Yana\'s Response to Perl

[Anonymous]

#599

For the past few years, I’ve practiced vipassana, or a mindfulness meditation practice with decent consistency, and this introduction to the concept of felt sense feels quite similar. Of course, the goal in mindfulness meditation is to learn to cultivate a sense of awareness in the present moment, even when we are not in the meditative state. However, I can’t say I’ve consciously practiced mindfulness when I sit down to write. One of the exercises my meditation teacher recommends when we find ourselves confronted with feelings of unease, anxiety, fear, anger, at any sort of impasse, is to pause, and try to physically locate and describe that feeling in our bodies, kind of like finding exactly where your headache is. Is it in my throat, temples, shoulders, stomach? Does it shorten my breath, is my heart beating faster, are my hands sweaty, clenching – in a sense, how do the emotions express themselves as sensations. This is different than putting words to feelings, but it’s necessary to be aware of the sensations to be able to speak about them. I wonder what the differences are between accessing felt sense and practicing mindfulness or bodily awareness, and I wonder how the Guidelines are similar and different from these types of meditation practices where one focuses on the breath, is silent, etc.

I’m struck by my realization that I’ve never consciously applied a mindfulness practice to my writing, and I’m really excited to see how working with felt sense will change my writing, and of course process of writing. It seems strange to use a wordless process for the practice of finding words, but it cannot be any other way, as words are always secondary…

[Sondra Perl]

#602

Great connections, Yana. I think you may have missed the class when we discussed the differences between meditation and focusing. I’ll go over this again when we do the Guidelines for Composing — but to simplify now, in meditation one of the goals is to let go of thinking, to notice ideas or words but not to get stuck or attached to them. In composing, it is to sense into the body but to remain focused on the words that come. Practiced meditators sometimes find this hard.

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