Writing from the Body — Abigail Levine

Writing from the body is producing words faster than you can think. It comes from something you know as a feeling—down lower than a thought in your head. You feel it there, more a hunch than a fully formed idea. It only reveals itself in the process of being expressed.

Writing from the body requires activation of your body. This doesn’t have to be beautiful or prescribed. You just have to get your blood moving. What might you do? You could walk a few steps and lie on the floor. Down there, you might attend to some part of your body you had forgotten. You could go over to a wall and get so close that the colors of the paint begin to separate and the texture of the plaster starts to look like mountains or clouds. You might lean against it and close your eyes. You could shake or dance or sigh, of course, but remember this is not a performance; it is for you. Perhaps, simply, lower your eyes for a few seconds and let all that activity in your head spread out through the rest of you. Then write some words. Or let them arrive. They are so easy to erase later.

Writing from the body is a way to bring together ideas that you wouldn’t have thought had any relation. And maybe they didn’t, but they do something interesting to each other. Their not-quite alignment might be better than a perfect fit, or they might incite you to make a connection you would not arrive at otherwise. Considering ideas that have made it to the page is very different than working on them in your head. When I write this way, I don’t recall what I’ve written. I am less attached to it. I can work with it like a film editor, splicing together interesting pieces I’ve found on the cutting room floor.

Get words out with less aim. Just put yourself in the ballpark of what you’re going to write about. Remember the idea that excited you, but not what you thought about it. Gather the feeling you had in response to an experience, know you are close to it without translating it into thought. And set yourself some limits. Concrete ones are best. Draw a square on a sheet of paper and fill that with writing. Write only by hand. Write before you spend an hour on your phone in the morning. Doodle for a few seconds every time you lose your train of thought.

The point is to loosen words. The payoff is that afterwards you’ve said something you didn’t entirely intend. Your body is a source that isn’t trained to translate into language. It stores what you experience—reactions, memories, other people’s voices—in felt forms. Writing in connection to this place lets you call up these experiences and the effects they’ve had on you. It lets you express yourself with less mediation and judgment. It gets you away from “your” voice. It gets you started.

Writing from the Body is an approach I began to use while teaching artists, a way to ease the experience of writing and expand the range of the writing itself. I draw on my practice as a dancer, the sensitivity I’ve developed to my body—and others’ bodies—to guide the way I use words. Composing with words feels contiguous with choreography; I think of words moving space and generating experience, and movement coalesces around metaphors, propositions, and ideas. This writing-as-a-dancer has a different relationship to intent, invocation, and communication. Writing from the body is an ever-evolving set of approaches for accessing language through a cultivated attention to the experience of living in your body. It is available to anyone anytime.

—Abigail Levine, 2021