A pool of thoughts

When deep thinkers come together

The ‘air’ breath (the one where you breathe in and out through your mouth) felt most intuitive for both of us.

We’re half way through a week-long writing retreat and coming to the end of a meditation workshop. Our final instruction - to turn to the person next to us and share which breathing pattern we liked most.

On the yoga mat next to mine, a fellow writer shuffled her body to face me. A warm, calming smile, she spoke softly. I was sleepy post-meditation so I think she was being careful not to startle me. She said she’d felt connected to my breathing during our class and described how the rhythm of our breath together had reminded her of the sea. I’d been imagining an ocean too.

Limb by limb, others in the class began propping themselves upright or slowly stretching, gently breaking the stillness that had held the room. It’s rare to feel so connected to almost-strangers. We only met three days ago.

The faces that arrived on the first day of my massage therapy course had been strangers then too. But by its very nature, massage is a close practice.

I’d feel in tune with the person massaging me. You can feel so much through someone’s hands - if they are nervous, unsure or holding tension themselves.

We’d have detailed conversations about the quality of the strokes and the subtleties of our touch. More than once, my classmates sensed when I was an anxious or hesitant about a certain technique. They couldn’t see it, they could feel it.

There were times I felt exposed but we all did - so we were careful with each other, creating a gentle, nurturing space and community. Their faces, mannerisms and touch became comforting and familiar.

It’s similar to writing in many ways. As we exchanged words and sentences in writing workshops this week, I saw parallels between the two practices - touch and writing - that I’d never noticed before. Different forms of communication, both occupy intimate spaces in ours lives, require sensitivity and trust.

I’ve been feeling the most vulnerable I have in a long time, sharing my writing here and reading unedited pieces out loud. Surface levels discussions about our projects, so often inspired by our lived experiences, slip seamlessly into sharing personal anecdotes and the anxieties that run our lives.

You see so much of someone and how they view the world when they read words they’ve just written out loud - speaking it has a way of revealing our relationship to the writing.

There’s a complex internal world beyond the sentences we construct - our words are often at the face of it.

I’d written down a quote on the power of sensitivity and writing by literary agent Ann Rittenberg after reading it on Rosie Spinks’ Substack. I found where I’d written it in my notebook:

“I once told her she had no skin between herself and the outside world. Such a condition can make daily life painful, but it can also make for wonderfully particular, wonderfully alive writing.

It's writing that's stripped bare of the kind of chatty filler that makes the writer feel more secure, that assuages the writer's fear of what she's seen in those deep recesses. Every sentence is pointed, to the point, a working part of the whole machine.”

It’s been freeing coming together as a group of writers. Hearing others talk openly about their creative process lifted something for me and I feel braver.

I’ve always approached writing as a solitary process but I won’t now.