Writing the Mind Alive: The Proprioceptive Method for Finding Your Authentic Voice (Paperback)

~ (Author), Simon Tobin (Author) "It was Ralph Waldo Emerson who said, "Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that iron string..." (more)
Key Phrases: serene head, proprioceptive information, unlined paper, Proprioceptive Writing, Proprioceptive Question, Mary Katherine (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description

Discover the revolutionary writing practice that can transform your life!

In 1976, Linda Trichter Metcalf, then a university English professor, sat down with pen and paper and intuitively started a self-guided writing practice that helped to bring herself into focus and clarify her life as never before. She and a colleague, Tobin Simon, introduced this original method into their classrooms. They experienced such solid response from their students that, for the last twenty-five years, they have devoted themselves to teaching what has now become the respected practice of Proprioceptive Writing®–in workshops, secondary and elementary schools, and college psychology and writing classes around the country, among them the New School University.

“Proprioception” comes from the Latin proprius, meaning “one’s own,” and this writing method helps synthesize emotion and imagination, generating authentic insight and catharsis. Proprioceptive Writing® is not formal writing, nor is it automatic or stream-of-consciousness writing. Requiring a regular, disciplined practice in a quiet environment, the method uses several aids to deepen attention and free the writer within: Baroque music, a candle, a pad, and a pen. Presenting Proprioceptive Writing® in book form for the first time, Writing the Mind Alive shows how you, too, can use it to
• Focus awareness, dissolve inhibitions, and build self-trust
• Unburden your mind and resolve emotional conflicts
• Connect more deeply with your spiritual self
• Write and speak with strength and clarity
• Enhance the benefits of psychotherapy
• Awaken your senses and emotions
• Liberate your creative energies

Featuring actual “writes” by students of all ages, Writing the Mind Alive is a catalyst for mental and emotional aliveness that can truly enrich the rest of your life.

From the Inside Flap

Discover the revolutionary writing practice that can transform your life!

In 1976, Linda Trichter Metcalf, then a university English professor, sat down with pen and paper and intuitively started a self-guided writing practice that helped to bring herself into focus and clarify her life as never before. She and a colleague, Tobin Simon, introduced this original method into their classrooms. They experienced such solid response from their students that, for the last twenty-five years, they have devoted themselves to teaching what has now become the respected practice of Proprioceptive Writing®?in workshops, secondary and elementary schools, and college psychology and writing classes around the country, among them the New School University.

?Proprioception? comes from the Latin proprius, meaning ?one?s own,? and this writing method helps synthesize emotion and imagination, generating authentic insight and catharsis. Proprioceptive Writing® is not formal writing, nor is it automatic or stream-of-consciousness writing. Requiring a regular, disciplined practice in a quiet environment, the method uses several aids to deepen attention and free the writer within: Baroque music, a candle, a pad, and a pen. Presenting Proprioceptive Writing® in book form for the first time, Writing the Mind Alive shows how you, too, can use it to
? Focus awareness, dissolve inhibitions, and build self-trust
? Unburden your mind and resolve emotional conflicts
? Connect more deeply with your spiritual self
? Write and speak with strength and clarity
? Enhance the benefits of psychotherapy
? Awaken your senses and emotions
? Liberate your creative energies

Featuring actual ?writes? by students of all ages, Writing the Mind Alive is a catalyst for mental and emotional aliveness that can truly enrich the rest of your life.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 240 pages
• Publisher: Ballantine Books; 1 edition (May 28, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0345438582
• ISBN-13: 978-0345438584
• Product Dimensions: 8.1 x 5.4 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (14 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #187,377 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

40 of 41 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars If you've gone as far as you can with freewriting,, August 9, 2002

By	Lady Seashore - See all my reviews

morning pages and the like, this book is worth serious consideration. The authors take a clear, compassionate and even-handed approach to the practice of writing. If those other techniques have left you wanting, I strongly recommend you buy this book, read it and practice the technique for 30 days, as the authors recommend. I did and my writing improved immediately.

While PW doesn't go as far as to guide the reader on how to create structure, it can take your writing to a deeper level. For my money, it beats reeling out random thought after random thought into a notebook or computer screen by a country mile.

The authors also make a case for PW offering other benefits such a acquiring deeper personal understanding plus other psychological and spiritual benefits. If you become adept at PW, those extra enrichments appear to be possible as well.

Overall, the book is highly readable and the Proprioceptive Writing technique is explained in detail. The examples are terrific and inspiring. And, to my delight, the authors tactfully address other popular writing methods. Their approach: free the writer vs. unleashing the limitless amount of thoughts we all have simply works.

P.S. The other reviewers here who dismissed the book and validity of the PW technique as a serious writing tool, should take another look. The old saying applies here: It's better to light a candle than to curse the darkness.

79 of 91 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Tubular Bells, Book, and Candle, July 16, 2002

By	Ruth Edlund "dark goddess of replevin" (King County, Washington:) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This book teaches an interesting technique. My chief quarrel with the book is that the authors present it as a virtual panacea, which I think overstates their case.

After following the technique carefully for some time, I can report the following. Here is its essence: you can deepen your powers of insight and develop a meaningful writing practice by doing the following regularly, several times a week, thirty-five minutes at a stretch:

(1) Light a candle
(2) Play Baroque music (the slower stuff)
(3) Write on unlined paper
(4) When meaningful, ambiguous or loaded terms emerge in your writing, always ask "What do I mean by _____?", which is the "proprioceptive" question. Proprioception is usually used to refer to our sense of where we are in our own bodies, but the authors adapt it to refer to a sense of orientation in our own minds.

The first two are meant to create a sense of ritual. Nice, but hardly necessary. The unlined paper is meant to convey a sense of freedom and spontaneity, and strikes me a useless requirement. The touchstone of the authors' method, and really the only necessary part, is the persistent reflection on what one means by the terms one uses, both as one works through each individual "Write," and as one regularly sets pen to paper day after day, month after month, year after year.

The guidance this book provides on introducing precision and clarity into one's writing and one's thoughts is useful. A structure that gently encourages insight can hardly be harmful. But many individuals who keep journals for an extended period of time, or who cultivate an unwritten meditation practice, are already writing proprioceptively without candles and Baroque music.

The authors' enthusiasm about their technique is odd for something that seems frankly a touch mechanical; the spirits that they invoke are denatured and bland. To write well, write often. The candle is entirely optional.

21 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Writing the Mind Alive, June 13, 2002

By	Susan E. Carter, Ph.D. (Austin, Texas) - See all my reviews

From my experience at Proprioceptive Writing workshops over the years, I know that Linda Metcalf and Toby Simon are inspired teachers. When I heard of the publication of their book, Writing the Mind Alive, I was intrigued but at the same time wondered: Would the voices I knew from the workshop come through in book form? Would Linda and Toby be able to describe Proprioceptive Writing in such a way that readers would be able to start their own practice on the basis of the book?
"There's no such thing as 'the greatest'," Linda said at my first Proprioceptive Writing workshop in 1988. This isn't performance, she was saying. For me, at that moment, her words were liberating, because as a would-be fiction writer I was intimately and painfully aware of "the greatest." It was out there somewhere. I heard Linda; I listened.
"Write what you hear," they said. "Listen to what you write, and always be ready to ask the Proprioceptive Question." The Proprioceptive Question is what sets Proprioceptive Writing apart from other forms of "free" writing. When you come to a word that resonates (e.g., "the greatest"), you write, "What do I mean by the greatest?" And you listen, and you write. It's a simple move, but its effects are dramatic: you slow down, you move inward, you access the concrete details of experience and memory that lie behind the intersection between the word and the often unrecognized emotions that are attached to it.
Writing the Mind Alive, I was happy to discover, delivers. The book succeeds in making the practice of Proprioceptive Writing accessible; you don't have to attend a workshop in order to get started (although you might well be motivated to attend one, after reading the book). Metcalf and Simon describe the nuts-and-bolts of practicing Proprioceptive Writing (the Proprioceptive Question is, to me, at the heart of it, but there are other elements), and they also share with their readers the stories of many students--vignettes that convey the tentativeness of beginnings and the development of trust in these writers' own voices. Not just as "writers" in the usual sense, but as listeners who are slowly but surely learning to tune in to what lies beneath the nattering that we so often take for our thinking. Slowing down, asking the Proprioceptive Question--not with the attitude of a critic but with the attitude of a curious listener--the writer learns that every thought--even the most prosaic--may turn out to be the road to somewhere interesting in the internal landscape, the intérieur non moi. The vignettes give a sense of the texture of the practice, beyond the concrete details, the "how-to."
For me, the book also offered deeper insight into the dual potential of Proprioceptive Writing. It is helpful as a means of improving writing (as the authors discuss in chapter 3), but it is also valuable as a therapeutic/spiritual discipline. Because of my own personal focus on writing as a form of self-expression, as opposed to self-exploration, I was somewhat blind to this aspect of the practice. After reading Writing the Mind Alive, though, I see that the Proprioceptive Question--which to me forms the heart of the practice--is also a means for self-exploration. The Proprioceptive Question (What do I mean by -_____?) leads you inward, or downward, moving you toward recovering the concrete details of memory/experience. This is good for story writing, but it also helps you to foster that small but crucial space between you and your thoughts--the space that allows you to know that although you experience thought and emotion, you are not these thoughts and emotions. If you are interested in exploring writing as an interior journey, Writing the Mind Alive is a good place to start.