March 14th, 2011

Yesterday, I sat down to make a video for the current writers on my Word Sauce – Letting Go course.

I had no idea what I was going to say.

There is so much uncertainty in the world right now. Things feel as if they’re changing and changing fast – and that can be so challenging for us human beings.

The financial system, the weather system, ways of thinking and living that we’ve know for a long time, all seem to have been tossed up in the air like a bundle of pick-up sticks.

Who knows where they’ll fall?

But something new will happen. It always does.

One of the things I’ve been spending some time thinking about recently is, where do I, one small person, fit amidst all this change in the world?

What is mine to do?

I can only make a difference in my own tiny corner of the universe. How do I do that to the very best of my ability? How do I best use my resources?

How can I really continue to enjoy and relish this precious life that I’m so lucky to have been given? Because I really think I have a responsibility to do that, to have fun, to live as well as I can, to learn as much as I can, in addition to being as responsible as I can.

And then, of course, there’s the voice that creeps in, whispering, but isn’t that frivolous? Amid all the devastation and suffering right now, how is this even important?

And, as I listen deeply, as I write, as I share my process with the wonderful people who do my e-courses and workshops and come and work with me one-to-one, I’ve begun to get very clear that my work with writing is absolutely central to all this.

I’m still going to be working with my hypnotherapy clients here in York. I love doing this work. It’s where everything – my research, my passion, my interest in so many areas of personal development – comes together for me.

And I’m going to be developing more and more of my work over at Word Sauce.

It’s time.

I do hope you’ll join me on this next stage of the journey. It feels like a very natural evolution for me. If you’ve been following this blog over recent months, you’ll know that I’ve been writing less about techniques and interventions (that way of working was never truly mine anyway) and  more about acceptance, surrender, mindfulness, allowing our light to shine.

Writing more about less.

My work with Word Sauce – the e-courses, the workshops, the community -  is growing. I’m working on a book about writing and being.

It all feels right. It feels time.

Over at my new blog wordsaucery.com, I’ll be writing about writing and living and everything that the process of writing continues to teach me about mindfulness, self-hypnosis and simply being in the world.

I may still pop back here from time to time for the odd reflection on self-hypnosis. I might not. I haven’t really decided yet. We’ll see where it all takes me.

I hope you’ll follow me on this next part of the journey. I’m curious and excited about what it will bring.

Whether we meet again or not, I’d like to thank each and every one of you for being such wonderful readers and friends to me over the last four years. Every comment, every email I’ve received has been important to me in some way.

I wish you well on your own journey.

Do come and put your head round the door at wordsaucery.com

You’ll always be so welcome.

And thank you again. Heartfelt thank you.

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February 21st, 2011

‘It is strange to be here. The mystery never leaves you alone.’

I’m working on rising early these days and using the time to read quietly, write in my notebook, think things through.

This morning I made a cup of green tea (I love this warming Green Chai from Pukka), dipped into the notes I’d made before falling asleep  yesterday evening, and read from a beautiful book, Anam Cara: Spiritual Wisdom from the Celtic World, by John O’Donohue. This is the opening paragraph:

‘It is strange to be here. The mystery never leaves you alone. Behind your image, below your thoughts, the silence of another world waits. A world lives within you. No-one else can bring you news of this inner world. Through our voices, we bring out sounds from the mountain beneath the soul. These sounds are words. The world is full of words. There are so many talking all the time, loudly, quietly, in rooms, on streets, on TV, on radio, in the paper, in books. The noise of words keeps what we call the world there for us. We take each other’s sounds and make patterns, predictions, and blasphemies. Each day, our tribe of language holds what we call the ‘world’ together. Yet the uttering of the word reveals how each of us relentlessly creates. Everyone is an artist. Each person brings sound out of silence and coaxes the invisible to become visible.’

I love this. Don’t you?

‘A world lives within you. No-one else can bring you news of this inner world.’

We only have to listen deeply for a moment, let go just a little, enough to allow the first sounds to surface.

Today, another wonderful group of Word Saucerers are starting their process of ‘Letting Go.‘ I had to share this quote with them and I hope it speaks to them as it did to me this morning.

If, like me, you hadn’t come across Anam Cara before, I do recommend it. There are so many passages of reverie and wisdom, such as this one.

I want to always remember the strange mystery of being here. This a reminder of what a gift it is.

And I’d like to thank the lovely Helen for recommending Anam Cara to me.

Tags: anam cara, letting go, Word Sauce, Word Sauce 1 Letting Go, writing
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February 17th, 2011

‘yes and then he asked me would I yes to say yes my mountain flower and first I put my arms around him yes and drew him down to me so he could feel my breasts all perfume yes and his heart was going like mad and yes I said yes I will Yes.’

- James Joyce, Ulysses

I’ve always loved this passage from Molly Bloom’s reverie in Ulysses, where she remembers her first meeting with the man who is her husband.

It’s one of the earliest examples of what was to become known as ‘stream of consciousness’ in literature, where we get a sense of a character’s free flow of private, internal thoughts.

It’s a window into a time when psychology and the understanding of the subconscious began to change the way that writers wrote. It fascinates me.

And Molly’s monologue – which spills thrillingly over pages and pages – both begins and ends with ‘yes.’

Joyce is said to have described yes as ‘the female word’ that indicated ‘acquiescence and the end of all resistance.’

But Molly isn’t a passive or receptive character. She’s central to the book. Her physicality shapes the narrative and, over and over,  Joyce contrasts her sensual pleasure in and curiosity about the world with the dry intellectualism of her husband Leopold and his male friends.

‘ yes first I gave him the bit of seedcake out of my mouth and it was leapyear like now yes 16 years ago my God after that long kiss I near lost my breath yes he said I was a flower of the mountain yes so we are flowers all a womans body yes that was one true thing he said in his life and the sun shines for you today yes that was why I liked him because I saw he understood or felt what a woman is and I knew I could always get round him and I gave him all the pleasure I could leading him on till he asked me to say yes and I wouldnt answer first only looked out over the sea and the sky I was thinking of so many things he didnt know…’

Molly Bloom embodies yes. The end of all resistance for Molly is not saying ‘yes’ to a man – or to anyone else – but saying ‘yes’ to herself.

Yes.

What happens when you say ‘yes’ – to that project you’re toying with, to writing, to a relationship, to life?

What happens when you say ‘yes’ to yourself as creator of your own life?

Maybe is a different feeling. When I say ‘maybe’ to something, it feels vague, hard to get hold of. It drifts, it wobbles, it feels timid or fearful. It occupies too much space in my mind whilst I compute possible scenarios, rehearse pros and cons.

Maybe I’ll sit down to write this evening, but I haven’t really made up my mind. I’ve been thinking about what I need to do to move forward but I’m not sure I want to figure it all out right now. It feels too big, too difficult.

Sometimes ‘no’ is better than ‘maybe.’ It can free you up.

But I don’t think we have to be certain – that is, without all uncertainty – to say ‘yes.’

It doesn’t matter if you don’t know what it is that you’re writing yet or what it is that your new project or relationship might ultimately become.

You can still begin with ‘yes’ and feel that ‘yes’ reverberate deep inside you. You can say ‘yes’ to letting something unfold, with all its patterns and possibilities, let ‘yes’ ripple up through you, finding its own form.

Yes to discovery. Yes to finding out more. Yes to asking more questions. Yes to not knowing yet and allowing, feeling somewhere in your body. Yes.

Perhaps yes really is ‘the feminine word,’ the connection with the feminine in us all – the unpunctuated, curious, rhythmic expansion and contraction of all possibility.

Yes.

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February 9th, 2011

According to this Wikipedia article, McCartney wrote the lyrics to “Let it Be’ after visiting his mother, who had died when he was 14, in a dream. In this dream, in the midst of a period of great tension in his life, his mother told him, ‘It will be alright. Just let it be.’

Let it be.

What I rediscovered and re-membered last week when I visited the wonderful Andrea Franzi for an osteopathic treatment.

Let it be.

Sometimes, with all of our techniques and processes, it’s easy to forget that all that is necessary in a practice of meditation, mindfulness or self-hypnosis is to simply notice what arises.

To drop into our bodies. To be with what we experience there, embody it, be it – without judgement, analysis, interpretation.

Sometimes that is enough.

Sometimes that’s so difficult too. Hard to be with the breath when the mind is chattering away. Difficult to simply notice and be with images, colours, thoughts that arise without asking why, wanting to understand further, make connections, find meaning.

Frightening to connect with parts of ourselves that feel painful, not good enough, this flesh that we think is too saggy or baggy, this pain that we’ve somehow split off from ourselves because ‘it’  is too much for us to bear.

It’s hard when we both are a body and also have a body, all at the same time.

And yet, being with, being in, being… This is where I keep returning.

I move into my body, remembering what it feels like to inhabit it from the inside out, I notice, with curiosity, a little line of red moving up from the midpoint of my stomach, a pulsing in my right shoulder.

This is where I am right now. This is what I am. Right now.

Such peace in this. Light streams through the window, moves over my eyelids, moves through me and around me and it’s as if I’m breathing with my entire body, every cell of my body opening to receive it.

Sometimes we need techniques, visualisations, processes.

Sometimes we need to be the process.

There are many things in my life right now that I can’t change. And, as I acknowledge that, there comes a point of stillness, of peace.

Surrender.

This is the word I chose last month as my word for 2011. (You can see it here on the altar I created for Amy Palko’s beautifully supportive Bloom By Moon programme.)

I’m very grateful to Andrea for reminding me that surrender begins with the body, with the breath.

Let it be.

Tags: meditation, self-hypnosis, surrender, visualisation
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February 1st, 2011

‘It is very appropriate, at certain times of the day or night, to look deeply into objects at rest…’

- Pablo Neruda

Tags: Neruda, poetry
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January 31st, 2011

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January 27th, 2011

The natural choice for my first ever Word Sauce interview is my dear friend, colleague and ex-doctoral supervisor, Celia Hunt. Celia is a writer, teacher, researcher and consultant in the field of creative writing and personal development.

In fact, it’s probably fair to say that Celia invented the field of creative writing and personal development (although she would never lay claim to this herself).

In 1996 she set up and ran the unique MA programme in Creative Writing and Personal Development at the University of Sussex which, until her retirement last year, recruited students from all over the world and inspired an entire movement of teachers, therapists, healthcare practitioners and workshop facilitators with Celia’s combination of passion, theoretical grounding, creativity and rigorous research enquiry.

Celia was a founder member of Lapidus, the UK-based organisation for the literary arts in personal development. She has pioneered research into writing and wellbeing, has published many papers in the field and is the editor and/or author of three seminal texts: The Self on the Page and Writing: Self and Reflexivity (each with Fiona Sampson) and Therapeutic Dimensions of Autobiography in Creative Writing.

Celia lives in Lewes in Sussex where she enjoys the beauty of the old town, with its castle and ancient houses, its proximity to the Sussex Downs and the sea.

She’s currently working on her next book, Creative Life Writing as a Tool for Transformative Learning, to be published by Routledge in 2012.

So, pull up a chair and get to know a little more about the wonderfully inspiring  Celia Hunt.

Where did it all begin? How did you become interested in creative writing and personal development?
It all began through my own quest to know myself better, to go right back to the beginning. I guess I could say that it began with my reading of Marion Milner’s book A Life of One’s Own, which I must have read in the 1970s. That has always been such an inspiring book for me and, I know, for many other people too. It’s a sort of self-analytic autobiography, in which the author tries to find out through diary writing what makes her happy, presumably because she isn’t happy much of the time. It very much spoke to me about my own dissatisfaction with my life at the time and it encouraged me to start exploring myself through writing autobiographical novels.

That was in the 1980s and early 1990s. Around the same time I went into psychotherapy, so I suppose you could say that I was exploring myself through two different methods: the writing and the therapy. And sometimes they came together because I would take bits of writing into therapy to discuss with my therapist. This was very helpful and stimulating.

Also around that time I started studying the MA in Language, the Arts and Education at the University of Sussex, run by poet Peter Abbs. This involved doing a combination of academic and creative work, so I was able to continue my autobiographical fiction writing for that purpose and also to write some reflective essays on my writing process and that of well-known writers such as Franz Kafka, all of which helped to deepen my thinking about the self in the writing process.

The most important piece of work I did for the MA, from the point of view of my subsequent development, was devising a way of using autobiography as a basis for teaching creative writing, which I subsequently put into practice in a course for the Centre for Continuing Education at Sussex University.

What I found in teaching this course was that using autobiography in this way had the potential to open people up to deep feelings and memories. Some people found this very helpful, but it could also be very upsetting, which made the learning environment very challenging.

All the work I’ve done since, for example in setting up and running the MA in Creative Writing and Personal Development, involvement in setting up Lapidus, and the research I have undertaken, has flowed from the experience of teaching that first course.

How would you describe your creative process? Do you have a routine? How do you like to work?
Because I became a creative writing teacher, and also perhaps because all of my creative writing was a way of understanding why I hadn’t managed to find a meaningful way of being in the world, I stopped doing creative writing when I began to develop a career. Since my retirement in September 2010, I’ve begun to go back to my fiction and poetry, and I’m delighted to be writing creatively again.

But this is a fairly small activity at the moment, because I’m deeply involved in writing another academic book. And now that I have a lot more time at my disposal I do have a regular writing routine: I try to work on the writing for about four hours every morning, with just a short break in the middle. In the afternoons I go for a walk or swim in the local pool. In other words, I try to do body-work rather than mind-work at some point during the day, otherwise I just seize up eventually.

What I have learnt about my writing process is that I have to pace myself, which isn’t always easy, as there is a very impatient part of me that wants to do everything in one go and move onto the next thing!

Sometimes I read in the mornings instead of writing, and I’ve recently discovered the joys (and frustrations) of the Kindle software on my computer, which allows me to download books, some of them free. Wonderful, as long as one doesn’t get carried away!

What are you working on right now?
As I said, I’m writing a new book, Creative Life Writing as a Tool for Transformative Learning, which I’m hoping to finish by the end of the year. It’s going very well now, although it’s taken me a long time to be able to focus on it, and I’m very much enjoying having the time now to work on it at leisure.

Tell us more about the book…
Well, during the early years of convening the MA in Creative Writing and Personal Development lots of students taking it were telling me that they had undergone major change as a result of it, for example, that they had had a breakthrough in their ability to write or to think of themselves as writers or learners, or that they had found the courage to leave their jobs or their partners, in order to find a more meaningful way of being in the world. The word ‘life changing’ came up a lot.

At the same time I was becoming increasingly aware that the programme was very challenging, both to students and tutors, and that the tutor team — in the field of creative writing and personal development generally — needed a deep understanding of how this kind of teaching and learning worked. So I was keen to do an in-depth research project on the MA to explore all these things in more detail.

The opportunity arose in 2004, when I was awarded a National Teaching Fellowship of the Higher Education Academy, with a sum of money to undertake a project of my choice. I was also fortunate enough to be able to raise further money from the British Academy to cover the costs of a research assistant.

So the project began in 2004 with the following aims: to understand better the kinds of changes in sense of self which students of the MA in Creative Writing and Personal Development experienced, the elements of the programme that gave rise to these changes, and the nature of the challenges of this kind of teaching and learning, so as to inform not only creative writing teaching, but other areas of adult, further and higher education where creative life writing might be used as a tool for learning. The book will present the findings of this research project.

What’s your favourite word?
That’s an interesting question! I’ve always felt words bodily, somewhere between my ribs, and sometimes it takes me quite a while to get hold of a word even though I can feel it strongly. A word I have loved for a long time is opprobrium, just for its sound really, not so much its meaning, something about all those hard consonants coming together, I think.

Its literal meaning is an atmosphere of disapproval or bad odour surrounding someone or something, so it’s not a very happy word, but I used it once in a poem set in ancient Greece, which talked about ‘an opprobrium of virgins’ — make of that what you will!

What/who are your three favourite books/writers of all time?
Well, in view of what I said above, Marion Milner’s A Life of One’s Own would have to be at the top of the list. A close second would be Karen Horney’s Neurosis and Human Growth — well actually anything by Karen Horney, as she has been so helpful to me in understanding myself and other people — she was a second-generation Freudian psychoanalyst who emigrated from Germany to America just before the Second World War, and the first woman to take issue with Freud on his views on women.

As to literary writers, my absolute favourite is Joseph Conrad, whose novel Lord Jim I am currently rereading — or rather listening to on audio book — but I also very much like his shorter stories, ‘The Secret Sharer’, ‘Typhoon’, ‘Heart of Darkness’, etc. He has such a wonderfully flowing and visual style of writing.

I have a strong visual imagination, so I particularly like writers who stimulate it without over-stimulating it. I’ve always said, as a creative writing teacher, that writers need to leave space for the reader’s imagination and Conrad does exactly that, in my view. I’m also a great fan of the early Doris Lessing books, The Grass Is Singing, the Children of Violence trilogy, and some of her science fiction books. I would say something very similar about her style as I said about Conrad.

What inspires you?
Generally, rural landscape inspires me — I walk along the top of the South Downs quite a lot — sunshine and blue sky whatever the temperature — the persistence of the natural world and its creatures even in extremes of heat and cold (I am an avid watcher of wildlife programmes!) — human beings’ capacity to change in positive ways — the way creative life writing has the power to bring people closer to themselves, again in positive ways — the human mind’ s capacity for understanding.

How would you write your autobiography in 25 words?
Had potential as a child, but was unable to develop it until she discovered the therapeutic potential of creative writing; since then she has never looked back!

What do you think are the most important issues and challenges for the field of writing and wellbeing in the future?
- Developing programmes of study for people wishing to work with developmental creative writing in education, health and social care, and other areas; since the discontinuation of the MA in Creative Writing and Personal Development at Sussex University, an MSc in Creative Writing for Therapeutic Purposes has been set up at the Metanoia Institute, which I’m delighted to see, but there is scope for more such programs at universities and other institutions; good training, including immersion in both theory and practice, is crucially important for the field.

- Developing a formal accreditation for people wishing to work as therapeutic writing practitioners.

- Continuing and strengthening Lapidus: the Association for the Literary Arts in Personal Development.

What’s coming up for you in 2011 and beyond?
I shall be busy with writing my book for the remainder of this year, as well as continuing to supervise a number of doctoral students at the University of Sussex and running, at Sussex and elsewhere, workshops on creative writing for academic purposes, i.e. using creative writing techniques to help people develop their academic and research writing (see my upcoming website at www.celiahunt.com).

I’m also just starting a three-year Visiting Research Fellowship at the Education Faculty of Canterbury Christ Church University, Kent, which I’m much looking forward to. When the current book is finished, I am hoping to be able to apply myself again to my fiction and poetry writing, not just for personal development this time!

Thank you so much, Celia. I look forward to reading your next book and I wish you all the very best for these new exciting projects.

Go to www.wordsauce.com to find out more about ‘developmental creative writing’ and writing for wellbeing.

Tags: Celia Hunt, creative writing, creativity, developmental writing, therapeutic writing, writing in education, writing therapy
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January 20th, 2011

If you write things – as part of your professional work or as part of your personal adventures and explorations – I wonder, do you read yourself kindly?

Do you read your own words with curiosity and loving attention, as you might read the work of a friend?

Do you put down what you’re doing – all the other stuff – to really pay attention for a few moments, as you might to a small child bringing you something that they’ve made, a painting or a poem that they’ve poured themselves into?

I know that I’m still learning to read myself like this.

Sometimes I get impatient and annoyed with myself, cringing inwardly that I’m just not good enough; and who do I think I am anyway, working on such utter nonsense?

I think for many writers – perhaps for most people who write (or paint or make things)? – the process of reading ourselves on the page can be challenging, even painful.

Depending on how we’re feeling at a certain moment, we can find ourselves in love with our own words or deeply disappointed and frustrated.

And the idea of somehow being kinder to ourselves can call up horrible fears – of not being good enough, of failing, of putting something out there that is just, well frankly, laughable. Who wants to be a sloppy writer of mushy, overly sentimental words? Better to be mean, harsh, unkind with yourself so that noone else will be able to get the dig in first. Right?

I’ve written here before about my belief in the power of acceptance and self-kindness. Writing and journaling exercises can be powerful ways to cultivate more self-compassion in our lives.

The process of writing – or becoming absorbed in any creative pursuit, for that matter – can be a process of becoming more aware of our own internal thoughts, silencing our internal ‘noise,’ learning to look at the world around us in new ways.

The process of reading what we’ve written – or really seeing what we’ve made – can become an opportunity to read ourselves and know ourselves with growing awareness, compassion and kindness.

I find it very helpful to think about an ‘ideal reader’ for my words – someone who is loving, kind, supportive, encouraging. Over the years, I’ve got to know this ideal reader better. She lives somewhere inside me (dare I say, ideal reader, somewhere inside my heart or is that just too soppy?), gently soothing me when I’m feeling annoyed with myself, dissolving my fears about what’s ‘not good enough.’

I only have to remember to invite her in to remind myself to read myself with greater kindness.

What does your ideal reader look like? Who are you writing to, or producing for, at the moment?

If your reader is harsh, unkind, critical in an unhelpful way, it might be useful to take some time to close your eyes, take a couple of deep slow breaths and invite in a different kind of presence, someone or some being (because for some people, it’s an animal or a tree or a landscape) who listens to you and receives what you make with unconditional kindness.

What does this ideal reader of you have to tell you?  It might be surprising to discover what s/he/it has to say.

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January 14th, 2011

If you’ve been following my story of the unfolding events in my life over the last couple of weeks you’ll know that, in addition to the other tools in my therapeutic/developmental toolkit, I like to use writing to process difficult or challenging experiences.

Writing and the way that it can help us to make meaning out of experiences which, at certain points in our lives, appear to be utterly devoid of any meaning, really is my  passion and my area of special interest and research.

So I’m excited and delighted to be relaunching Word Sauce and a new online home for my Word Sauce Programme (now available as two self-contained and modular e-courses) right here.

If you’re interested, in any sense – perhaps as someone who longs to write or to write more or as a therapist, educator, coach or healthcare professional – in the connections between writing and wellbeing, please do come and take a look. Right now, there is no other networking site (to my knowledge) where people interested in writing for their personal or professional development can connect, ask questions and exchange experience and ideas.

Over the next few weeks and months, I’ll be posting articles, videos and links to relevant research. There is a Professional Network area for people who use writing in their work with others to share ideas, discuss best practice in our growing field and generally hang out with one another.

The reason that I can offer this for free is because I’m also using the space to host private areas where participants in my courses can download course materials and engage in the course discussions and writing exercises.

Over the next couple of weeks, I’m going to be posting more here about writing therapeutically. Today, I thought I’d begin by talking about the idea of a ‘writing therapy.’ What is it exactly? People ask me all the time.

And it’s a very good question. Right now, there is actually no such thing as ‘writing therapy’ or a ‘writing therapist,’ although there are many people working in health care or as private therapists who use writing as part of their work. This usually takes the form of facilitating writing workshop groups in which people engage together in writing exercises and then reflect on their experiences and insights; or in one-to-one work, usually as part of homework tasking or sometimes within the session itself.

In terms of best practice, I think it’s fair to say that there is currently a very rudimentary framework for this work – both practically or theoretically. There are many good accredited courses in art therapy right now, within which practitioners can learn to work using writing.

In the States, the National Association for Poetry Therapy runs an accredited training through which it’s possible to become a ‘poetry therapist’ and offers practitioners supervision and continuing professional development.

In the UK, the organisation LAPIDUS (Creative words for health and wellbeing) currently has around 200 members with interests in writing and also bibliotherapy (the therapeutic ‘prescription’ and reading of texts); whilst NAWE (National Association of Writers in Education) brings together writers involved in teaching creative writing either formally or informally in schools, unversities and in the community.

Within these two groups there has historically been a somewhat political divide between people who feel that writing is not ‘therapeutic’ and should not be taught in that way and those – myself included – who feel that taking a certain approach to writing can be enormously helpful in terms of our personal development and our development as writers.

In my experience, drawing upon tools and approaches that help us to get our feelings into words can help us to extend our writing skills, establish a regular and more fulfilling creative practice and change the way that we read ourselves.

There are many writers doing wonderful work running workshops for the general public in healthcare and educational settings. Some of them, I think, struggle to support workshop participants with the emotions and feelings that can emerge for them because they may not have any formal training in this area. I often meet writers who tell me this. So I think there is a real need for further training and support.

Over the past two decades, the key figure in terms of research into the health benefits of writing has been J. W. Pennebaker. Pennebaker developed a paradigm called ‘expressive writing’ that focuses on the benefits of expressing ourselves and getting our feelings out onto the page. He describes the process of writing as a kind of catharsis and his research has found benefits across a range of contexts, including measuring outcomes such as lowered blood pressure, faster rehabilitation periods after surgery, reports of improved wellbeing after redundancy, etc.

Pennebaker’s paradigm involves asking people to write for twenty minutes about something that is important to them.

Personally, although the research in expressive writing is enormously helpful and has served to establish a basic foundation for the place of writing in healthcare, I think it’s time to go beyond expressive writing to look at the many different writing exercises and approaches we can use; and also at what happens when we begin to shape our writing, to craft it and redraft it, to share it with other people, to read ourselves on the page. If you’re interested in reading a basic overview of my thoughts in this area, you might want to check out a paper I wrote for the Journal of Health Psychology in 2009 on this topic here.

In recent years, Celia Hunt at the University of Sussex has been pioneering research into these aspects of writing. Celia was my  superviser for my doctoral research between 2003 and 2006 and her rigour in researching this field is inspiring. Sadly, since Celia has taken retirement, her unique MA programme in Creative Writing and Personal Development, where I initially studied and then taught, has closed. She tells me that she’ll soon have a web site up and running with links to her current freelance work, books and activities and she’ll be among the people I plan to interview here on the blog and over at Word Sauce.

That’s a mini snapshot of the current situation in terms of writing and therapeutic writing. These days, I like to call the kind of work I do ‘developmental writing’ because it captures the very wide spectrum of reasons why people might want to engage in writing for welbeing.

It’s not always therapy per se (in the way that we tend to connote that word), unless people want to engage in a particular framework with me. It can simply be about exploring feelings, connecting with a sense of creativity and joy, finding your flow.

Over on the Word Sauce site, I’ll be fleshing this picture out, little by little, drawing together lists of resources and practitioners.

Please do come and say ‘hello.’

Tags: poetry therapy, therapeutic writing, wrting therapy
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January 3rd, 2011

This New Year’s Eve, my dad collapsed on the living-room floor.

My dad, the strong, capable, fixer-of-things, the man who for most of his 66 years has been dedicated to running and fitness and, as founder of a very popular local running club, is passionate about cultivating fitness and self-belief in others. My dad, falling to the floor at my sister’s feet.

It’s the kind of phone call we all dread. I rushed to the hospital.

Over the next twenty-four hours, I sat willing the colour to return to my dad’s face. I held his hand and looked into his eyes and saw that he was already somewhere far away from me – in a place of pain, in that in-between place to which people retreat when it all becomes too much for the body to bear.

For hours I sat listening to the blip and bleep of the monitors. I watched the graphs – mysterious translations of my dad’s heart rhythm and blood pressure – moving on the screen above his head. Those green and white lines seemed like the threads of his life, unfurling above his head in delicate webs, and I sat and watched them and willed them to bccome stronger whilst we chatted about nothing in particular, each of us complicit, knowing all the time that he was slipping further away, each hour a little further beyond the bright lights and clatter of the ward.

Leaving him last night was the hardest thing I have ever done. I did it because that is the thing you do. I did it because I had to. Visiting time was over.

But what I wanted was to lie down on the floor next to his bed so that I could be there if he needed an extra blanket. What I wanted was to roll the pain up in that extra blanket and carry it for him. What I wanted was to scream and cry and rage and demand of everyone and anyone that Something More Be Done. And, should I be tried and tested, should even more love be required to heal him, then I would love him harder, longer, stronger, louder.

Later that night, my dad was transferred in an ambulance with blue flashing lights to Leeds where a team of eight emergency staff performed a state-of-the-art angioplasty.

Only minutes after it was completed, my dad described to me on the phone how he had seen his heart pumping on a monitor from many different angles and how he had felt his cheeks and forehead infuse with warmth for the first time in weeks as the surgeons cleared blockages in a major artery.

Today, my dad has made the journey back: back from the critical care unit in Leeds to the ward in York, where skilled staff will monitor his progress and chart the next steps for the further procedures he now needs; and back from that other place, that strange space where we go for a while when we’re exhausted with pain and fear, whilst our bodies get on with the business of breathing, of living.

Tonight, whilst my dad told us the story of his journey over the last few difficult hours, I looked into his face and welcomed him back. I thought not about how fragile we all are but about how strong and resilient we are, even in the face of such seemingly superhuman challenges.

My dad’s heart is not quite mended. There is still some way for us all to travel together. But tonight I am giving thanks. Tonight, my heart is brimful.

I’m so grateful to everyone who has supported my dad, my family and me over the last couple of days with messages and thoughts and kindness.

I’m so thankful that I live in a time and place of amazing technologies, with medics who are willing and able to save the lives of people like my dad every day with their expertise, hard work and dedication. I’m humbled and awed by what I’ve seen.

And this New Year, I wish you – belatedly but from a place that I couldn’t have accessed or understood just a couple of days ago – a deep-down knowing in your heart, and the courage to trust that your heart is stronger and more resilient than you might ever imagine, that it is always ready to open a little more, always ready to mend.

Tags: heart, love
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December 22nd, 2010

Tomorrow, I’m going to be popping in to BBC Radio York to talk about happiness.

Given the UK government’s announcement of research leading to a Happiness Index – a measure of national well-being that will help to shape policy – we’re going to be talking about what happiness is and how it can best be measured.

At this time of year, lots of us begin to reflect back over our year and set our intentions for the year to come.

In 2010, what made you most happy? Or perhaps a better way of phrasing that might be, what was happiness for you?

I’d love to hear from you. Please do message me on Facebook or Twitter or add your comments here.

To get you thinking, here are a few starting-points from my blog over the past couple of years:

Happy new year, happy new you?

Happiness ‘rubs off on others’

Research into the secrets of what makes us happy – from the last century

So far, the happiness themes emerging on Facebook and Twitter are:  connection with other people, challenge and a sense of purpose.

How about you?

I’ll cover as many of your thoughts as possible on the radio tomorrow, so please do get in touch. And thank you so much for your help!

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December 16th, 2010

Today I’m happy to be able to officially announce that I’m now offering coaching sessions over phone or Skype.

Over the past year, an increasing number of people have been asking me to work with them over the phone. It’s something I’ve done for a long time on an informal basis but, before putting together a formal package of phone coaching, I wanted to be sure that I had all the right tools in place to enable me to offer my approach out in a way that will really work for people wherever in the country/world/their lives they might find themselves.

Clients signing-up to my phone coaching package will have access to the same  self-hypnosis/mindfulness tools as clients who consult with me in person here in York.

We’ll work together over four one-hour calls (usually weekly, but we’ll decide together what fits best with your schedule) and, just like my face-to-face clients, I’ll be sending you a questionnaire to fill in to help us to define and clarify the issue we need to work on together and I’ll be setting you ‘homework’ to do in between sessions.

I’m really excited that my work is evolving in this new direction. It means that I can make solution-focused, results-oriented work available to people when they really need it on a more flexible basis.

If you’re geographically distant from Yorkshire but want to work with me or if you work long hours or struggle to arrange childcare, then this might just make things that bit easier for you.

You can find out more about working with me either in person or over the phone here.

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December 13th, 2010

Throughout December, I’m (imperfectly and as much as possible) responding to the #reverb10 writing prompts, a wonderful end-of-year project encouraging people to ‘reflect on this year and manifest what’s next’ through the sharing of stories.

December 12 – Body Integration
This year, when did you feel the most integrated with your body? Did you have a moment where there wasn’t mind and body, but simply a cohesive YOU, alive and present?

(Author: Patrick Reynolds)

Frippery

The night
is a silk sleeve turned inside out.

The breeze
is a handkerchief against my cheek.

When I walk, each of my steps
is a stitch in the weaving

of air. I will not fold
myself neatly.

Sophie Nicholls, December 2010

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December 7th, 2010

Tags: community, reverb10
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November 26th, 2010

There’s nothing mystical or special or ‘woo’ about hypnosis.

As Pema Chodron, the renowned meditation teacher writes in her book Start Where You Are (which I thoroughly recommend), there is ‘nothing holy’ about bringing your awareness to your breathing, the inside of your mind, noticing the movement of your thoughts or the sensations you experience inside and around your body.

She quotes Bodhidharma (the Zen master who brought Zen from India to China) who taught that enlightenment is “Lots of space, nothing holy.”

She continues: ‘There’s nothing that you can think or feel that gets put in the category of “bad.” There’s nothing that you can think or feel that gets put in the category of “wrong.” It’s all good juicy stuff – the manure of waking up…  the art of living in the present moment.’

Self-hypnosis is nothing mystical, nothing holy. You don’t need to sit on a meditation cushion or wear special robes or create a particular environment.

You just need to find a space where you can allow your body to feel comfortable for a while and where you can be undisturbed for ten or twenty minutes.

And as you bring your awareness to your thoughts, you might experience your conscious mind drifting around or chattering away. And that’s just fine. There’s nothing you can think that is “bad” or “not good enough.”

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November 23rd, 2010

For the last couple of evenings, I’ve been engrossed in Elizabeth Taylor’s first novel.

Not that Elizabeth Taylor. No, the other one here, who seems to be described everywhere as a wonderful and hugely ‘underrated’ novelist.

I first stumbled across her Angel in the Oxfam bookshop in York and I just couldn’t put it down. Its fifteeen-year-old eponymous heroine retreats into a world of books, dreaming of taking control of her life by becoming a feted ‘authoress.’ She has some early success too but I won’t spoil all the wonderful subtleties and nuances for you.

Now I’m devouring the exquisite At Mrs Lippincote’s, in which Julia, a wonderfully unsatisfactory officer’s wife who just won’t stick to the ‘little rules’ of appropriate behaviour, struggles with her own inner yearnings and longings.

Julia too likes to escape into a world of writers and literary novels. She is also intensely curious about the world and the people she meets in her small corner of it.

Here’s a passage I read last night as Julia goes out alone for the first time in the small town her husband has been posted to and begins to observe the people around her:

‘There would be raw material enough to weave dreams, for many an hour, washing up, ironing or shelling peas, those times when the body divides, one part set down firmly before the sink, but the mind all the time tracking, veering, going forward at a fair pace in no particular direction, not quite so much like Emily Bronte learning German grammar while she kneaded bread as Julia liked to suppose’ (p.99).

I love that.

…’those times when the body divides.’ Isn’t that just a perfect description of how our inner lives can be, the body here, the mind going off somewhere else?

And that inward romanticising that Elizabeth Taylor seems to be poking gentle fun at in Julia who longs for something more.

Because it is funny and silly and Julia does take everything much too seriously; much too seriously for her own good, as her husband constantly reminds her.

And at the same time, Julia’s story moves me deeply. Because it’s a serious business, this.

It’s the story of a thwarted self-realisation, a woman who hasn’t yet found a way to be comfortably and passionately herself,  inside her own skin, and so is always dividing, part of her escaping somewhere else.

I can’t wait to find out how it ends.

I think I want Julia to start telling her husband’s harsh and critical cousin (herself frustrated and trapped by her own stultifying self-expectations) to get stuffed (or whatever they would have said in the 1940s).

I want her to run out into the terribly nice street and start yelling; or perhaps make a terrible scene in Mrs Lippincote’s drawing-room by telling a few people just what she thinks.

I want Julia to connect, really connect with her passion and reclaim her life from the people who keep telling her how to live it ‘properly.’

Perhaps she can even begin to write down some of the stories she’s constantly making up inside her own head.

I’d have loved to have met this Eizabeth Taylor (and the other one too!), who died in 1965. What a  perceptive and remarkable woman she must have been.

Tags: At Mrs Lippincote's, Elizabeth Taylor, self-realisation
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November 18th, 2010

There’s something happening around the internet this week – in some of the blogs I read and on Twitter. It’s called The Girl Effect.

It’s what happens when a community of women bring their voices – and words and photographs and stories and hearts – together to talk about something they feel passionate about.

I have a sister. Her name is Verity. Some of you may have come across her already because, whenever I write something on Facebook or post something here on my blog, she is always among the first to comment, to cheer me on or cheer me up. I’m truly lucky to have this gift of sisterhood and the support of so many other bold, brave beautiful women in my life. (You know who you are.)

Some of the women I meet through my work as a therapist and on my e-courses don’t have that kind of support. They get in touch because they need a place to talk things through. Perhaps they need to regather their strengths or grieve for a loss. Perhaps they need to work out what to do next, reconnect with their creativity and talents, celebrate their achievements or uncover their deepest desires.

Don’t we all need a safe place to do that sometimes? I’m in awe of the amazing women I work with who remind me, every day, of just how great girls are. Given half a chance.

And that’s the thing, isn’t it?

We all need that chance.

But some girls never get it. There are girls I’ll never meet, girls like Anita in the video below, who move me with their courage in working out a way forward and then helping others to work out a way forward too – fighting for the right to raise enough money to educate themselves, for the right to dream and plan and progress in the world, despite never having been given the chance.

Did you know that there are at least 50 million 12-year-old girls in the world right now who are at risk – actually at risk – in terms of their basic safety and health? I didn’t really know that. Well, maybe I did, as a vague possibility somewhere out there on the edge of my awareness – but I didn’t really know it. Not in those terms.

It feels overwhelming when I think about where to start, what to do, how I could even begin to help with a problem that seems so huge.

50 million. That’s huge.

But when I think about my sister and my love for her and how much her love for me sustains me and carries me forwards, the solution seems simple.

Sisterhood.

Corny? Naive? A bit 1970′s?

Anita doesn’t think so. She just wants the other girls in the village where she lives to be given a chance. I’ll leave her to tell you more. She can say it all so much better than me.

Please, if you can, join The Girl Effect in time for International Children’s Day on 20 November. You could get involved, donate some money and/or join with Tara Sophia – another wonderful woman who inspires me – and write about it on your blog and link back to her campaign here. Thank you.

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November 17th, 2010

Over the last couple of evenings I’ve been teaching myself how to knit ‘in the round.’

This rather strange assemblage of wool, needles and plastic cable is actually my nascent knitting project on a singular circular needle.

Oh, yes.

Since I started knitting again about a year ago, for the first time since I was a child, I’ve avoided all the patterns that ask for ‘knitting in the round.’ I didn’t even realise I was doing it. I didn’t even know how I was talking to myself about it in my own mind.

I just knew that this ‘knitting in the round’ thing looked incredibly complicated. And probably required equipment. Tools. A demonstration, perhaps.

Divide stitches evenly over four double-ended needles.

Cast on using a circular needle…

And then, a couple of evenings ago, I actually noticed what I was doing – the avoidance, the mini horror stories, the voices, the fear.

And then it occurred to me: ‘What are you doing to yourself? This is only knitting. What’s the worst that can happen? Erm… You’ll have to unravel it and start again?’

And that was enough.

I found a couple of short videos on You Tube and worked my way through knitting across five needles, two circular needles and finally ‘the magic loop method.’

And, guess what? It wasn’t anywhere near as difficult as I’d imagined. A little fiddly, perhaps. But I’m now on my way to a pair of lovely wrist warmers in tweedy grey Aran yarn.

I just love the buzz that comes from noticing and then dissolving those niggly thoughts about something I thought I couldn’t really do.  I wonder what else has been terrifying me without me even noticing?

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November 9th, 2010

Today is my birthday and, this morning, I woke up with this huge upswell of happiness and love in my heart. As it’s my birthday, I hope you’ll indulge me in indulging it for a moment. Because I want to say thank you.

Today I feel so darned lucky to be alive and working, surrounded by so many  wonderful, supportive and encouraging people.

Please just know that I am so incredibly grateful.

Thank you.

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November 8th, 2010

I’ve written about the power of ritual before. Here, for example (with bonus lyrics).

I’m incredibly curious and interested in the ways that we use ritual in our lives – and the extent to which we seem to be losing some of the rituals that have defined us or bound us together on this planet for centuries. I think perhaps it’s time for us to create some new ones.

By rituals, I mean both those particular events or actions that we choose to create in our own individual lives to consciously mark or celebrate something; and those times when we come together collectively to do the same.

A ritual could be as simple as waking early in the morning to watch the sun rise or lighting a candle and meditating for ten minutes or writing down in your journal everything that you’re grateful for in your life.

I think the point, though, is to do it purposefully, and with intention.

On Saturday, I went to a community bonfire in a small vllage north of York. People had come together to organise a torchlight procession from the village green out to the sports field.

We wove our way in a little band down the main street and into the dark where the first torch bearers lit the bonfire. We’ve been doing this for centuries in one way or another. Lighting up the dark. Getting ready for winter. Warming ourselves on the last flames as the year turns and our lives with it.

For me, this time has always had an extra significance. It’s my birthday tomorrow and the bonfire parties and fireworks at this time of year always give me a secret thrill. I remember as a very small girl watching my dad lighting a catherine wheel he’d nailed to the fence post and turning to me with a smile, saying, ‘This is for you, Sophie.’

And I suppose that’s what I mean when I talk about ritual. I’m so grateful that my dad created that moment for me, lit the touchpaper that has continued to burn for me so brightly down the years. And some years, just remembering that, looking up into the night sky, has been more than enough to light up my own dark.

I think we badly need rituals right now. There is so much doom and gloom out there; so much potential dark.

Here’s the challange. How can we create small moments that make new meaning out of our lives, celebrate our hopes and dreams, our trials and achievements, what we’ve learned, the journeys we’ve made this far, what we’ve come to understand? How can we share them with the people around us?

And perhaps, with purpose and intention, everything can become a ritual. Yes, a dark field lit by stars, a place at the edge of the fire, a new sun rising can do that for us, creating a space for us to step out of time and connect with what’s bigger or wider than us and what’s deep within us and what we’re part of.

And also preparing a meal for people we love; or writing a letter to someone telling them how much we cherish them in our lives; or making a space for ourselves at the end of each day to reflect and to choose to focus on what we’ve already made happen rather than what we haven’t yet done. These things too.

Whatever it might be for you, I think we need more of it.

And as I looked up into the sky on Saturday, I had a thought and I just wanted to share it with you here and find out what you think too.

I began to think that maybe this is our time, for our generations now, on our particular little corner of the planet, to consciously and purposefully and collectively decide, to set our intentions about what we’re really here for, how we’re going to live, what we choose to celebrate and what we’re going to spread around.

Tags: healing, love, ritual
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