Write from the heart for the heart

"The intimacy of pen and paper is what I need to open my heart and channel my love for myself and the world.

I make myself available as a channel for inspiration to flow through.  A computer and word document just don't hold the same space for me.

Writing with my hand in my journal is a very yin energy of receptivity, whilst the computer holds a yang energy of action and doing and I tend to pop out of my heart and into my head with one eye on what other people would like to hear or read instead of focusing on what wants to be expressed from the genius heart-space.  My writing takes on an ego flavoured pompousness and preachiness, whilst channeling the genie is all genuine heart-felt personal truth." (taken from my journal)

Journalling has been one of the most valuable emotional -mental healing tools for me.  Any pent-up feelings, whether they be excitement and gratitude or confusion and depression, putting pen to paper provides me with release and relief..... and the happy outcome is a clear head and heart.  From this clean space, I can continue my day from a present moment awareness that stuck emotions would never have allowed.  Unexpressed emotions tend to make me reactive to the days chores and challenges where I use the players in my life as confirmation of my clouded beliefs and the target of my pent-up feelings.  Inappropriate anger or disproportionate reactions to the event are consequences of unreleased feelings.  So when my husband is going on a fishing trip and I haven't journalled my confused inner state, I might not be aware that he is triggering my age-old abandonment issues and I might (as I have many times) be inexplicably angry with him and be grumpy and downtrodden instead of joining in the jolly mood of happy holidays. Writing gets this out on physical paper for my eyes to see and gain perspective.

Julia Cameron taught me the value of what she calls The Morning Pages but I was really resistant to this "silly exercise" initially. And it required courage to write.  There is the risk of someone else reading it and the even bigger risk of really knowing the good, the bad and the ugly in myself.  One messy beautiful story.  But it really does provide a safe space for me to be completely me in that moment, whether I am ranting and raving or completely in the masochistic victim space of "poor me", or whether I am confused about an issue or need to work through my feelings to reach a space of gratitude.  It is all healthy proactive stuff.  It is like putting yourself in the washing machine and coming out sparkling white at the end of a cycle!  The feeling is lighter and brighter like all the washing powders claim.  But no big spend required.  No psychology fee.  Just the simple act of putting pen to paper and letting go of the barriers to lightness of being.