ON-LINE ISSUES

V.4 N.1, March 1997

Writing and the Body

by Celeste Snowber Schroeder

Simon Fraser University

1. Blaise Pascal said, "The heart has its reasons." I would like to suggest that the body has its reasons, reasons which release words to the page. This paper will explore the relationship between listening, solitude and embodiment as necessary tools to writing methodology within phenomenological curriculum research.

2. Volumes have been written on the teaching of writing within language arts, and recent writing textbooks present a comprehensive theoretical framework in both the mechanics and aesthetics of writing (Fletcher, 1993; Olson, 1992; Tompkins, 1994). However, little attention has been given to the relationship between listening, the body and writing. How does the writer cultivate a listening to life, a deep listening which spills over from blood to ink? Where does the act of writing begin, is it with pen and paper, fingers to the keyboard, or is it more inextricably connected with the very cells of our body? Helene Cixous (1993) has said, "Writing is not arriving; most of the time it's not arriving. One must go on foot, with the body" (p. 65). How does one begin to go on foot, and write from the cells of the body? I suggest that the notion of solitude be incorporated into the writer's and educator's life as a way to foster active listening and attentiveness, not only a listening to the mind, but a listening to the senses in the body. It is important to note that solitude is not necessarily being alone, but can be a way of being. Thomas Merton's definition elucidates this when he relates solitude to a state of openness; he says, "The truest solitude is not something outside you, not an absence of men [women] or of sound around you; it is an abyss opening up in the center of your own soul" (1961, pp. 80-81). The implication of solitude is an attentiveness to body, mind, senses, imagination and heart. In turn, the whole body becomes a place from which to write, giving rise to a poetic rendering of the world.

3. It is here that I turn to the tradition of the phenomenologists and women autobiographical writers (Dooley, 1995; Grumet, 1988; Heilbrun, 1988; Sarton, 1973; van Manen, 1990, Winterson, 1992; Woolf, 1929). I will look to both women's autobiographical writing and phenomenological writing within education to form a theoretical framework for relocating writing to the body.

   Texture of the Poetic: The Link Between Phenomenological and Women's Writing

4. The practice of phenomenological writing within curriculum research aims to attend to the details of life, reflecting Edmund Husserl's notion of "bringing us back to the things themselves" and Martin Heideggers' notion of "recollection." Max van Manen (1986) links this kind of phenomenological writing to a "poetizing activity" (p. 39). The return to the poetic and the senses is also a dimension of women's autobiographical writing, allowing the reader to catch the glimmers and details of life.

   Poetry is the way we help give name to the nameless so it can be thought. The farthest horizons of our hopes and fears are cobbled by our poems, carved from the rock, experiences of our daily lives. (Lorde in Wear, 1993, p. xiii)

   I have also chosen women's writing because of the recent implications of the body in the writing of women. Various feminist theorists have researched the theme of embodiment and women's writing (Bateson, 1989; Belenky et al., 1986; Dooley, 1995; Ruddick, 1989/1995; Rich, 1986; Vigier, 1994). The autobiographical tradition within women's writing gives what Dooley (1995) would call a phenomenological intimacy. This covers an intimacy with self, others, and surroundings - the writer within becomes the lenses in which one sees the crucible of relationships of being and knowing. It is in autobiographical writing where the division between ontology (the nature of being) and epistemology (the nature of knowledge) is broken; being and knowing become closer, and in Dooley's words, "we know the thing by becoming it" (p.79).

5. How actually does the writing process cultivate the link between knowing and being? In autobiographical writing do we simply record the details of our lives, or is the process one which fosters an awakening to the details of our lives? I look at the tradition of autobiographical writing as a model for writing from the body, and as a methodology which allows the writing process not only to be a recording of details, but a finding of details, where the details sing off the page, resonating deep within us to the incarnation of ink on paper.

   The Concerns of Phenomenological Writing

6. The goal of phenomenology is to gain a deeper understanding of the nature or meaning of everyday experience. Therefore it is the phenomenologist's task to study lived experience (van Manen, 1990). Numerous concerns drive phenomenological educational research. I highlight those which are central to the act of writing. Max van Manen (1986) outlines the primary concerns of phenomenological research which I draw upon here. The first priority is to give attention to the world as one immediately experiences it, rather than conceptualizing, categorizing or theorizing about the world. The aim is to gain insight from being in more "direct contact with the world" (p. 38). The second concern of phenomenological research is the search for what it means to be fully human, as man, woman, or child. Third, phenomenological research is mindful of the practice of what phenomenologists have termed "thoughtfulness." This concept is taken from the original work of Maurice Merleau Ponty and Husserl who emphasized a mindful wondering about the project of life, of what it means to be alive. It is in this concept of "thoughtfulness" where I link the theme of listening and solitude in autobiographical writers. Fourth, phenomenological research is a "poetizing activity," for it is interested in an evocative, or poetic way of telling the world. As van Manen says, "We must engage language in a primal incantation or poetizing which hearkens back to the silence from which the words emanate" (p 39).

7. The pursuit of the dailiness of life seen both in the world of the child and adult is a theme possessed by many involved in phenomenological research in education. The lived experience in the body becomes central to learning rather than peripheral. The "lived body" is taken from the German leib (living body) as opposed to the korper (physical body). The notion of dualism can entrap the body in korper, thus the phenomenologist's terminology of the lived body allows the view of the body as an integrated being (Leder, 1990). Learning occurs not only in the places of intentional education but also in the places of in-between where the themes of relatedness with others, self, space, and time come into play. The places of in-between or the margins of life are places both child and adult may not have thought to be educationally instructive, yet daily inform their world. Playing at recess, walking to work, experiencing the gestures of a conversation are all places of in-between where both child and adult interconnect with the world and the physical self. The nuances of gesture, smell, touch, sound, and sight evoke the remembrances of memory, revealing there is far more to attend to in the body than has been credited in the traditional ways of learning. Stephen Smith echoes this in his work on childhood memory and says, "childhood remembrances are most vividly real when the body is remembered, when the body is our direct access to the past, or when the body becomes the bearing of our thought" (1991, p. 168). It is in these remembrances of the in- between where the phenomenological researcher places value. We are hearkened back to learning in the cracks of life, the places we might have deemed unimportant. It is in this place of ‘in-between' where one often has a physical encounter with the world, the senses are given breath. The intentional noticing of these places has been a focus of attention for both phenomenological researchers and women writers.

8. The methodology used in phenomenological research explores the particular phenomenon, uses personal experiences, traces etymological sources, and obtains experiential descriptions from others as well as locating experiential descriptions in art and literature - the tradition of the written and visible word. Phenomenological reflection can be sought through thematic analysis - uncovering thematic aspects in descriptions of the lifeworld, isolating thematic statements, and attending to the speaking of language, to name a few (van Manen, 1986, pp. 39-43). The process of writing one's experience is not usually a difficult endeavour. Many things come to mind, but to write in a way that there is an evocative telling of one's world so that the writer's experience comes alive to the reader is a different story. To write in a way that there is a singing of the world, or a dancing of the world, is writing with the textures of the poetic, engaging the mind and body, senses and perception.

   The Tradition of Women's Autobiographical Writing

9. Women's autobiographical writing occurs not only in autobiographical texts, but can be seen in non- fiction, fiction, prose, poetry, and journals. Women's personal narratives take shape in various alphabets. These narratives have been given more attention in recent years in the quest to ground feminist theory in women's lives (Berman et al., 1991). The integration of women's narratives within feminist theory has opened up artistic possibilities for writing in a way that one could have only dreamed of before, particularly in academic discourse. Women, as well as men, have named and renamed themselves within autobiographical texts, but it has been a particular pursuit of women to rename themselves in language that reflects and echoes their experience. Language itself must be redefined and rewritten to communicate parts of life that may have been hidden or neglected. This is precisely the concern of Carolyn Heilbrun's well known work, Writing a Woman's Life (1988). She says:

   I want to examine how women's lives have been contrived, and how they may be written to make clear, evident, out in the open, those events, decisions, and relationships that have been invisible outside of women's fiction, where literary critics have revealed, in the words of Gilbert and Gubar, "the woman's quest for her own story." I wish to suggest new ways of writing the lives of women, as biographers, autobiographers, or, in the anticipation of living new lives, as the women themselves. (p. 18)

   The textures of the world of everyday life that are visible, as well as those textures which are invisible, have been taken on as the crux of much of women's writing. Heilbrun (1988) highlights the American poet and novelist May Sarton in her autobiographical work Journal of a Solitude, written shortly after her work, Plant Dreaming Deep. The former book was what Heilbrun referred to as "the watershed in women's autobiography" because it recounted the pain that was concealed in Plant Dreaming Deep. Journal of a Solitude was an intentional retelling of Sarton's pain and therefore noted by Heilbrun as a breakthrough in women's autobiography, where pain had previously been seen only as a catalyst to spiritual transformation. (pp. 12-13). It is not surprising that the work of May Sarton is recounted in much recent literature on women's autobiography (Dooley, 1995; Wear, 1993). I call this visibility of pain, a retelling of the invisible world, or the invisible textures of life. However, Sarton, as well as other women writers in a journalistic fashion, can tell this invisible world at the same time they meet the visible textures of life. Annie Dillard (1977) does exactly this with brilliant clarity. She says, in reflecting on the visible creation,

   I am in my Middle Ages; the world at my feet, the world through the window, is an illuminated manuscript whose leaves the wind takes, one by one, whose painted illuminations and halting words draw me one by one, and I am dazzled in days and lost. (pp. 23-24)

10. Writing the invisible and visible textures of lived life is what the autobiographical writers give to us. All of life becomes an alphabet from which to excavate meaning. There is an ability to listen, listen to not only the loud voices of language, but the whispers. It is in this process of writing, of composing the text, that we compose ourselves. Dooley (1995) says, "In composing the text, we compose, as well, the self" (p. 6). The self is allowed to breathe, live and be recreated in the writing of a life. The notion of thoughtfulness, evident in van Manen's phenomenological work is pervasive in the works of writers and contemplatives. Author, Natalie Goldberg (1986) articulates this well:

    We have lived; our moments are important. This is what it is to be a writer: to be the carrier of details that make up history. Our task is to say a holy yes to the real things of our life as they exist. We must become writers who accept things as they are, come to love the details, and step forward with a yes on our lips so there can be no more noes in the world, noes that invalidate life and stop these details from continuing. (p. 44)

11. The writing endeavor fosters an awakening to the details of our lives. Writing is largely made up of listening to life. To compose the self as Dooley suggests, it requires the ongoing practice of "seeing" and "listening." Author, Frederich Buechner (1982) recognises this as he says, "I am speaking of the humdrum events of our lives as an alphabet" (p. 11). Goldberg says, "Writing, too, is ninety percent listening. You listen so deeply to the space around you that it fills you, and when you write, it pours out of you" (p. 52). In order for this listening to begin to happen, or to continue to happen, several women writers have taken up solitude to cultivate listening (Berlak, 1995; Butala, 1995; Dillard, 1974; Lindbergh, 1955; Schroeder, 1995; Wear, 1995; & Woolf, 1929).

    Solitude and Listening as Pedagogical Tools for Writing

12. May Sarton (1968), an author who has both lived in solitude and written about the relationship between solitude and writing says,

    One of the facts about solitude is that one becomes as alert as an animal to every change of mood in the skies, and to every sound. The thud of the first apple falling never fails to startle the wits out of me; there has been no sound like it for a year..The intense silence magnifies the slightest creak or whisper....That alertness is also there toward the inner world, which is always close to the surface for me when I am here, so it may be a mouse in the wainscot that keeps me awake, but it may just as well be a half-formed idea. (p. 60)

    It is in solitude where the writer wrestles with the art of writing. The writing process does not begin with ink to page, or fingers to keyboard, but in the many stages of sifting, reflecting, and distilling thoughts and ideas. Goldberg (1986) says, "Our senses by themselves are dumb. They take in experience, but they need the richness of sifting for a while through our consciousness and through our whole bodies. I call this composting" (p. 14). In solitude, ideas are nurtured into an incarnational reality where art is eventually birthed, syllable by syllable, movement by movement, pigment layered upon pigment. Solitude teaches one the art of attentiveness to the opening of a bud, to a child's startling questions, and to the beat of one's own heart (Schroeder, 1995, p. 3). The art of listening in writing becomes as formative as all the rules of grammar.

13. Where does the place of solitude serve for those who are writing in phenomenological curriculum research or in pedagogical practice? We might think that is fine for full-time writers, but how do teachers and students build solitude in their schedule? One educator/scholar, Ann Berlak, has taken up this challenge, integrating time alone in her life as a way to reflect thoughtfully upon the vocation of teaching. She takes periods of solitude, varying in lengths and degrees, and writes about the practice of teaching. She says,

    I come away to slow down, to get some distance on the work I do for a living, to await the muse; to try to make sense of my life and my vocation, not to find truths that will apply to classrooms or teachers across the board, but to understand my own individual experience, to see the macro in my micro . . . to find a way of teaching that might endure, to see what of eternity might be at my dinner table. (Berlak in Wear, 1995, p. 158)

14. It is the task of seeing the macro in the micro, or even the micro in the macro which is at the heart of listening and seeing. Solitude strips away the urgency of time, and allows one to go from (chronos) time, (i.e., chronological time), to (kairos) time, (i.e., unmeasured time). In chronos time I measure my moments, very aware of time moving, but in kairos time I allow myself to be swept into the eternal present. This is the time to which children give themselves in play. Merton (1961) has said, "Hurry ruins saints as well as artists. They cannot take time to be true to themselves" (pp. 98-99). It is often the attachment to time, that prevents us from doing the wandering our whole being needs to do in the act of writing. May Sarton (1973) echoes this sentiment, "The most valuable thing we can do for the psyche, occasionally, is to let it rest, wander, live in the changing light of a room, not try to be or do anything whatever" (p. 89). I have taken up this notion with teaching graduate students in "theology and the body." They are asked to spend time in solitude and keep a journal during the semester concerning their movement experiences. This facilitates time to reflect on the nature of learning in the body. Time and time again, it is apparent that this space given for writing gives the student the inner space to digest the physical part of the class and write in a way that echoes the experiences of expansion in their body/soul. Solitude beckons us to consider the ramification for re-establishing the art of listening and seeing in the process of writing and teaching. It invites us to see the extraordinary in the ordinary, the poetic in the phenomenological, or better yet, the poetic in the academic!

    The Notion of Embodiment

15. The notion of embodiment in the writing of women is linked to phenomenological writing in educational research through the act of listening in our bodies and being present in our bodies. Subsequently, there is a presence, an attentiveness to our bodies in the stillness, as well as in the movement. Solitude gives us space to listen to our bodies and opportunity to be embodied people. As suggested earlier, writing does not begin when we put pen to paper, but in the way we are mindful towards life, in the way we live, breathe, think, and dwell in our bodies. Writing allows us to attend to the physicality of the textures around us: sound, gesture, smell, sight; the rumblings within and without continue to shape the alphabet of language. In his book, Writing from the Body, John Lee calls us back to the primacy of the body in writing. "The call to write is a call received in the body first....Creativity is not tidy or polite -- it's insistent. It calls us to feel, not dimly, not safely, but wildly, passionately, in every cell and fiber" (1994, p.1).

16. Now, all of this may sound appealing, but how does one actually write from the body or write passionately in every cell and fiber? After all, we must use our body to write in the first place; I could not type this paper without fingers, joints, muscles, blood, and the rest of my body functioning. Writing in its essence is a kinesthetic endeavor. Even Virginia Woolf has said about writing, "The habit of writing thus for my own eye is good practice. It loosens the ligaments" (Woolf in Hoffat and Painer, 1974, p. 227). Poets, feminist theorists, phenomenological researchers, and authors on writing address working from the body. In recent years there has been a return to discourse in the area of the body from a variety of disciplines (Christ, 1986; Cixous, 1993; Feher, 1989; Grosz, 1994; Grumet, 1988; Leder, 1990; Lee, 1994, Vigier, 1994). But how does one integrate a pedagogy of the body in the writing process? Where is the relationship of the body to writing in the curriculum?

17. I would like to suggest the notion of solitude as a way of cultivating "listening" both in the body and in writing within the scope of pedagogical practice. Listening is not just hearing sound it is also listening to the messages of the body: the rumblings within, the delights and joys, the sorrows and losses, the rhythms of everyday life. In solitude, one feels the gravity of the body, the levity of the body. One feels. Period. In our urgency of time, time pressed, we do not always attend to our bodies: the nuances of our gestures, the tightness in our necks, the flight of our hearts. Modern and postmodern culture have propelled us forward, and in solitude we catch our breath. We begin to hear the rhythms of our breath and the rhythms of our words. Thich Nhat Hanh (1975) speaks of the relationship between breath and mindfulness, and breath and attentiveness to both body and mind; he says, "Breath is the bridge which connects life to consciousness, which unites your body to your thoughts" (p. 15). The concept of returning to breath as a way of returning to the body has also been noted by movement practitioners (Barlow, 1973; Blom & Chaplin, 1988; Cheney, 1969; Hanna, 1988). Gay Cheney, an author on dance, has said, "The breath is the primal act, that which vitalizes and sensitizes all of us, all parts of us (1989, p. 21). Solitude gives one the opportunity to listen to the breath, ultimately listening to body and heart, not that they are always distinct, but in solitude one hears the rhythms of their connection.

18. Solitude is the soil needed to hear the syllables being formed, and let these alphabets run their course through our bodies. This is writing too. The words form within our cells, ruminate throughout our beings and are eventually extracted from our bodies, sometimes painfully, and are born on the page. Solitude brings writing back to our body, to the listening body. It is not solitude alone, but a conscious turning to the body, where the senses are awakened to dance. Lee says, "To write from the body, we must let the body dance" (1994, p. 64). Unfortunately, many of us need life's circumstances to press us into taking solitude. Sandwiched between the writing of drafts of this paper I had strep throat accompanied by a flu virus. My total physical exhaustion gave me a day of solitude; I was too weak to do much else besides rest in bed, and our children were taken care of for the day. Even though I was immobile for most of the day, it was solitude which turned my thoughts towards my body, even my aching body. Time began to take on another dimension, chronos time was transformed to kairos time, as I spent much of the day in reflection, gazing out the window of my bedroom. The details of creation took on profound beauty, my eyes were pierced with the deep pine greens and burnt siennas; the hues of the cedar trees and autumn leaves. Crinkled leaves scattered our weathered deck, beautiful random patterns emerged as the leaves gently surrendered to the ground. I pondered these colors throughout the day as the wind danced through the trees; I fell in and out of sleep, weak in my physical body, yet my senses having the opportunity, the time to become intensely alive again. Even in my quest for researching about solitude I became too busy to take it, unless I was brought to it by ill health. So what would happen if we cultivate an intentional solitude in the scope of pedagogical practice? Should we encourage students to attend to their senses, their body, their thoughts in quiet, in or outside the classroom as integral to the writing process?

    The Pedagogy of "Writing and the Body"

19. This paper is forming some of the theoretical framework for relocating writing to the body in order to cultivate a listening which hearkens words to the page. Yet, the pragmatics of these ideas, eventually need to inform curriculum. I would suggest that students have the opportunity to kinesthetically sense the relationship to the body and writing. I could talk about the nature of swimming in long discourse, but until you actually plunge into the water and allow your torso to take you through the water you would not kinesthetically comprehend some discourse on swimming. I would therefore like to propose a way to teach writing where there could be a time for body awareness and reflection, and thus an awareness to the senses. The scope of this paper does not allow me to outline the details of a full curriculum in this regards, but I would suggest an integration of improvisational exercises, based in the tradition of movement education which could bring awareness of the body, as well as time for reflection. This time of reflection could in turn be a listening to the body, a way to cultivate listening, even a way to open the imagination. Following are a few beginning improvisational exercises which serve as pragmatic examples of cultivating writing from the body. It is important to note that a whole series of these exercises would have to be implemented on a regular basis within writing in order to be effective.

    Warming Up the Ligaments: Exercise 1

20. This is a preliminary exercise designed to find the rhythm of writing, by physically loosening up the body. Find a quiet place, if you are in a class setting, carve out a small space around you that is only yours. Begin by taking several deep breaths, breathing into the places in your body which may feel stress. Raise your arms and find a way to yawn with your whole body. Yawn with your arms, yawn with your shoulders, yawn with your whole torso, being mindful of the release of breath. Slowly go through warming up various parts of your body, starting with rolling your neck from side to side, shoulders, chest, pelvis, hips, legs and feet. Breathe into your stretch, allowing the breath to move you. Shake out the parts of your body which need to let go. Perhaps your fingers or hips, knees or face. Once you feel you have warmed up the ligaments, sit down and write, non-stop for fifteen minutes. No more. Write whatever comes to your mind. If your mind is blank, write about what it feels like to bring attention to your body in this way. As you write be mindful of the connection of writing and the breath. It is important to note that this exercise is designed to be built on through other movement awareness exercises which facilitate a listening to the body. It is just the beginning.

    The Gestures of Childhood: Exercise 2

21. This exercise is designed to captures some of the gestures, and sensory experiences that are embedded in the memory of childhood. Through physically remembering the way one might have experienced physicality of being a child can elicit the act of writing childhood memories. This exercise necessitates a wide open space: a gym, a field, a beach, or a park. The main movement in this exercise is "to skip." You may not have had permission to skip since you were perhaps four years old, or by being with some children. Skipping is a motion which is inherently playful and free. When you have found a safe place to skip, just try skipping in all the ways you could ever think possible to skip. Skip in little movements, big movements, with your arms at your side, or in full motion. Engage in this movement long enough for the motion to sweep you into freeing your body from the sedentary postures many of us are used to. Enjoy the air gliding off your body and the kinesthetic sense of soaring. After you have engaged in skipping for 10 minutes or so take a deep stretch and be very aware of your breath. Breathe into your stretch. Give yourself another 10 minutes to walk quietly in solitude, continuing to warm up your body. Now go and write for 15 minutes about your experience of skipping. How did it feel in your body? Was it a familiar feeling or very old? What did it remind you of your childhood? Try to write a childhood memory from this place.

    Conclusion

22. This paper has sought to establish that writing is an act which inherently includes a continued listening to life. Phenomenological curriculum research has sought methodology to do this in a variety of ways, and women autobiographical writers have come again to the body as a way of listening to life. This listening to life, which is a listening to both mind and body is echoed in the notion of embodiment. However, for the cultivation of this kind of listening, the kind of listening which calls forth the poetic in writing, I am suggesting a turning to solitude as a practice for writing. The returning to solitude is a returning to a listening, a deep listening which runs its course like a river, and eventually flows in a waterfall onto the page. The theoretical work in this paper will be able to give rise to curriculum which includes solitude, listening and the body in the act of writing.

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