A dear friend told me she’s been experiencing writer’s block recently and asked if I had any advice to work through it. 

In my experience, the key to avoiding writer’s block is deep listening.  It’s the same as opening yourself to another person to let them unburden.  In this case, the person you are opening to is yourself.  The trick is to set aside your expectations, your worries, and your business for a while, and to find yourself in your own body.  Tune into your sensations, your perception of your own energy, your pure existence in space and time.  Set ‘yourself’ aside and make room for whatever is emerging around and within you. 

What makes the simple difficult is that being with ourselves can sometimes feel impossible.  If we’re unable to feel well in our bodies, everything in us pushes to get away.  Creating an internal experience of safety is relieving and magical. It strengthens our ability to exist deeply within our own bodies.  How do we create safety?  By relational modeling of safety, both with others (in community) and within our selves (imaginal healing work). 

For experiential safety creating practice, consider joining my workgroup “emotional vulnerability through creative expression (evce).”  You can also follow along for resources here on the evce blog or on instagram.

When you sit down to create, first, tap in to what your intentions are.  Did you come with a goal?  Did you come with an expectation?  Let it go, and give yourself the space to just be there in whatever way you need.  If your body needs rest, meditation, dance, care, affection, or silence and you come in trying to extract some creative work out of it, you’re working against yourself.  Let ~being there with yourself~ be your priority.  And if you stay for a while, whatever needs to emerge and be shared from you will do so naturally.

Until next time, and with love,
hannah