The Healing Power Of Writing

The vastness of the ocean has been replaced by the safety of a kiddie pool.

I float under a lifeguard's watchful gaze,

Passively accepting the artificiality of my confines,

Only vaguely aware of a time not long ago when I could look upon the horizon and feel the sun upon my skin.

Memories of riding atop the waves,

Both terrified and exhilarated by nature's limitless beauty,

Have been replaced by the scent of chlorine penetrating my nose and irritating my eyes.

But I don't care.

I'm lulled by the warmth of the water and comforted by the knowledge that soon I will forget the taste of salt water and the thrill of that first plunge into the depth of the ocean's infinite embrace.

So we've been looking at the idea of finding peace through poetry,

But really this is an extension of writing therapy in general.

So we're going to look at that a little bit today.

And the reason I started this session with the poem,

I Float,

Is because that poem was an extension of a writing therapy session.

I wrote it as an expression of some of the inner turmoil I was feeling in response to some life stresses.

And the responses to those life stresses were causing extra duress.

I felt my world being restricted.

I felt like I was being withheld.

I felt like I was living in an artificial confines.

And this was sort of symbolized by the idea of swimming in a kiddie pool inside with the chlorine versus the freedom that comes with the ocean's infinite embrace.

And sort of my desire to express and connect to that now how this relates to finding peace and finding peace through poetry is that by expressing and sort of putting a label on that feeling,

Highlighting it specifically,

Getting it on the page and expressing and playing with and sort of putting it there and crafting it.

I was able to really highlight and go,

Oh,

That's what I'm feeling.

And once I knew what I was feeling,

Once I knew the issue,

I could then take proper steps to address it.

I could go outside,

I could be with nature,

I could be with myself.

I could be freer because I knew what I was actually trying to attain.

But this all relates to the idea of writing therapy.

I have a little statement about writing therapy or the idea that the page is the perfect therapist.

First up,

It is always available and it is the best listener.

It is free.

It is ever present.

It is best listener.

It is always there.

Unlike talking with another person,

Unlike sharing yourself with an external world,

The page is just there for you.

It will listen forever and then it can be discarded and ignored.

You can ritualistically burn it or discard it or keep it or retain it.

No one else ever has to see it,

But it listens.

The page listens perfectly.

It retains everything you choose to put upon it and it retains it with perfect memory for as long as you keep that piece of paper for.

Now,

As an obvious aside,

I'm not detracting from nor dispromoting or saying that talking therapy or talking to friends or anything like that is negative.

I believe that we should employ all of those things and more.

But in addition,

The idea of writing therapy,

The idea of using the page,

Using poetry to find peace,

Is yet another tool in our arsenals to attain peace.

In our journey to become present,

In our journey to heal,

The page is there and available and it's wondrous.

So what I hope to do with this session was sort of demonstrate some of poetry that can come from writing therapy,

Highlight the idea of what writing therapy is,

Rather the benefits which we've just covered,

And then sort of get into the practice of writing therapy.

Now,

Writing therapy is a idea of getting the blank page and just expressing yourself.

It sounds very similar to what we've been doing,

But this is more of a free flow.

You're going to sit for an extended amount of time and just allow words to flow onto the page.

You're going to use the page to share or to express or to relate something that has been sitting in you,

That you've been holding on to.

In the next session,

We're going to look at sort of bodily held tension and sort of expressing as poetry some of the feelings held in the body.

But for the moment,

We're just going to write something that's sort of waiting to be expressed,

That's just there,

That's just inside,

That you haven't felt confident to say to someone else.

That's okay.

We're going to say it to the page.

What you do is you sit down,

You set a timer,

And I will require you to pause the audio for five minutes for this one.

You can go longer,

But you're going to set a timer for five minutes and just allow yourself to speak and to express and to release.

Now,

If something is already starting to come that you just want to get down and write about,

By all means,

Pause the audio and begin.

But if you find yourself struggling to write,

If you find yourself unsure of what to do,

That's okay.

Start the writing session with,

I have been holding on to these feelings,

Or for the next five minutes,

I am going to write about,

Or if that's still not helping,

I am doing a finding peace through poetry course by Zachary Phillips,

And he is getting me to write.

And I didn't know what to say myself.

So I'm going to use these words.

Literally write all of that.

And when you find your actual own voice coming,

When you find something internal that actually needs to be expressed,

Stop writing all of whatever nonsense I just said,

And start writing for yourself.

So I invite you now to pause the audio for five minutes or more,

And just write what you're holding on to.

Write like you're sharing something from the deeper parts of yourself.

Write a confession,

Write a release,

Write about an embarrassing moment,

Write something that you've wanted to tell someone,

But you couldn't quite do it for whatever reason.

And remember,

You can discard this piece of paper at the end of this session.

You don't have to keep it.

You can if you like.

So you're free.

So I encourage you to pause the audio now,

And come back to me after five minutes.

Okay.

So if you need some more time,

I encourage you to take it,

To keep writing.

Like I said in the first session,

If you discover poetry or discover peace,

I encourage you to just be with it.

That is the whole point of this course.

But with all of that said,

What have we got?

And how can we use this writing therapy to write poetry?

Now,

Obviously what you've written and what everyone else listening to has written will be different.

And I can't see what you've written,

But I'm going to assume that something is on that page has quite a lot of poignancy,

A lot of potency.

Now for me,

My sort of the poignant,

Potent,

Sort of overarching feeling or expression was one of freedom,

Freedom being taken from me,

Or a lack of the ability to embrace my own freedom.

There's a freedom piece in that poem that I read to you at the start of this session,

The I float poem.

So what I want you to do is take a moment,

Take a minute,

I'll let the audio go silent,

And just look over what you wrote and just sort of highlight,

Circle or write down below it,

The themes that you see coming up.

It might be freedom,

It might be sadness,

It might be guilt,

It might be grief,

It might be happiness,

It might be love,

It might be jealousy,

Whatever it is,

It's okay.

No one's going to see this except for you,

And they should choose to share it.

So let's pause the audio for a minute and just look over the themes of what we've got coming up in our writing therapy session.

Let's give it a try.

Okay,

So as always,

If you need a little bit more time,

Feel free to take it.

But what you've got now is a collection of feelings.

And what I want you to do is just sit with those feelings and close your eyes down and see if any imagery or symbols or concepts are coming to mind.

And like I've always said,

If a poem comes,

Or if the writing comes,

Pause the audio,

Write.

But we're just drawing that out of you otherwise.

So once again,

For my poem,

The I Float poem,

The idea of freedom was there in the original writing therapy.

And then closing my eyes and sort of going through this process like I'm asking you to go through,

I had this idea of nature,

Vast sort of beauty,

Wonder,

Chaos,

Freedom,

And the analogy of restriction that can come.

It's like what's an aspect of nature that is similar to nature,

But quite restricted.

And I chose the ocean versus an internal kiddie pool.

You know,

Someone surfing on the ocean,

The ocean's infinite embrace,

This depth,

This wild,

This big,

This spacious,

This natural versus an enclosed chlorine filled kiddie pool.

That seemed quite poetic.

I could have went with a forest versus a veggie patch.

I could have went with any sort of comparison between sort of the natural versus the finite,

The infinite space in the moon and the stars versus my closet.

There's a lot of different variations I could have went with,

But for whatever reason,

The ocean versus a kiddie pool came to me.

So once again,

We're going to pause the audio for a minute.

If you need more time,

Please take it and just allow the idea or sort of visualizations or imagery or symbolism to come that expresses what your key point or points of the poem is.

So if you're working with jealousy,

We're just allowing things to come.

And if nothing comes,

That's okay.

But if everything comes and a poem comes,

Pause the audio and write it.

All we're doing is trying to find some sort of poetic visualizations or imagery or symbolism that might best express the nature of the writing therapy.

Let's pause for another minute and give it a try.

Okay.

So if you need some more time,

Please do take it.

But ideally what we've got now in front of us is our initial piece of writing therapy,

Which would have helped us to express and just release some of the pent up tension in our bodies,

In our minds.

Then we looked over it for the themes and the identification of the theme allows us to sort of put a little circle around the main issue that we're facing.

My one that I demonstrated was around freedom.

Yours could have been around any sort of emotionality.

And then we took the last step of adding some poetic sort of flair to it.

How could we best analogize our feeling?

I used the ocean versus a kiddie pool.

And the idea of finding that analogy is one,

It might lead directly into writing an expressive piece of poetry,

But more so the attainment of peace.

It's like,

Oof,

I can feel,

I can see the beauty and wonder and the primality and the space and the glory of the ocean versus the restriction and the immaturity and the tininess and the fakeness of a chlorine filled kiddie pool.

That symbolism,

That analogy allows me to vividly and clearly put into my mind what I need,

What I'm wanting,

What I'm craving,

What I'm running from,

What the issue is.

And that vividness gives me strength and power to take steps in my life to make those changes,

Either practically going for a swim in the ocean or more poetically by writing a poem about it.

So I encourage you to sit with this idea,

To sit with the piece of writing therapy,

To sit with the symbolism,

To sit with the main themes that are drawn.

And if something comes,

Allow it to come and allow yourself to express it.

In the next session,

We're going to delve deeper into this a little bit,

Sort of look into our body,

Do a bit of a body scan and sort of a similar process of finding sort of feelings within the body and then expressing them poetically as a form of attaining peace.

But as always,

Until then,

I encourage you to share what we've written in the classroom and also to ask any questions that you might have.

I'll be in there daily to answer any questions and to connect with you.

Until then,

I'll see you next time.

Catch up.

This track was taken from the course,

Finding Peace Through Poetry.

It's out now and available via my profile on Insight Timer.

I encourage you to click through and check it out.