Proprioceptive Writing

I’m still learning how to say and how to spell the above type of writing! I understand it’s a medical term that has to do with balance between outer and inner. One definition says it refers to a sense of self-movement, sometimes called the sixth sense. Or maybe it’s clearer, the ability to know where and how your body is oriented to your surroundings.

I spent last weekend learning and practicing proprioceptive writing at the Hot Springs Retreat Center in the scrubby hills of southeastern Ohio close to a small town called Peebles. The focus of the practice is to pay attention to words that flit through my mind, capture one that asks me to pay attention to it, and begin by answering the following (and very specific) question: “What do I mean by _________?” Write regarding that one word until another word beckons to be explored. Then ask the question again: “What do I mean by (this word)?”

Now that I have had some experience with the concept, I’m confident this practice will change the way I pay attention to words as I commit them to a page. Candles, Baroque classical music, and a timer set for twenty minutes completes the proprioceptive writing ritual. At the end of twenty minutes, we twelve participants left the writing table to gather in the old farmhouse’s living room. We read our free-writes to each other, listening as if we had written them ourselves, and read our own sentences as if they were written by another.

I think I’ll use this method mostly when I need to expand a concept or event that keeps my writing from moving forward.

We moved through five cycles of writing and reading during the weekend, enough to get familiar with the format. I dealt with words such as “indifference,” “world,” “reinvention,” “discern,” “peace,” and “fence” among many others.

I’ve helped my struggle with pronouncing proprioceptive by counting syllables (five) and am now ready to put the practice to use, find some proprioceptive balance and uncover understandings that a specific word has for me.