Waking Up in the Body

Right before I started writing poetry regularly, I began studying Buddhism and practicing meditation. I sat quite a bit during this time in college, never (to this day) with any regularity, but certainly with vigor and faith. Faith in what? In the hope of some peak experience that would grant me an existence of infinite bliss? I don’t really know what I was after or am after now, but looking back at those college days, I remember being deeply curious about not only the practice of meditation but about Buddhist philosophy in general—which fundamentally challenged many of my foundational Cartesian assumptions about thought being integral to selfhood. 

Being physically disabled, I had internalized the habit of equating my self-worth with my intellect. To get what I needed I couldn’t rely on physical ability; I had to use my mind. This rather crude survival mechanism got me in the habit of running away from my body. Seeing it as a spastic cage, I conditioned myself to escape through imagination, entertainment, other people, and whatever other distractions I could find. The ineffability of the ultimate reality that the Buddha pointed to was something I never really appreciated. When I finally learned about mindfulness, it changed not only my ability to appreciate the moment, but to appreciate this very body. 

This crucial attention to the “now” has been widely appropriated and at times diluted or oversimplified to suggest that only the present moment matters and nothing else. This New Age embrace of eastern philosophical underpinnings such as the concept of none-self (the interconnected nature of the universe) or the concept of “only now” combined with good-old American miseducation can even lead to the reinforcement of violent hegemonic assumptions: “Why should we discuss historical oppression of specific minority groups if we are all one, man?” or “Let’s not dwell on the past… it’s just a concept.”

The word mindful is translated from the Pali sati, which comes from the Sanskrit smṛti, meaning “memory.” When I share mindfulness-oriented writing exercises, I don’t want people to turn away from the past or future; I want them to turn toward it as just another fleeting phenomenon of the present moment. To be mindful is to remember one’s own aliveness, and poetry is the proclamation of that remembrance. 

It’s important to note that meditation as prescribed in the Pali Canon is specific and cannot be substituted. My calling as a humble poetry ambassador isn’t to create a method of writing that is equivalent to meditation. It’s really to continue the practice of unifying the body and mind—within language, a realm in which we tend to let our minds rule over our bodily experiences. 

The kind of meditation I have always practiced is centered around breathing. In fact, it is breathing, in the most intimate sense. This presents a unique challenge for someone with cerebral palsy. How can I “relax” my body if I have no control over my muscle tone? How can I be “still” if I have involuntary movements that increase when I will them to decrease? How can I breathe deeply if my diaphragm experiences the same involuntary contractions as all my other muscles? I found out rather quickly that meditation is the direct confrontation with the body, with the disability. 

The more I engage with this practice, the more I am invited to set aside normative notions of my body and experience it—not outside of language—but through its own natural, ancient, native language. In other words, before I even began writing poetry, I was already deeply engaged with disability poetics: What is “stillness” for a body in motion? What is sitting up “straight” if you have scoliosis? What is breathing through muscle spasms? All these questions really boiled down to one, which still resonates every time I sit to meditate: What is disability? 

My poetry is a reverberation of this very question. It’s not one I ask intellectually… it’s a question I live, I do, I write, I sit. Every writer has these kinds of questions, which their work spirals out of. They may appear to be different across writers, but the result of asking them is the same. They all transcend the writer’s discursive mind—the mind that “knows”—and kindles a boundless mind—a space of wonder, attention, and intuition. 

The practice of mindfulness allows me to tap into this boundlessness: not discouraged by doubt or criticism, not limited to specific plans or themes, not siloed into disability poetics, not even bound to words or letters. 

In my workshops, I try to create the conditions for writers to (re)experience this miraculous freedom. It may sound counterintuitive, but focusing our attention on what is already readily available to us—our own bodies—is a simple, effective way to experience our natural poetic brilliance. I hope the following writing ritual allows you to get in touch with your own uniquely miraculous body-mind-universe. 

Writing the Breath

Take up a comfortable position and close your eyes or look downward. Try to keep your neck and spine aligned—but if you can’t, don’t worry about it. 

Bring your attention to your breath however feels natural to do so. Perhaps you feel it passing through your nostrils or maybe you feel your diaphragm expanding and contracting. Wherever you feel your breath most clearly, let your attention rest there.

As you follow your breath, differentiate between your in-breath and your out-breath. You can think “in” and “out” as it occurs, or you can think “rising” and “falling” if you’re focusing on your stomach. You’re bound to get distracted, so when you do, be grateful that you noticed and are now back to breathing. 

When you are ready to write, bring the attention on your breath to the page. Write automatically, without editing, deleting, or reading. Just keep your hand moving, but instead of relying on your mind to guide you, continue to anchor yourself to your breath. When thoughts come, let them pass onto the paper just as they are, no room for blocks—just writing and breathing. Even doubt and criticism are just thoughts to get down on the page.