Body and Soul

We have become accustomed to separating our bodies from the rest of our being. We live inside our heads—inside our brains—and ignore many of the messages that come to us from our skin and bellies, our necks and feet. And then when we sit down to write, we try to express ourselves with words that have no body substance. We say things like:

“I was scared.”
“The man was angry.”
“Summer makes me happy, even when I’m nervous.”
“She woke up feeling sad.”

We use these emotion words as a shorthand—after all, everyone, even little kids, knows what it means to be scared or sad—and we all assume we know what we mean. But do we? Does my fear feel like yours? And by simply reading that someone is sad, do you feel sad?

So what if instead we wrote:

“I had a knot in my belly that made my heart pound, my hands sweat, and my hands tremble.”

“The man’s lips pulled back from his teeth, the cords in his neck stood out like ropes, and I swore I could see the hair on his head rising like hackles.”

“I feel summer’s warmth against my skin, I breathe in the green scent of fresh-mown grass, and the constant cicada-buzz lulls my jangled nerves.”

“When she woke up, her room was filled with shadows and the damp scent of mold. Even the thought of getting up made her shake, and she buried her tears in her pillow.”

Notice how much stronger these longer sentences are, how much more interesting—and how each connects to a body-feeling rather than an abstract word for an emotion.

The Western world has a long history of denigrating the body, saying that we shouldn’t trust it, that it’s the source of sin. Flesh is bad, spirit is good. But the idea of the Incarnation is that body and soul can’t be separated. The Divine doesn’t float around in an abstract, spiritual realm. Instead, the Divine is right here, in the experience of our bodies.
 
Becoming more aware of your own body deepens your connection to your soul—and it will strengthen your writing. As you learn to pay closer attention to the messages your body sends you, you will be able to bring this awareness to your writing. That will not only make your words both more interesting and more precise. It will also connect you more deeply to their souls.

Ellyn Sanna is the center of Soul Writing. She has been an author, editor, and writing mentor for more than 25 years, working on hundreds of books on a variety of topics. To learn more about Ellyn, click here.