Tag Archives: Candace Pert

How to Use the Root Chakra for Deep Character Development

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I recently wrote about how, if you take into account the ideas that come from Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s theories on achieving flow along with Candace Pert’s findings about how human emotions originate in the exact locations of the seven main chakras and that “our bodies are our subconscious minds,” you can utilize the chakras to banish writer’s block, achieve flow, and tell your untold stories.

This is achieved through the Writing Through the Body™ method, which uses the chakra system as a practical tool for uncovering a character’s desires, wounds, and motivations. By exploring these psychological foundations, writers are able to portray their characters’ behaviors, reactions, and responses on the page with greater depth and emotional truth.

For example, the Root (first) Chakra rules Tribal Power and Tribal Consciousness, which is about identity in relationship to Tribe, or family of origin. Deep down, the Root Chakra relates to how an individual (character) sees themself and the degree of their feelings of security in the world. The Root Chakra says I AM.

In your writing, by considering characters’ places within their families of origin—even if the family members are not part of the present story—you can begin to uncover important information about your characters’ current behaviors and motivations, which will inform the story you tell about them.

Below is a brief explanation of the Root Chakra, its traits and characteristics, and some ways you might integrate its attributes into your character development.

First Chakra – Root Chakra

Location
Deep in the pelvis, just in front of the tip of the tailbone

This does not directly apply to your character but is used for visualization purposes when doing certain exercises within the Writing Through the Body™ method, offered here as an FYI.

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

This is about who your character is connected to or disconnected from, and how this impacts their sense of identity and security in the world.

Primary fears
Physical survival, abandonment, loss of order

Does your character have any of these fears to any degree in relation to anyone or anything—or in general?

_____________________

Writing exercise

Take some time to sit quietly, and think about the aspects of the Root Chakra as they relate to all your characters. 

Write a sketch of a character that may not be materializing as fully as you would like, and answer the questions below as fully and exhaustively as possible. 

Tip: Every time you arrive at a new place of understanding, ask “why?” Continuing to ask “why?” is how we get to the deep psychology of our characters. 

Example: You discover that your character had a falling out with her favorite aunt years ago and they have never resolved the conflict. Why?

Questions to begin your exercise:

• Who are they most bonded to in their family of origin and why?

• Is there any estrangement in their family of origin? If so, how has that impacted them?

• What is their relationship to money and their general ability to survive in the world?

Let me know what you discover in the comments.

As always… Sending you mad writing mojo…

Happy writing!

Johnnie
OOOOO

What do the 7 Main Chakras of the Body Have to do with Writing Fiction?

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We often hear and talk about achieving flow in our writing, but what does that really mean, and how do we achieve it on a regular basis?

When we’re able to achieve flow, as coined by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, our obstacles (read: writer’s block—or what I consider writer’s fear) 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. 

Watch Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s TED Talk 

If you’re here, chances are that you equate your writing practice with happiness in your life. You know that if you weren’t writing, your life would be lacking something important and essential. And if you aren’t writing and you yearn for it, you know that your life would be so much more fulfilled if you were able to.

But what if this state of flow isn’t just psychological? What if it’s also physiological?

Pair Csikszentmihalyi’s insight about flow with pharmacologist Candace Pert’s groundbreaking research on emotions. While studying where emotions originate in the body, Pert discovered something remarkable: the same areas rich in emotional neurochemistry—where neuropeptides and neurotransmitters are generated—correspond closely to the locations long associated with the body’s seven main chakras.

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 chakra areas corresponded to what I called ‘nodal points.’ Places where lots of neurotransmitters and neuropeptides were released.”

PERT INTERVIEW W/ ADAM “AGNIDEVA” HELFER

Pert 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.” [emphasis mine]

Learning about Pert’s discovery in 2013 was my epiphany. If emotions originate in the body, then perhaps the key to writing emotionally alive characters lives there, too.

Not only was it fascinating to me, it was also liberating. Pert’s revelation led to my revelation—after years of fiddling with a method I was working on to help writers create deeply human characters from an informed, psychological understanding AND simultaneously creating a Divination Deck based on the seven chakras, it all merged in my mind, and I had my Eureka! moment. My Writing Through the Body™ method was born. 

I knew then that, as writers, we have no excuse to play the writer’s block card anymore… that we can—and do—have ready access to our characters’ emotions, and therefore, their deep psychologies, by way of our own rich, fertile subconsciousness. This is done in tandem with an understanding of the chakra system for practical application in our writing lives, especially as it relates to character development. 

We can climb into our characters’ skins through this practical application and experience the synchronicity of accessing our own subconscious—our creative impulse—to achieve flow and, in the process, render them as full and round with complex human desires, motivations, and behaviors. We are able to tell their stories with a kind of depth that resonates for our readers long after they’ve put down our work.

Below is the conceptual map behind my Writing Through the Body™ method.

Now let’s look at the engine that powers it: the chakra system.

When we learn what the chakras are, how they function, and how to apply their traits and characteristics to our characters, we achieve a greater understanding of them, which leads to fewer questions and blocks, and ultimately, greater flow of creative energy within ourselves. 

Chakras

Chakras are traditionally understood as energy centers within the body, originating in Hindu and yogic traditions. They represent seven key points along the spine—from the tip of the tailbone to the top of the head—that correspond to different aspects of human experience, development, and consciousness.

The function of chakras

The word chakra comes from Sanskrit and means “wheel” or “disk.” In traditional imagery, the chakras are depicted as lotus-like symbols, each with its own color, aligned along the spine.

These “energy centers” are spinning hubs, of sorts, holding spiritual weight that connect to bodily functions, elements, and divinatory beings. 

I see them as bridges between our material, mortal existence and unseen energies that surround us, move within us, and extend far beyond us.

Chakras are typically associated with practices grounded within the body, like Tantra and yoga. It is believed that understanding the chakras allows us to access and release diffused spiritual energy. In my mind, that same energy is creative energy. When it begins to move freely, it creates a deeper flow of prana, or life force, within us.

Healthy chakras

While many traditions offer practices for opening and balancing the chakras—such as yoga, meditation, and breathwork—I believe writing can be one of the most powerful.

Rather than seeing the chakras as spinning disks (even though I understand the translation), in my mind’s eye they appear as pulsating orbs of energy that expand and contract, almost like breathing.

When we begin to view the chakras as a practical application tool, as mentioned above, they become more than spiritual concepts. They become a map of human development, emotion, and motivation. Each chakra holds a different emotional territory: survival, desire, power, love, expression, intuition, and meaning. 

These are the same forces that animate our characters. Their fears, wounds, longings, and transformations live somewhere along this energetic spine. When we use this map to create them, something unexpected happens: we inevitably encounter those same emotional landscapes within ourselves.

The catch is this, though: We must access our subconscious to get there. We must. So that we can enter that liminal space between consciousness and imagination and slip into our characters’ minds, hearts, and souls.

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 fully open the door to their subconscious. They sense—even if unconsciously—that they will be forced to feel and reckon with their own unresolved emotions to a deep degree.

But it’s the only way. The only way. To write unforgettable characters and stories.

So… if you’re a brave soul (I’m sure you are), and if you have stories to tell (I know you do), stay tuned for more. Each week I’ll explore one chakra and show you how its emotional themes can unlock deeper character development, providing you with richer fodder. And the side benefits: You’ll be able to banish writer’s block, achieve flow, and tell your untold stories.

Sending you mad writing mojo…

Happy writing!

Johnnie
OOOOO

Feel the flow: Write with your whole self

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Creative writers know that feeling of being in the zone: the wheels are turning, placidly moving you and your characters forward so you’re in the flow, the outside world falling away, and this imaginary world you’ve invented is sparking every one of your senses and the outside world has become nonexistent. It’s trance-like. And it’s only after this trance-like state of mind has occurred that we become aware of it because to be conscious of its presence in the moment would send it back into hiding like an owl at the first blush of dawn.

http://virginiawoolfblog.com/virginia-woolf-had-teeth-pulled-to-cure-her-mental-illness/

http://virginiawoolfblog.com/virginia-woolf-had-teeth-pulled-to-cure-her-mental-illness/

Virginia Woolf writes about this phenomenon of getting lost in the creative process in To the Lighthouse:

“Can’t paint, can’t write, she murmured monotonously, anxiously considering what her plan of attack should be. For the mass loomed before her; it protruded; she felt it pressing on her eyeballs. Then, as if some juice necessary for the lubrication of her faculties were spontaneously squirted, she began precariously dipping among the blues and umbers, moving her brush hither and thither, but it was now heavier and went slower, as if it had fallen in with some rhythm which was dictated to her (she kept looking at the hedge, at the canvas) by what she saw, so that while her hand quivered with life, this rhythm was strong enough to bear her along with it on its current. Certainly she was losing consciousness of outer things. And as she lost consciousness of outer things, and her name and her personality and her appearance, and whether Mr. Carmichael was there or not, her mind kept throwing up from its depths, scenes, and names, and sayings, and memories and ideas, like a fountain spurting over that glaring, hideously difficult white space, while she modeled it with green and blues.” (18) Susan Perry, Writing in Flow

Writers yearn for these slippages in time because it’s during this boundary-less, water-like immersion with our characters, their world, and our subconscious that we tend to get our best work done or at least get most of our work done. It’s what Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi coined as flow. Csikszentmihalyi writes:

“We have called this state the flow experience, because this is the term many of the people we interviewed had used in their descriptions of how it felt to be in top form: ‘It was like floating,’ ‘I was carried on by the flow.’ It is the opposite of psychic entropy… and those who attain it develop a stronger, more confident self, because more of their psychic energy has been invested successfully in goals they themselves had chosen to pursue.”

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

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

In her book, Writing in Flow, which is the result of Susan Perry’s in-depth interviews with several well-known writers, Perry says that experiencing flow typically occurs when writing creatively, such as fiction or poetry, rather than journalistically. Clearly, it happens when the writer unhooks from her reality and crosses the threshold to her subconscious, the all knowing place we possess deep within that gets muted by the racket and responsibilities of our daily lives.

Perry also says that while most writers can’t explain how they achieve flow and don’t have a specific method for achieving it, they agree that something different happens in their minds and in their writing when they reach this dissociative state. While anyone who has ever experienced it can attest to something happening in the mind, I believe something happens in the body, as well.

As a college writing professor, I always encouraged my students to write with their whole selves, rather than cutting themselves off at the neck and writing only from their heads, which seems to be the inherent project of academia. I wanted my students to engage their hearts, too, but not in a sentimental way. I wanted them to throw themselves into the mosh pit of discourse on their topics of interest with every ounce of passion they could draw up.

I now know that I was intuiting this process I’ve developed called Writing Through the Body™, although I hadn’t even an inkling then of how to explain it to them, or to myself, for that matter. Whenever I made this statement to them—Write with your whole self—a few nodded in agreement, but most of them looked at me blankly. It wasn’t until I had the revelation that my Divination Deck (created in 2005) and these writing workshops I’d been tossing around in my mind even longer should be combined. That’s also when I realized that the magical experience I had had years before when writing my novel, Miranda’s Garden, occurred because I had achieved a massive unblocking of energy, and I was able to enter and access my subconscious in ways I had never done before. With the coalescing of these seemingly separate ideas and projects, Writing Through the Body™ was born.

When I posted a notice on social media in the Fall of 2013 announcing the beta test for my first online Writing Through the Body™ workshop, someone responded and expressed interest. He quickly realized that the “TM” near the title was the trademark symbol and didn’t stand for “transcendental meditation,” as he had first imagined. When I explained the concept of the workshop, this was his reply: “I might be more interested if it involves meditation. Not sure I want to get into the chakra stuff.”

Unfortunately, some people have a negative view of the chakras, if they have one at all, thinking they are an off-shoot of the new age movement and nothing more than new age vernacular, but people like Caroline Meis and Deepak Chopra have helped normalize the misconceptions of chakras and demystify their meaning by introducing them into the mainstream. We still have much to learn, however, about these powerful energy centers—or color wheels, as some refer to them—in our bodies so we can use them to their full potential.

Chakras are not a new or faddish creation. In fact, they have a long history in Eastern ideology, having first been realized in India.

As the Western world has progressed in its thinking and has become more aware of the connection and fluidity between our simultaneous existence in both the material and spiritual realm, and that we are not bodies and minds separate from our souls, the line between spirituality and science has also begun to merge.

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

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

Before her death, which came far too soon in 2013, neuroscientist and pharmacologist, Candice Pert, had made significant strides regarding the understanding of neuropeptides, which are, as she explains to Bill Moyers, strings of amino acids that encase every cell in our bodies and which led her to what she called a “unified theory of emotion.”

In an interview with Adam Omkara, Pert discusses her revelation, as a researcher with a hard science background, that these energy centers she had been studying show up in the body in the same locations as the chakras. She says, “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.”

Pert doesn’t distinguish between the mind and the body. She refers to what we all possess as the bodymind: one entity with no separation. She says, ““The mind is not confined to the space above the neck,” and “The ‘me’ that’s you is your whole body.”

Additionally, Pert discusses unexpressed emotion in an interview with Lynn Grodzki, and says, “I think unexpressed emotions are literally lodged lower in the body.”

As writers who take on the task of being the purveyors of our characters’ humanity, it is essential that we dislodge as much stuck emotion as possible, allowing it to move through us so we can best express our characters’ motives from an emotional and psychological standpoint. This is flow. When we block emotions, we block our chakras, and this truncates flow.

With this in mind, I created the Writing Through the Body™ process for fiction writers, which utilizes the chakras of the body to help writers access and enhance the kind of deep character development that quality, impactful writing requires. As writers, we need to have intimate relationships with our characters, which will in turn allow us to write deeper fiction, which will in turn create greater self-awareness in us.

Creative writers are, for the most part, sensitive souls. We see what many others do not. We see the veiling of human existence and sense the emotional aspects of life vibrationally. We think more deeply about life and the human condition than most. For this reason, life can be a brutal assault on our senses. To manage this assault, we must create protections for our own emotional survival, and they can become second nature to us. To write effectively, we need to be able to let down those protections, remove the blocks that we’ve so deftly put in place to self-protect, and let flow occur in the safety of our own sacred writing spaces.

This is what the Writing Through the Body™ process does. It helps writers clear energy centers and stuck emotion, which leads to a triple-faceted benefit: 1) by taking part in a meditation for each chakra, writers will begin the process of clearing each, one at a time, to allow the flow of emotion necessary for the tapping of the subconscious required to write deep fiction, 2) by focusing on a particular chakra and its positive and negative manifestations and answering a series of questions specific to each, writers can delve deeper into their characters’ psyches, giving them the ability to render their characters with more complexity, and 3) while engaging in this process, writers will realize the personal benefit of becoming more grounded and more aware of themselves and the world around them. As Csikszentmihalyi asserts:

“The optimal state of inner experience is one in which there is order in consciousness. This happens when psychic energy—or attention—is invested in realistic goals, and when skills match the opportunities for action. The pursuit of a goal brings order in awareness because a person must concentrate attention on the task at hand and momentarily forget everything else. These periods of struggling to overcome challenges are what people find to be the most enjoyable of their lives. A person who has achieved control over psychic energy and has invested it in consciously chosen goals cannot help but grow into a more complex being. By stretching skills, by reaching toward higher challenges, such a person becomes an increasingly extraordinary individual.”

As writers, our “consciously chosen goal” is to write characters with depth that take our readers to places they otherwise would not go, to connect with them, to make meaning of life. Imagine the difference we can all make by enhancing our ability to get into flow, to access the depths of our subconscious and render more complex and meaningful stories while simultaneously enhancing our own sense of well being.

What do you do to achieve flow?