This Potent Summer Series started with a lot of noise.
We looked at how the potency that drives our creative practice can get stifled by all kinds of noise, both external and internal.
We also talked about the static noise that’s created when we try to distance from the intensity inside ourselves — and often end up pushing away the stories we want to tell in the process.
In the last blog, I talked about “the radio within,” a metaphor that can help people understand what it means to work on a foundational level of the body and nervous system.
It’s not just about turning down the noise that obscures what we’re listening for.
It’s also about enhancing the music.
Pleasing vs. Potent
Learning to work on this neuroplastic level isn’t about being relaxed all time and listening to beautiful, calm music. As we know, the music under all the noise isn’t all Enya!
Instead, when we learn to tune in to “the richness underneath it all,” we discover the landscapes and stories we’ve been waiting to tap into.
The music inside of us, the stories we yearn to tell, can also be like the complex, discordant notes of Stravinsky or the punk music wafting from a back room in London in the 1970s or (my inner music) a plaintive ballad sung on a karaoke machine at 2 in the morning.
Hearing what’s there is all about meeting ourselves exactly where we are — all of ourselves, including the fragments, the fuzziness, the chaos and the silences.
By working on this foundational level of the body and nervous system, we learn to bring our whole selves to this tuning of the radio.
And we learn that working deeply with neuroplastic principles in creative practice is different than “just relaxing” to write.
But how do we learn to tune this inner radio?
Approaches that work on this neuroplastic level, like Sense Writing and the Feldenkrais Method, grow capacity in the landscape of the body and sensation — so we can learn to be present with all of what we encounter or experience, be engaged and whole in it, rather than racing to fix it or heal it or expel it or explain it away.
So that when we feel a calling, we can actually hear it.
A Gift Sequence: Tuning Our Radio
As artists, discomfort and intensity can often be a guide, even a gift. It’s often what calls us to want to write or create in the first place.
For this series’ gift (at the link below), I wanted to share a Sense Writing sequence that can help you explore different ways of being actively engaged with all your sensation, the wondering and curiosity, yes, but also your discomfort and uncertainty. Because growing your capacity is the key to a potent creative practice.
This movement and writing sequence is probably the most advanced that I’ve ever shared as a gift. You might feel the trial and effort as you explore the non-habitual, and as you notice the different tones, notes, and colors that may emerge.
But in practicing, in this gentle but engaged way, you may also uncover something new — not just in your story but in your ability to be present with it.
And I hope it will also act as a reminder the next time you notice the thoughts or fragments or images floating inside you, maybe disconnected, or a sticky feeling you can’t put into words yet, that you can allow yourself to exist with what’s there.
To feel all the fragments and fuzziness and discordant notes. And perhaps whole worlds will start to compose themselves.
All you need is a notebook, pen, and the floor.
Enjoy,
Madelyn
