tribe, created your reality?
Do you have any unfinished business in relation to this tribe? (If so, what prevents you from healing it, either within yourself or with the person or people involved?)

Sending you mad writing mojo…

Johnnie

XXXX

What do the chakras have to do with writing?

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When we’re able to achieve flow, as coined by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, our obstacles (read: writer’s block) disintegrate, and the words come effortlessly.

Csikszentmihalyi believes that when we’re in flow, when we experience complete absorption in a task, we realize happiness.

http://www.ted.com/talks/mihaly_csikszentmihalyi_on_flow

http://www.ted.com/talks/mihaly_csikszentmihalyi_on_flow

FLOW

=

concentration /complete absorption

=

happiness

 

In an interview with Wired magazine, Csikszentmihalyi described flow like this:

Flow is ”…being completely involved in an activity for its own sake. The ego falls away. Time flies. Every action, movement, and thought follows inevitably from the previous one, like playing jazz. Your whole being is involved, and you’re using your skills to the utmost.”
(emphasis mine)

“Your whole being is involved.” Including your body. And when the “ego falls away,” you have greater access to your subconscious mind. And when we access our subconscious mind, it cleans our psychic house.

I know from experience that when I carve out a block of time and write, my perspective about everything changes. Writing is exercise for my psyche and my soul, just the way hiking, running, or biking are exercise for my body. When I exercise my body, I can face the day, no matter what comes. When I write, I can face life, no matter what comes.

If Csikszentmihalyi is correct in his assertion, and I believe he is–that when we’re absorbed in a task and achieve flow, we achieve happiness (and access to our subconscious mind)–why, then, do so many people struggle with achieving flow, and in the case of writers, with overcoming writer’s block?

Some people believe they have to wait for inspiration, but waiting for inspiration is for wusses, in my opinion. If we’re going to be real writers—that is, honor and respond to the multitude of voices and ideas that knock around in our heads, we have to treat it the way we would treat someone we love. We have to give it attention and effort. We have to maintain our relationship with it and to it. And we have to be aware that when we do this, our lives are better.

http://opioids.com/endogenous/candace-pert.html

http://opioids.com/endogenous/candace-pert.html

Pharmacologist, Candace Pert, was doing some fascinating research on our emotions and where they originate when she died way too soon in 2013. In short, she discovered that our emotions are created in the very same locations as the seven main chakras of the body.

She had this to say about her findings in an interview with mind/body guru, Adam “AgniDeva” Helfer:

“I realized in 1987 that areas along the axis, from the top of the forehead to the base of the spine, these classical chakras areas corresponded to what I called ‘nodal points.’ Places where lots of neurotransmitters and neuropeptides were released.”

She went on to posit that because these neurotransmitters and neuropeptides are created in the body and that they create our emotions, “Our bodies are our subconscious mind.”

Learning this was my epiphany. My Eureka! moment. Not only was it fascinating to me, it was also liberating. This means that, as writers, we have no excuse to play the writer’s block card anymore. This means that we can have ready access to our emotions, which we writers need, to render full and round characters and tell stories with depth that resonate with our readers.

 

So in my mind, it looks like this:

WTB_Process_ImageThis is where the chakras come into play.

When we learn how to unblock them, we achieve greater flow. When we learn to decode them and their positive and negative manifestations, we can begin to apply their aspects and lessons to our characters (if we’re writing fiction) and to our own lives (if we’re writing creative non-fiction/memoir).

By focusing on each chakra as a pulsating orb of energy, with specific qualities, we can begin to unblock them, and in turn, remove writer’s block.

The catch is this, though: We have to access our emotions. We have to.

And I believe this is where writers get blocked. I believe far too many writers with profound stories to tell stay quiet because they’re afraid to feel their emotions in great depth.

But it’s the only way. The only way.

So… if you’re a brave soul and you have stories to tell (and I know you do), stay plugged in to the blog for the next seven days, as I’ll be sending you an email each day featuring information about the chakra for the day and how you can use it banish your writer’s block, find your voice, and tell your untold stories.

Be brave!

Sending you mad writing mojo…

Johnnie
XXXX

 

 

Writing is Re-writing: Just get it outside yourself

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As a college writing instructor, I found that one of the most difficult concepts for students to embrace is that writing is re-writing. None of us gets it right the first time. So many who claim they want to write either don’t want to put for the effort of re-writing or are driven by perfectionism and want their first drafts to be their final drafts.

That never happens.

As Anne Lamott says in her excellent and entertaining book on writing, Bird by Bird, in a chapter titled “Shitty First Drafts,” “All good writers write them.”

I like to think of the analogy of a potter spinning clay. The first draft is the act of throwing the clay onto the potter’s wheel. Just as the clay has to be extracted from its package to be turned into something meaningful and useful, the same is true of our words. We have to extract them from our mind – get them outside ourselves – before we can begin to shape them into something meaningful and useful.

While working on a first draft, just get it outside yourself. Dump the words on the page or screen the way a potter throws the clay on the wheel. Don’t worry about organization, sentence structure, word choice, or punctuation.

After the words are outside your busy brain, then and only then, can you do something with them.

Try it. Do a word dump. Just one page. Do it now…

Then re-work it
5 times
10 times
20 times
… or however many times it takes.

Writing can improve your sex life

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This week, in my Writing Through the Body workshop, we talked about the second chakra, called the Sacral chakra.

This chakra is located in the area of your navel, and is connected to your lower abdomen, low back, large intestine, pelvis, hip area, appendix, bladder, and sexual organs. It’s all about our ability to go with the flow, so while all the chakras are important, you can probably imagine why this one is especially important when it comes to creative flow. Creative flow can mean a lot of things. It can mean artistic flow (writing, composing music, painting), or it can mean actually creating life. This chakra is about self-expression in a very deep sense, and it also aligns with partnership, sexuality, pleasure, and relationships.

In her book Writing in Flow Susan Perry writes about reports she received from writers and how they became sexually aroused when they had experienced a really good writing session. This is no surprise when we consider that this chakra involves creativity, sexuality, and pleasure.

It would stand to reason, then, that if one aspect of our lives in this area is flowing, then the other would, as well. What I’ve observed, though, is that oftentimes, creative people have a difficult time finding that balance between honoring their creative impulses and their relationships, and some people, either consciously or unconsciously, decide they can’t do both and do them well, so they choose to become hermit-like and pursue their art. This is the paradox of the Sacral chakra energy.

Deepak Chopra thinks about the Sacral chakra in this way: He writes, “Creativity is the process of taking the same raw material and creating different Deepak Chopra | wikipedia.comcontexts and relationships between the components. For example, when a composer creates a new piece of music, he is using the same notes in a new relationship with one another other, resulting in the emergence of something that did not exist before.” Considering this, we can see how this can also apply to writing when combining words to create new relationships between them, or with painting when combining colors. It also applies when creating life; when two people combine their DNA, a multitude of possibilities are available.

The Sacral chakra is also about magnetism. When this chakra is open and flow is occurring, magical things can happen. Abundance flows. So this is powerful, powerful energy. The energy of this chakra revolves around creation and procreation. They go hand-in-hand. Creating art. Creating babies. Creating ourselves.

So, write! Get that Sacral chakra flow moving! Get those stories out, and in the process, give your libido a boost. Be careful, though… remember this chakra is about creating. Art. Ourselves. And babies, too.

If you need help priming the pump, I’ve added a couple of sacral chakra video meditations.

The first one is 8min. long and driven by an infectious drum beat.
The second is 2 min. long and is more sedate.

Getting to Know You: Backstory – How much is too much?

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In my Writing Through the Body workshop this week, we talked about backstory a little. Backstory is your character’s history. It’s everything that happened before the story you’re telling.

Knowing your character’s backstory will help you make informed decisions about her or his motivations, intentions, and behaviors in the story you tell.

Before we went into production on my feature film, FOUND OBJECTS, I wrote extensive and detailed backstories on all the characters and sent them to the actors who would play the parts. By the time we started production, they had clearly ingested their respective characters and showed up fully embodying them.

Even though we aren’t acting out our characters in fiction writing in the literal sense, in some ways, we are. We have to be able to slip into their skins to portray them with authenticity, and the best way to do this is by thoroughly knowing their backstories.

This doesn’t mean, though, that the backstory will wind up in your story, though. In fact, oftentimes it’s better NOT to include it.

In the video below, KM Weiland quotes Ernest Hemingway:
“Backstory is the nine-tenths of the story under the water.”

Watch the video to see what else she has to say about backstory.

And Libby Hellman has more to say about her process of creating backstory
for the main character in her novel, Easy Innocence.

 How do you create backstory for your characters?