Writing the Mind Alive: The Proprioceptive Method for Finding Your Authentic Voice

Discover the revolutionary writing practice that can transform your life

In 1976, Linda Trichter Metcalf, then a university English professor, sat down with pen and paper and intuitively started a self-guided writing practice that helped to bring herself into focus and clarify her life as never before. She and a colleague, Tobin Simon, introduced this original method into their classrooms. They experienced such solid response from their students that, for the last twenty-five years, they have devoted themselves to teaching what has now become the respected practice of Proprioceptive Writing(R)-in workshops, secondary and elementary schools, and college psychology and writing classes around the country, among them the New School University.

"Proprioception" comes from the Latin proprius, meaning "one's own," and this writing method helps synthesize emotion and imagination, generating authentic insight and catharsis. Proprioceptive Writing(R) is not formal writing, nor is it automatic or stream-of-consciousness writing. Requiring a regular, disciplined practice in a quiet environment, the method uses several aids to deepen attention and free the writer within: Baroque music, a candle, a pad, and a pen. Presenting Proprioceptive Writing(R) in book form for the first time, Writing the Mind Alive shows how you, too, can use it to
- Focus awareness, dissolve inhibitions, and build self-trust
- Unburden your mind and resolve emotional conflicts
- Connect more deeply with your spiritual self
- Write and speak with strength and clarity
- Enhance the benefits of psychotherapy
- Awaken your senses and emotions
- Liberate your creative energies

Featuring actual "writes" by students of all ages, Writing the Mind Alive is a catalyst for mental and emotional aliveness that can truly enrich the rest of your life.


About the Author
Linda Trichter Metcalf, PhD, graduated from the High School of Performing Arts in Manhattan and the City College of New York, and received her MA and PhD degrees in literature from New York University. In the mid-1970s, as a professor at Pratt Institute searching for ways to help students find a writing voice, she created the practice now known as the Proprioceptive Writing method. Combining the art of literary criticism with therapeutic techniques, she has taught the method at institutes such as Esalen, Omega, and The New School. In 1982, she and her partner, Tobin Simon, founded the Proprioceptive Writing Center in Maine, where they lived for many years, and, in 1996, they opened a center in New York City, where she now lives and teaches individuals and groups, practices writing therapy, and provides teacher-training in Proprioceptive Writing.