The Primal Animal of Your Body:
You know what you are by how it feels to experience yourself.
As I work on a new incarnation [yes, she’s coming to life again as we speak] of Writing Raw: Writing from the Animal Body, I’ve been contemplating the animal body and these lines came to mind.
“You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.”
Part of a longer, amazing poem, these lines by Mary Oliver remind us of what a break from conventional wisdom it is to even realize that we have a soft animal of our body and that we can simply let it love what it loves.
What I now am curious about, though, are the different animal qualities a human body can have.
How might you let the fierce animal of your body love what it loves?
or…
…the fiery animal of your body or…
…the luscious animal of your body or
…the primal animal of your body or
…the slinky animal, the protective animal, the well-fed animal, the hungry animal, the delighted animal, the joyful animal?
You have an amazing array of animal qualities to experience in your body.
Qualities of experience tell you so much about what you are because you only exist here and now, not as an idea but as a living breathing being.
You know what you are by how it feels to experience yourself.
Try this…
For a moment, close your eyes, take a few deep breaths, sink down into your hips and thighs and belly and feel and sense the animal in you, the animal body that you really are.
Sense into how it feels to be your animal body.
Sense the feelings and then the qualities of these feelings.
They could be tight, hard, fluid, pouncing, expansive, hungry, languid, on-the-prowl.
Listen and feel, closely.
Feel your hind paws on the earth and notice how they link you back to ancestors not so far removed from the earth, ancestors who felt no distinction between who they were and the animal body they had. Ancestors who hadn’t yet perfected the art of forgetting they were real, alive hairy animals who had to scout and forage for food.
Your animal body is this close.
Enjoy the experience of getting even closer, so close you no longer feel you ever left her far behind.
If you’d like to get closer still, join me for
Writing Raw: Writing from the Animal Body
It’s not just for writers. It’s for women who long to be and feel alive, and are curious about writing deep into the space of their soft, primal, alive… animal body.
We begin on October 30th.
