A Shaking Place
Embodying and writing to deep center
Think of the last time you deep belly laughed. Or a moment that rocked you with grief that you felt it in your stomach. Go to that place for a minute — can you feel it?
Transverse abdominis are the deep core stomach muscles within each of us; these are the muscles we feel when we laugh, or cough, part of the intricate internal system knitting our human forms together in stable and sturdy ways. I feel them like hands on a ribcage; in moments of near-tears laughing, crying, or coughing; or when walking. I feel this like a flow state, a deeply rooted idea taking form and moving through the creative channels and portals emerging out into the world.
For years I have been working on embodying core — physically, metaphorically, in writing and being, thinking and action — ebbing between consistent and inconsistent repetitions centering on the intention of strengthening. Like anything new and newly forming, I am shaky as I do this work: speak the truths out loud, lean into new muscle groups, exit the edges of comfort into the vast unknown, returning to a practice I’ve laid to rest for a while. I have felt the pull of wanting to run away from the places that shake, but know those points of pulling away are are precisely the places where there is necessary growth and potential. Instead, I endeavor to stay, to go slowly, and connect with those shaking places.
In a dream once, years ago, I saw a black void of nothingness; I heard a voice that was my own saying “return to your core and your dreams will follow” in a sound that was the clearest it’s ever been. I wrote it down, and in doing so, it helped me remember. I come back to this phrase it in body and mind, thinking and practice, and use it like a guiding thread, asking, “does this keep me close or take me away from my core, capacity, and center?” and it’s a thread that keeps me walking, and talking, and writing, and moving, and trying, and creating. Not just creating on a page, but living in life: in body, mind, and making.
When we write, we can drop into our existence, tune into life, and pay attention. We are engaging with the flow of experience and an opportunity to drop into the core of our deep being. This attentiveness strengthens our presence and our memories, our minds and our physical remembering. Creative practice can bring us back to our bodies, our inner lives, the world around us, each other, and our natures; we are accessing the innermost spaces of our existences when we write, knitting together the overlaps and the intricacies of being.
Practices of turning inward and tuning in are not always easy, nor should they be, and we may confront our points of growing along the way — we might find our own shaking places. Writing and our creative lives can often bring us to our cores and our centers through the act of shaking us and reviving us deeply; those places of center within us personally and collectively can be the guiding forces, the stabilizers, the practices that keep us stable and upright and determined in shaking times. This is why we keep our practices small but steady: so that they can be sustained, maintained, and returned to overtime.
In the creative process, there are steps and stages, and it does not always lead in a straight line or take the same form. There may be the idea or the impulse that we choose to follow first, grow, tune into, or plant like seed; then there’s growing, the momentum, the learning the rhythm, learning the nutrients, the maintenance; then, sometimes, there’s the bloom — when the idea takes full form, reaches a new strength, or we find some glimpse of completion. Like muscle groups, or planting new stories like seeds in the field of the mind, growing and watering them over time, the stability lies in the repetition, the rest and returning, in practices of maintaining and careful tending. As you’re writing, what are you paying attention to? As you’re moving through the pages, through the world, through your life, what are you growing and tending to? What have you felt that rocks you to that place of your own deep core? What helps you tend to your ideas, your practices, and be steady, and continue?
Let’s be brave in our writing, in our living, with our voices, and with our expressions this week and all weeks. Let’s go to the shaking places when they arrive on and off the page and expand out. Let’s grow our capacities for clarity and caring for ourselves and each other around what is steading. Let’s stay focused, and keep going.
nourished by, nourishing:
friends, music. dusk walking. voicemails, phone calls, ceasefire. continuing. reading these are the times that grow our souls by grace lee bogs. watching headlights on windows in the evening. persimmons.
upcoming experiences:
November 21 | Paper Marbling brooklyn
November 25 | Fort Greene Park Artisans Bazaar brooklyn
November 30 | Paper Marbling baltimore
December 3 | Fort Greene Park Holiday Artisans Bazaar brooklyn
December 6 | Marbled Stationery brooklyn
December 11 | Bookbinding: Pamphlet Stitch brooklyn
December 13 | Taste & Write: Meditating on the Senses brooklyn
December 13 | Bookbinding: French Link Stitch brooklyn
[here’s the full calendar]