Writing, Yoga, and the Voice of the Body
It seems obvious to say that it is through the body that we find our way in this world. Yoga teaches the adherent that the body is a place where the earth and the divine come into being. Even if you don’t believe in the theological language used by all of the world religions and spiritual teachings and poets, you know biologically this is the case. We breathe and billions of cells are being fed and activated. We are a walking ball of energy interacting with everything and everyone we come into contact with. We change others and they change us. Massive flows of energy sweep and flood across the globe as people live and die and act and create and destroy.
And yet, it’s stupefying how little awareness we have of this. Intellectually, I’ve just explained this to you but physically we have little awareness of how our bodies are adapting and changing. We pride ourselves on knowing so much about the body because of medical science, physics and the advances of technology, but how little we know of the intelligence and the science of our own bodies. Our bodies have a language that only we can understand fully. We can use the ideas and experiences of others, but ultimately we must learn who we are by studying our own bodies. This is the great teaching of many spiritual disciplines. For me, it’s been in yoga and in swimming. For others, it takes many forms, athletics, singing, dance, climbing, or any ritualized act performed with the body.
I’ve come to believe now too this is the case with the writing of prose, poetry, and playwriting. I didn’t always believe this because I didn’t really know or trust that emotion and sensation were tuning forks for my voice. I always believed some idea drove what I wanted to say as well as how I would say it.
Now, I’m learning from both my students and from my work that my voice resonates with the clearest tones when it’s referring to a physical experience. It seems that when my body speaks via an emotion or some sensation or action, there is a basic chord that I hear that tells me this is what I should say. My friend Rob Nixon, a writer and professor of writing, once used the expression that he felt something in his bones. Rob is someone who hikes and bikes and swims and he thinks of his childhood boy’s body all the time and writes from it as well. And I realized that this was exactly what a writer has to do, not metaphorically but physiologically: feel and see the world from within our bones. It also has struck me that the voice gets truer and truer when the body leads it to the places and people it needs to be around. I often try to help students listen to their bodies so that they can let it tell them the subjects that they need to write about as well. It seems that every writer must start first with writing about his or her body. He should really know it to be able to write with authority about the human condition and the landscape that gives us life. When I got lost writing my book, the After-Death Room, I began to learn to go back to my body and ask it what I should write. And it would usually give me hints—sensations, reminding me of what something felt like: the heat of the sun on my neck in India, the pollution in my lungs, the feeling of claustrophobia on a street in Asia, the hunger for intimacy brought on by smell or human touch. And by recording these sensations, I would somehow have a clearer idea of what to say or what to write about. I attribute this to my yoga practice—and to the other ways I’ve learned to listen to my body. The body has not only a language but a story that we must tell every time we write.
And yet, it’s stupefying how little awareness we have of this. Intellectually, I’ve just explained this to you but physically we have little awareness of how our bodies are adapting and changing. We pride ourselves on knowing so much about the body because of medical science, physics and the advances of technology, but how little we know of the intelligence and the science of our own bodies. Our bodies have a language that only we can understand fully. We can use the ideas and experiences of others, but ultimately we must learn who we are by studying our own bodies. This is the great teaching of many spiritual disciplines. For me, it’s been in yoga and in swimming. For others, it takes many forms, athletics, singing, dance, climbing, or any ritualized act performed with the body.
I’ve come to believe now too this is the case with the writing of prose, poetry, and playwriting. I didn’t always believe this because I didn’t really know or trust that emotion and sensation were tuning forks for my voice. I always believed some idea drove what I wanted to say as well as how I would say it.
Now, I’m learning from both my students and from my work that my voice resonates with the clearest tones when it’s referring to a physical experience. It seems that when my body speaks via an emotion or some sensation or action, there is a basic chord that I hear that tells me this is what I should say. My friend Rob Nixon, a writer and professor of writing, once used the expression that he felt something in his bones. Rob is someone who hikes and bikes and swims and he thinks of his childhood boy’s body all the time and writes from it as well. And I realized that this was exactly what a writer has to do, not metaphorically but physiologically: feel and see the world from within our bones. It also has struck me that the voice gets truer and truer when the body leads it to the places and people it needs to be around. I often try to help students listen to their bodies so that they can let it tell them the subjects that they need to write about as well. It seems that every writer must start first with writing about his or her body. He should really know it to be able to write with authority about the human condition and the landscape that gives us life. When I got lost writing my book, the After-Death Room, I began to learn to go back to my body and ask it what I should write. And it would usually give me hints—sensations, reminding me of what something felt like: the heat of the sun on my neck in India, the pollution in my lungs, the feeling of claustrophobia on a street in Asia, the hunger for intimacy brought on by smell or human touch. And by recording these sensations, I would somehow have a clearer idea of what to say or what to write about. I attribute this to my yoga practice—and to the other ways I’ve learned to listen to my body. The body has not only a language but a story that we must tell every time we write.
posted by Unknown at 8:40 AM
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