The Writer Who Inhabits Your Body

PREFACE Words That Become You

Acknowledgments

INTRODUCTION Please Remove Your Shoes

Part One

Center Is Everything

1 A Source of Knowing

2 Working through the Body—What Body?

3 Postures of Authenticity

4 Aligning Head, Heart, and Hara:
The Column

5 Centering in Intention and Care

6 Following Center’s Intelligence into Your Work

7 What’s Revealed through Practice

Part Two

Opening the Body to Language

8 Your Dojo of Solitude

9 Creating Space and Spaciousness

10 The Writing Body’s Emergence

11 Writing, a Surrender

12 Ways of Naming

13 The Dance of Listening

14 Bringing Your Body to the Page

15 The Companion Energy of Support

Part Three

Turning Obstacles into Doorways

16 The Doorway of Our Histories

17 The Doorway of Doubt

18 The Doorway of Fear

19 The Doorway of Our Darkness

20 The Doorway of the Gap

21 The Doorway of Hiding

22 The Doorway of Difficult Emotions

23 The Doorway of Disorder

Part Four

The Roar of Your Writing

24 Finding What’s Central to Your Work

25 Becoming Direct

26 The Power of Your Distinct Voice

27 Gathering

28 Exploring Your Roar

29 Honing What’s True:
The Act of Re-visioning

30 Tending the Fire

31 Delivering Your Words

CONCLUSION Claiming the Voice You Have

THE PRACTICES Committing to Your Embodied Writing Life

Notes

Bibliography

Index

About the Author

Renée Gregorio is a poet, longtime aikido practitioner, and master somatic coach. She has published nine books of poetry. Her most recent, Abyss & Bridge, won the New Mexico–Arizona Book Award for Poetry. She has been granted writing residiencies at the Millay Colony for the Arts in New York State and the Mabel Dodge Luhan House in Taos, NM. She teaches body-centered writing workshops across the United States. She lives in New Mexico.

“Renée Gregorio points the way to a self-expression that sparkles, shines, and roars with a truth and beauty that is uniquely your own. I will cherish this book as a beloved companion on all future writing adventures.” Amanda Blake, author of Your Body Is Your Brain and founder of Embright

“Renée Gregorio offers writers a unique body-centered path into discovery and creativity.” Natalie Goldberg, bestselling author of Writing Down the Bones

“Gregorio explores the relationship between the human body and creativity in a way that will benefit all writers. In this book you’ll find thoughtful insight, encouragement, and dynamic exercises. Gregorio’s approach can both inspire the beginner and help practicing writers deepen and expand. The Writer Who Inhabits Your Body is both a friend and teacher. Follow along!” Miriam Sagan, author of Unbroken Line: Writing in the Lineage of Poetry

“This is a wonderful resource for anyone who writes or has ever wanted to write. Using practices and principles from aikido, Renée offers exercises that awaken the mind/body/spirit connection, activating inspiration and insights from a place ‘rich with untapped knowing.’ She invites readers to open heart and soul and shows how to tap the creativity that emerges from their internal landscape.” Wendy Palmer, author of Leadership Embodiment and Dragons and Power

“A wonderfully crafted, beautifully written, highly accessible approach that illuminates and takes you through the doorway of writing. Gregorio takes you on a journey into your heart, gut, and embodied soul that sparkles with revelations in how your dreams, images, and longings become language.” Richard Strozzi-Heckler, author of Embodying the Mystery

“A writing process that is so much more than words on paper with pen or ink. Your words will spill, erupt, fly, and whisper, emergent foremost from who you are yourself. Gregorio will help you bring yourself to the page. Get quiet and listen to your own voice.” Nancy Shanteau, Cooperative Communication teacher and coach

“In The Writer Who Inhabits Your Body, Renée speaks powerfully to the benefits of the ongoing process of settling and clearing, which brings about wider and wider rings of listening, until the writer and what’s being written about are in harmonious relationship.” Robert Nadeau, 8th degree black belt, Aikido Master

“What an honor to explore writing as path, aikido as path, somatics as path, with someone who has been in practice for decades. This book is an invitation to the interface of what is most internal and the offering of that to the world. Scary and full of awe.” Staci K. Haines, somatic teacher and author of The Politics of Trauma

“Provides pathways of understanding and profound practices to guide writers into themselves with all the complexities, challenges, and opportunities writers face. In this way, Gregorio leaves no stone unturned and provides practical hope to being a writer. A masterful work.” Suzanne Roberts, principal of UnifyingSolutions of Anti-Racism Collective, polarity therapy teacher, and coach

“In this exquisite book of heart and feeling, wisdom and practice, Renée Gregorio deftly guides the reader through practices that plumb the depths of that stream. This book is a must-read for anyone who is longing for ‘a place where you know what it means to rest in yourself and let words arise.’” Chris L. Johnson, PsyD., founder of Q4 Consulting and author of The Leadership Pause

“This book is a gift: a poetic, embodied, and practical guide that lets you spring forth as written word.” Ginny Whitelaw, author of Resonate and The Zen Leader

PERSONAL GROWTH/CREATIVITY

“Renée Gregorio points the way to a self-expression that sparkles, shines, and roars with a truth and beauty that is uniquely your own. I will cherish this book as a beloved companion on all future writing adventures.”
–Amanda Blake, author of Your Body Is Your Brain and founder of Embright

“Renée Gregorio offers writers a unique body-centered path into discovery and creativity.”
–Natalie Goldberg, bestselling author of Writing Down the Bones

Writing is one of our most fundamental means of spiritual expression, yet the writing process can be challenging and imprecise, and both novice and experienced writers may struggle with accessing their innermost creative selves.

Taking an embodied approach to writing, poet and aikido practitioner Renée Gregorio offers a step-by-step experiential program to help you to center yourself in your body and, in so doing, expand your creative capacity on the page and give voice to the writer within. She shares hands-on exercises rooted in the martial art of aikido and the practice of somatics—body-centered learning—to provide direct and detailed ways to help facilitate personal growth and tap in to innate creative capacities.

Gregorio emphasizes creating your own internal writing dojo to clear the mind and enable you to access the deeper currents of language. Exploring discomfort as a doorway to new writing territory, she reveals how to examine difficult topics, express the full range of emotions, and turn self-doubt, fear, and painful experience into courage. She also explores how to unearth the power and physicality in your own voice, using techniques like “re-visioning” to effectively edit your work.

Through immersive and physically focused experience, this book will help seasoned and aspiring writers alike work with the body as a wise teacher to better access, hone, and express their authentic inner voice.

Renée Gregorio is a poet, longtime aikido practitioner, and master somatic coach. She has published nine books of poetry. Her most recent, Abyss & Bridge, won the New Mexico–Arizona Book Award for Poetry. She has been granted writing residiencies at the Millay Colony for the Arts in New York State and the Mabel Dodge Luhan House in Taos, NM. She teaches body-centered writing workshops across the United States. She lives in New Mexico.