How to Find Yourself: Proprioceptive Writing
Imagine if there were a tool you could implement that caused you to discover an unknown part of yourself. Imagine if this tool already existed inside of you and made your writing fresh, insightful and mind-blowing. Imagine if this tool was free and rendered you empowered, at peace and energetic all at once.
All of the above is possible with a method known as Proprioceptive Writing. After a dear friend of mine raved about this never-before-heard concept, I decided to give the book, Writing the Mind Alive: The Proprioceptive Method for Finding Your Authentic Voice, a read. After digesting and annotating my way through its profound pages, I now understand my friend’s earnest desire for me to give Proprioceptive Writing a chance.
But what IS proprioceptive writing? Dr. Metcalf and Dr. Simon—co-authors of the eponymous self-help book, state it “involves inner listening and exploration of what one hears.” You are literally listening to your own thoughts and writing down those thoughts during what is referred to as a Write.
A Write is a 25-minute (no more, no less) time in which you listen to baroque music and light a candle—yes, a candle. You sit down with several unlined sheets of paper before you and then, when you feel it’s time, write down whatever thoughts come to mind—no judgement, no censoring, you are simply writing down what you hear in your mind. Throughout the 25 minutes, you are encouraged to ask yourself “the” proprioceptive question as often as you feel is needed:
What do I mean by______________? Into that blank goes whatever word or expression that catches your attention.
Here’s an example from one of my Writes:
I feel pulled in so many directions, I can’t seem to think straight. What do I mean by pulled? I mean apart, fractured, tied to everything until there is so very little of me, my soul, to find.
At the end of a Write, you are asked to write down the following four questions and answer them honestly:
What thoughts were heard but not written?
How or what do I feel now?
What larger story is the write part of?
What ideas came up for future writes?
Following our answers to the four questions, we are to blow out the candle, staple our unlined papers together, date it at the top, and place it in a folder created solely for our Proprioceptive Writing sessions.
I must confess, I was both intrigued and highly skeptical that the Writes would produce any real epiphanies to me. After all, I’m a writer, teacher and performer—anything needing to be discovered internally by me had already become unearthed, right?
Wrong! Wow. There is something about the ritual of a Proprioceptive Write that provides a freedom, a formal doorway to the portal of your soul. Maybe it’s knowing no one is going to see your work that permits an ephemeral window into a wider perspective; maybe it’s the calm music that reflects one’s own heartbeat—regardless of how the magic manifests, it’s real and powerful.
While I’m not going to share the intimate details of a recent Write, I will let you in on an insightful theme revealed to me: I discovered the tapestry-like connection weaving my mother to me to my son in a profound way that I had never considered before.
Proprioceptive Writing is not at all like stream of consciousness writing. While the latter focuses on the ceaseless activity of one’s current perceptions, the former, according to the authors, “penetrates experience.” Stream of consciousness writing simulates our experience, but Proprioceptive Writing is the real deal, providing us with a ritual to explore our inner psyche without judgement. “In a sense, Proprioceptive Writing…allow(s) you to hang out with your feeling and search for its source in a situation and emotion.”
Proprioceptive Writing is for professional writers and novices alike. It’s for those who want to know themselves better and to deepen their empathy; it’s for those who are looking to increase their clarity of written and spoken expression or increase one’s self-confidence.
Our pandemic is causing us to feel out-of-sorts and disjointed from each other. Proprioceptors are nerves located in the muscles, joints and tendons that communicate with each other. When we do a Proprioceptive Write, we are literally connecting to ourselves and by extension, the world around us.
