Writing the Mind Alive

✍ Scribed by Linda Trichter Metcalf

• Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
• Year: 2008
• Tongue: English
• Category: Library

✦ Synopsis

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.

✦ Table of Contents

Foreword by Christiane Northrup, M.D.
Introduction by Linda Trichter Metcalf
One The Sound of a Voice Thinking
Two Write What You Hear: How the Method Works
Three Self-Expression: The Method as a Path to Better Writing
Four Proprioceptive Information: The Method as a Path to Emotional Health
Five Awakening to Yourself: The Method as a Secular Spiritual Practice
Six Creating a Lifelong Practice
Afterword
Dedication
Acknowledgments
Notes
Suggestions for Further Reading
Suggestions for Music