Words in the Wilderness

How can we write when words fail us?

When we face extreme stress or trauma the part of the brain that helps us to put words around the experience goes offline as our brain goes into survival mode.

Often we are told 'It's good to talk' when we're experiencing difficulty but that is not always possible.

So is there another way?

In this episode Jacky Power shares how poetry can be used as a form of somatic witnessing; a way of tuning into the sensations in our bodies and giving them shape through sound, rhythm, fragments and even made-up words.

You don’t have to explain what happened, make sense of it, or turn it into a neat story. Instead, you can listen to what your experience feels like in your body and allow the sensations give shape to their own sounds.

It’s an invitation to write without self-censorship, without interpretation, and without the pressure to make something “good”.

There is a lot of talk in wellbeing spaces about healing or recovery, but this is allowing for something different. It is allowing for what is and trusting that through the process of being 'with' our emotion - energy in motion - will shift.