An Embodiment Practice for Writers

I took a pole dance class recently. I’ve done this numerous times in the past, but what made this class different was its focus on embodiment of the erotic, divine feminine. What this translates into is following what our bodies want us to do.

It takes practice to not only listen to the cues your body provides, but to stay engaged with that listening and actively follow its advice.

For years, I’ve taken dance classes and worked my way through them, Hermione-Granger-style, doing exactly what my instructors taught me until I’d perfected it, then expecting an award. It didn’t matter if the teachers encouraged me to explore my body, I was too caught up in approval ratings to listen to myself.

But this time, for some reason, I decided to listen. To really plumb down to physical sensation, to pay attention to my impulses, to let myself go, to ignore the teacher, to lose myself in the music. The result? It was one of the most electrifying moments of my week, being in that space. I didn’t want it to end. I left each class grinning and just wanted to go home and keep dancing.

This was the difference between feeling that I’d accomplished something and feeling re-enchanted. And all it took, really, was a tiny bit of mindfulness around my body’s impulses and being willing to follow them.

The physical practice is a pathway to an enlivened, empowered life where women learn to own their emotional and erotic truth.

In the same way that your unconscious mind is guiding your body, it is also guiding your thoughts and words. Whenever you’re writing, imagining, daydreaming, or talking to others, you’re engaging with subconscious impulses. Instead of feeling the impulses rise in our bodies, we’re feeling them in our thoughts and emotions, in the pictures we envision in our minds, in the voices we hear, in the things that interest us about other people and the world.

What healers call embodiment practice is essentially the writer’s most important tool: Following the impulses of your desires. Paying attention to what you want, what lights you up, what feels right, what interests you. Listening to your heart.

With the same tiny bit of mindfulness around your impulses, and being willing to follow them, you can turn a writing practice from a Slog Through the Daily Word Count to something vital and alive, something that restores you, that re-enchants you, that makes you want to keep doing it through dinner and dessert, that keeps you thinking all night, waking up at 2am to make notes on your phone.

It’s not a muse—you are the muse.

As creatives, we all need a safe space to explore these impulses, to learn from them and take pleasure in them.

And if you want to cross-pollinate and explore your erotic body while you’re at it, Sisters in Motion is a licensed S Factor studio with incredible classes and community, located in San Francisco. Check them out.