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As seen in Science of Mind, June 2004: Write Deeply, Heal Deeply

Brenda walked through the door, a bright-eyed, long-haired, tanned Southern Californian. She appeared to be in perfect health. She decided to embrace her creative process in a "Writing Your Inner World" workshop—or so she thought. Every time the issues of fear and "holding back" came up, those evil twins of creative writing and deep healing, Brenda perked up. All of her questions during the three-hour workshop dealt with her fears of “getting my writing out there, where people can read it.”

  After the workshop, Brenda walked up. “What is it about showing your work to people that you’re afraid of?" I asked.

  “I’m afraid people won’t like it, or somehow they won’t like me because of it.”

  “Can I see something you’ve written?”

  Brenda grabbed her journal and opened it. I read briefly.

  "This is wonderful…would grab anybody," I said.

  “I just don’t know what people will think of my deepest heart feelings.”

  “Are you afraid of opening your heart to people you don’t know?”

“I guess that’s what it is, yes.”

I felt a breakthrough in the midst. “Has this also happened with relationships and interactions with people you know?"

  Brenda looked down again, then looked back up. Tears welled in her eyes. “Yes.”

“It just feels safer to hold it close to your chest?” I asked.

“That’s what I do. I know deep down I want to get it out, but I just can’t bring myself to do it.”

“When you feel like you need to express it, but don’t, does a part of your body tighten up?”

She nodded.

“What part would that be?”

“My chest. My heart.”

I nodded. A moment later, Brenda's brown eyes filled with tears, She cupped her chin. “Oh, my God.”

Brenda suffered from an aggressive form of breast cancer. Her long brown hair was a wig. Her outward condition was the result of taking runs on the beach while suffering from the after-effects of chemo. Inside, she stuffed an awesome gift of God—the ability to write so beautifully that her words could peel granite off the hardest of hearts. It was killing her.

  Brenda realized that her inability to share these stories with others was subtly contributing to her illness. She held this writing, and all of her deep emotions, close to her chest—the location of breast cancer. She wrote intense, beautiful and sometimes wrenching material, exactly the sort of stuff we need to get off our chests and share. However, a deep fear of rejection, caused by past relationships and others' expectations, prevented her from hitting the proverbial "send" button.

  Within six months, after supplementing her medical treatment with a regimen of exercise, meditation, visualization, holistic healing and journaling, Brenda received great news: her cancer was gone. During this time, she also laced together several journal entries into a story, and sold it to Chicken Soup for the Women's Soul— an ideal venue to touch women.

  She will tell anyone that writing deeply—and getting it out—saved her life.

How Writing Opens Us Up
  Authentic writing requires us to plume deeply into our own truths, patterns, issues, experiences, dreams, fantasies, relationships, hearts and souls. While our minds provide the words, structures and general pictures of what we write, our bodies and souls provide the raw material. We store considerable energy, personal and ancestral memory in our body cells; when something clogs them up or generates abnormal cell growth, dis-ease manifests. Our minds might block out a life trauma or childhood event, but our bodies never forget.

  "Whenever there are health difficulties, it's because the flow of life-force is blocked or out of harmony in some way," said Gyandev McCord, Ph.D., director of The Ananda Expanding Light retreat center and co-author, with Dr. Peter Van Houten, of Yoga Therapy for Headache Relief. "Any technique that can restore the natural flow is a boon to health. A creative endeavor such as writing can be an excellent auxiliary healing technique because 'getting the creative juices flowing' is all about freeing and increasing the life-force."

  When we write without fear of exposing our deepest truth, we open ourselves up. We tap into a universal current that flows through us, and clears our bodies of stagnated material. We transform from swamps into rivers. We release fears and mental blocks, and dive into our inner worlds to procure the jewels of our experiences. I often begin workshops by encouraging participants to "shut off your minds and let it all pour out" in a brainstorming session. I ask them to forget about punctuation, the last sentence they wrote, and everything except what is pouring through at that moment. In those few minutes, the sum total of their life experiences, dreams, memories, intuitive guidance, conversations and outside observations can integrate and flow onto the paper. We learn to trust ourselves and create grace and ease in our writing, bodies and minds—the opposite of dis-ease.

  This brings lightness and joy to the body. It also takes us to the specific place where our dis-ease or imbalance originates. During these sessions, we have little or no sense of time or surroundings; outside noises roll off our minds like raindrops down a window. We hear only the voice of what we're writing, whether it be characters in a novel, the narrator in a memoir, the waterfall in a poem or the frightened six-year-old whose stuffed rage you've re-discovered within and are coaxing onto life's playground.

  In this "inner hearth", optimal healing occurs. People gaze at the flames of a hearth, tell stories, peer into their lovers' eyes, warm their hands and hearts. When poet Gary Snyder designed Kitkitdizze, his homestead in the Sierra Nevada foothills, he built a hearth. Then he built his house around it. When writing deeply, we access that central "hearth" where everything seems to connect—where "the above is as the below," as Jesus said in the Gospel of Thomas. Interestingly, the Latin derivative of "hearth" means "focus."

  "When the mind, body, and soul consciousness unite in the christed ray of spirit, there is a feeling of vitality and peace," said holistic healer and teacher Iana Lahi, author of Spirit Gateways. "Writing connects the spiritual healing taking place into the physical body. The inner self knows when the truth is being written and there is a feeling of exhilaration and re-established trust with the universe and oneself."

Locate The Source of Dis-ease
  "Recognizing the deeper causes of dis-ease in our own bodies and minds is one of the best ways we can heal ourselves—either before or during our experience with the symptoms," said Dr. Madeleine Randall, a physician, shaman, dream teacher and author of Soul Doctoring. "When we recognize how our attitudes, beliefs, actions or lexicon of fears feed into the bad cells of a cancer, or blood sugar level gyrations of diabetes, we can sometimes reverse the course of the dis-ease on the spot."

  The stories of Julia Price and Kenneth Fink illustrate Dr. Randall's point. In the mid-1990s, Price absorbed a double whammy: She learned her beloved stepson had inoperable brain cancer at the same time she received a cancer diagnosis. The artist-writer used her well-honed creative skills and her compassionate heart to be kind to herself and locate the source of her dis-ease. Then she researched everything she could about non-allopathic forms of healing. The combination changed her life. "For me, writing was a means of bringing closure to that painful time, and at the same time, it gave me a way of offering something of value to others," said Price, the co-author of Remembering Wholeness.

  Price utilized her healing skills to create a center in her home. As fellow practitioner Dr. Gerald Sinclair said, "We served as a hospital for people trying to mend their souls and bodies…then they took off with renewed life purposes." Price also explored the Divine Feminine principle, which many consider to be a missing link in our quest for emotional and spiritual wellness.

  "The Divine Feminine energy has been with us from the beginning of time, but in many ways we are just beginning to reawaken to this wonderful healing presence in all of our lives," she said. "The arts, all of them—writing, painting, singing, movement, drama— provide a living bridge to this part of ourselves which we need so desperately today to reclaim."

  Iana Lahi shared an exercise from her Spirit Gateways Movement Healers training that uses writing and movement to honor the divine feminine and masculine. "In all of my trainings, writing is the link between the spiritual and physical states of consciousness," she said. "I teach how to energetically connect the heart, sexual centers and third eye. I ask participants to listen internally to the words created by the union in their bodies. Then I give participants the way to connect their inner feminine to their higher self. They enter into internal dialogue with their inner feminine asking her what part of their body she wants to live in, and then listen and write her words, messages, poetry and songs. We do a similar process activating the masculine."

  Fifteen years ago, Kenneth Fink was a high-powered corporate lawyer. A business school classmate of Donald Trump's at Wharton, Fink faced the ultimate mid-life crisis—a broken marriage, career difficulties, his mother's terminal illness, failing health and complete lack of purpose. "I unexpectedly was unable to get out of bed. This was the beginning of a lengthy illness that would prompt me to seek a different way to live. For the first time, I was unable to push through to a solution; pushing no longer worked," he said.

  During the quest to find himself, a textbook example of Joseph Campbell's Hero With A Thousand Faces, Fink embraced a multitude of spiritual and healing paths. He also recognized that the best forms of integration came from prayer, meditation and writing. His heart and mind connected, and he wrote an exemplary book, Unbuttoned: Who Says Men Can't Change?

  "Writing is a practical and readily available method for men to work through our issues," Fink said. "Our expressions can be open and outlandish and need not be suppressed for fear that our process will be unacceptable or inappropriate. If we are able to let go in the process, it takes us to places that we were not aware of in our external consciousness. It can offer solutions as to what actions will serve our purpose and allows a tremendous freeing of the unexpressed within. Expressing through writing can prevent the deleterious effects that holding back has on our well being on all levels."

  Price and Fink jumped aboard at the exact moment when they needed to access the sources of their ailments...or else. They trusted the process, attained fearlessness, dove into that timeless "hearth" where focus is supreme and mind/body/spirit work together, and—combined with healing they received—wrote their way into wellness. Their lives changed, and they went on to help countless others.

  Iana Lahi offered a stirring description of what it looks like where pen tip touches healing. "I learned how to shine the light of God into the aspects of my own wounded soul and bring them into their true form," she said. "Through writing, I could dialogue with the aspects of my divine feminine and masculine which were abandoned, betrayed or rejected by others and by my self. Writing is the bridge between my heart and soul, giving life to parts of myself that were being held in stagnation, that place right before creative empowerment and breakthrough occurs."

Putting Your Pen To Work
  Once we've accessed our deepest selves, and gained trust in the process, we're on our way. Start off with 5-10 minutes per day, feel the inner grace and accomplishment, and write again. Before we know it, we're writing for two or three hours and it still feels like 10 minutes. Several types of writing and exercises work—inner dialoguing, journaling, clustering, story vignettes, dream writing and writing scenes of a play. Confront your broken heart, acute or chronic illness, depression, fatigue, or emotional, physical, spiritual or mental imbalance. Give it a name and even a "face," if necessary. Honor its presence as a lesson-giver in your life. Offer it the space to convey its message or story. Often, dis-ease carries incredible stories, since storytelling is a sacred and ancient form of "passing something down" and the body knows that a good story will attract the mind. The rhythms and vibrations of storytelling reside deep in our cells, deep in our DNA. By attuning to, listening to and telling the stories of our inner selves, we open the floodgates to healing.

  "Often the answers come in metaphors and all we have to do is to understand that metaphor to decode the dis-ease," Dr. Randall said. "Our bodies’ symptoms are metaphoric means of gaining our attention to not only the physical but also the mental, emotional and spiritual imbalances in our existence."

  Write the story or dialogue as it comes to you. Do not question. Do not edit. Do not erase. Do not keep starting over. Just move forward. Let your pen and body flow freely together, cavorting upon the playground of your inner Muse as the conversations and stories of your dis-ease or imbalance appear on paper. If you feel like bailing out, if something comes up that you don't want to face, keep writing—you're breaking through. Bring these shadows into the light of who you are, right now. Don't let them return to your body, but thank them for enriching your soul.

  Iana Lahi shared the moving story of a client, faced with a trauma that could devolve into deep depression. "Claudia was a very successful director of a national non-profit foundation in Washington, D.C.," she said. "After weeks of agonizing over the trauma of a miscarriage, I asked her to write out her gut feelings. She wrote eight pages straight, in the middle of the night, unloading, sobbing and releasing her heart which helped her clear her own self blame and guilt. Since then she is taking the steps to walk forward in her life. Writing helped her to ease her inner battle and pain."

  The easiest way to get started is to journal. Make your journal your most private, sacred possession, your confidant. "I've used journaling for virtually every issue I've encountered as a woman, from teen-age angst to menopausal emotional volatility and everything in between," said Dr. Terra Pressler, author of Creative Juice: 8 Weeks to Authentic Writing. "Journaling also provides an excellent tool for addressing self-worth issues, since so many layers need to be peeled back. Journaling lets you go as deep as you want.

  "When I'm uncertain, I turn to my journal. When I'm out of balance, I turn to my journal. When I'm depressed, filled with doubt, hurting in every psychic joint, I'll turn to my journal. Like being in wilderness, journaling has become a deep form of prayer for me and I am invariably eased and returned to my center by the practice. I've used journaling to discover myself, to learn what I really want in career and relationship, and to grow in spirit."

  Dr. Randall employs another simple means of writing with her patients. "In the situation of physical illness which is difficult to resolve, I may ask them to write a letter to their body and then have their body write them back. Many time the intuitive answer comes in the writing and the body will let us know exactly what it needs," she said.

  Enjoy the process, and serve as an instrument to allow the highest and most healing thought and energy to also flow through as you write.

  "Writing can have a very positive effect, spiritually and emotionally, if it is done in the sense of the highest creativity: divine creativity," Gyandev McCord said. "When one gets himself out of the way and allows God to flow through, then much more results than a nice essay. When that divine energy is flowing through you, it washes away the little eddies and blockages of negative emotion and dullness."

  When you've finished a writing session, stop and read. What wisdom just appeared in the vignette, journal entry, piece of dialogue or story? What is the "voice" of your dis-ease like? Can you learn to embrace it? Can you identify the"finger" the ailment is "pointing" at you, and what it's admonishing you to do? Are you willing to follow this advice? Can you go back the next day and continue the conversation or writing?

  I've been through this process several times. In 1991, I was probably one of the most serious and emotionally stuffed 31-year-olds on the planet. I masqueraded behind a successful business, a straight-arm smile and some textbook knowledge of yoga and meditation. Inside, I was miserable. One day, I broke down. My ordered world collapsed, my relationship ended, and I got sick. I decided to "sweat it out" through writing; what emerged was a six-week, 200-page conversation with my nine-year-old self, which I'd left behind 22 years earlier. I asked for contact with what was ailing me, and I received a spiritual and emotional solution that changed my life. The blessings of joy, laughter, playfulness and purpose followed.

  "What matters is the kind of writing we do," McCord said. "By that I don't mean the topic of our writing, but rather the level of consciousness we draw upon. The higher our state of consciousness, the more transformative the experience. As Paramhansa Yogananda put it, 'The instrument is blessed by that which flows through it.'"

  Writing deeply to heal is not easy. It is a bold, courageous step, one of the most daring adventures into the unknown we will ever take. But its rewards exceed all risks: At the end of this tunnel stands a deeper connection with both the Divine and the rhythms of the body, and a deeper understanding of ourselves. Furthermore, we will emerge wiser. We're releasing the collective knowledge contained within our bodies and bringing it into the light. Who knows? Like Ken Fink, Madeleine Randall, Iana Lahi, Julia Price and Terra Pressler, you might emerge with the makings of a book that changes the lives of others—the ultimate gift.