Tag Archives: writing through the body workshops

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

Anais Nin: On writing and being…

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On Writing

To write is to descend, to excavate, to go underground.

I am in a beautiful prison from which I can only escape by writing.

The final lesson a writer learns is that everything can nourish the writer. The dictionary, a new word, a voyage, an encounter, a talk on the street, a book, a phrase learned.

The role of a writer is not to say what we all can say, but what we are unable to say.

My ideas usually come not at my desk writing but in the midst of living.

It is the function of art to renew our perception. What we are familiar with we cease to see. The writer shakes up the familiar scene, and, as if by magic, we see a new meaning in it.

If you do not breathe through writing, if you do not cry out in writing, or sing in writing, then don’t write, because our culture has no use for it.

We write to taste life twice, in the moment and in retrospection.

Solitude may rust your words.

 

On being

And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.

Good things happen to those who hustle.

We don’t see things as they are, we see them as we are.

When we blindly adopt a religion, a political system, a literary dogma, we become automatons. We cease to grow.

The possession of knowledge does not kill the sense of wonder and mystery. There is always more mystery.

Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one’s courage.

Life is a process of becoming, a combination of states we have to go through. Where people fail is that they wish to elect a state and remain in it. This is a kind of death.

Ordinary life does not interest me. I seek only the high moments. I am in accord with the surrealists, searching for the marvelous.

Shame is the lie someone told you about yourself.

When one is pretending the entire body revolts.

Don’t let one cloud obliterate the whole sky.

Only in the fever of creation could she recreate her own lost life.

Living never wore one out so much as the effort not to live.

There are very few human beings who receive the truth, complete and staggering, by instant illumination. Most of them acquire it fragment by fragment, on a small scale, by successive developments, cellularly, like a laborious mosaic.

We do not grow absolutely, chronologically. We grow sometimes in one dimension, and not in another, unevenly. We grow partially. We are relative. We are mature in one realm, childish in another.

Ask your character what she wants

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If I find myself just writing scenes where characters talk because I like the sound of their voices or the way they are together, I know it’s time to step back for a minute, re-evaluate, and do an exercise to refresh my brain.

One thing I do is get the characters talking about something different and that will actually move the story forward is to ask each of them in the scene this question: What do you want in this situation and why?

Then I let them have at it. I write in first person monologue for as long as each one needs to talk. And I free write. I recommend setting a timer if you haven’t done free writing before or if you really, really believe you won’t be able to get very far.

Commit to at least 5 minutes of free-writing, which means once you start, you don’t stop. You keep the pen/pencil moving on the paper (yes, you have to do this by hand), even when the character is being obstinate and won’t say much. When this happens, just keep writing, even if it’s just I don’t know what to say, I don’t know what to say, I don’t know what to say. Eventually, he/she will say something new and different, and it will probably surprise you.

Try it. It works!

 

Start watching at 1:35…

Move your character

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Creating characters readers will be invested in and resonate with is no easy task. We have to make them step up off the page so readers can take them in with all the senses, experience them as real people. Readers want to know what she looks like, smells like, sounds like, feels like, and in some cases, even what she tastes like. Take her from flat to living and breathing by spending enough time with her. Treat her like someone you care about because before you’re finished with her, you will care about her. Very much.

To get started, keep a character journal. Devote a page or more to each character.

  • Create a name, gender, and age.
  • Describe what she looks like. Give her a hair color, a body shape. Dress her.
  • Fill her apartment, bedroom, and car with things. But do this selectively. What she wears and what she owns tells us who she is.
  • Make her talk. Is her voice high or deep? Loud or soft? The way she speaks tells us how much power she thinks she has in the world.
  • What does her apartment smell like? Her car? What about her hair?
  • And if you kissed her? Her skin? Her mouth? What would you taste? (In a past post I wrote that we have to fall in love with our characters. Sometimes we also have to make love to them.)
  • Move her. Show us how she walks. Laughs. Picks up a wine glass or a cigarette. How she handles a pencil.

After you have her physicality clear in your mind (and this may come in pieces), get to know her and understand what motivates her to want the things she wants and to make the choices she makes.

  • Why does she go to the same coffee shop every day?
  • What does she do while she’s there and why?
  • What does she want, more than anything and why?
  • What, or who, might interfere with her getting her desire?
  • What’s at stake if she doesn’t get what she wants? How will this affect her life, and what new decision will she make when met with an obstacle?

As writers, to tell our characters’ stories, we have to become one with them. We have to let them under our skin as much as we have to climb under theirs. The more time we spend on knowing them from the inside out, the more we can understand what moves them.

And the more we move our characters, the more we move your readers.

Who’s your favorite character?

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.