PICTURE YOUR HEART as a perfect apple—a line from an old poem I can no longer find in my records. I’ve written so much that the archives feel like a hoard or a hive and either way, unapproachable. I go digging for the gold the way one approaches a packed basement, hoping for something worth saving.
Hypnosis is a kind of play familiar to children who still know how to suspend reality and sustain the fantasy. I remember deep immersion in full-blown dramas with other children behind closed doors that would last entire evenings as our parents drank coffee and complained about the state of things. When it was time to go, we groaned, having to unspool the story we were spinning.
The parallels between hypnotic suggestion and writing have me wondering what else we’re ignoring when it comes to healing, faith and creativity. When I lead a writing workshop, I’m guiding writers to visualize themselves in other states and frames--to walk up close to the tree inside the dream in one’s mind and study its shape and bark. “Picture this,” I say. “What’s taking your attention,” I ask, only after the imagined arrival. And when it’s time, I welcome us all back to the room.
When my mom died, my capacity to imagine—like a river—dried up. I could not picture anything—just infinite darkness, eyes shut or wide open. This was shocking for a poet who made a living at one point helping others tap into this capacity to see beyond the obvious.
In an act of desperation, I tried EMDR — eye movement desensitization processing — during the depths of the pandemic, taking long drives into the city at night from Skokie for strange, candle-lit sessions with a therapist. The streets were eerily empty in those days. For the first time in years, I started to dream again, to think and feel again in images. We never called it hypnotherapy but I am beginning to refer to it as such.
Let your mind float, from one image to the next, my therapist said. Link up with feeling and association, shake the memory tree with all its skinny branches of shame and shock. I was guided to grasp at sounds and symbols, listen for visions and voices, rumors and rooms long ago locked and buried.
I’ve had plenty of time since then with the old poems, sifting through boxes and boxes of bad ideas in the basement packed down around a few good ones, all musty and moldy with time—and I marvel at how they still managed to survive skunk invasions, possum piss, cockroach crumble, feral cat carcass, squirrel swarm, rabid rabbit stench! Feathers and shells, hair, fur, webs, nests.
I shredded many of these old documents, yet through self-hypnosis I know now how to restore, revisit, revive, and revise any narrative line that crosses my soul’s path. There are grand libraries within us of personal records—ancient hallways, elaborate painted ceilings of our hero’s journey painted into the skies! We can access any of these truths at any time, bend them, too, for our healing and survival.
Hypnosis is a kind of play familiar to children who still know how to suspend reality and sustain the fantasy. I remember deep immersion in full-blown dramas with other children behind closed doors that would last entire evenings as our parents drank coffee and complained about the state of things. When it was time to go, we groaned, having to unspool the story we were spinning.
The parallels between hypnotic suggestion and writing have me wondering what else we’re ignoring when it comes to healing, faith and creativity. When I lead a writing workshop, I’m guiding writers to visualize themselves in other states and frames--to walk up close to the tree inside the dream in one’s mind and study its shape and bark. “Picture this,” I say. “What’s taking your attention,” I ask, only after the imagined arrival. And when it’s time, I welcome us all back to the room.
When my mom died, my capacity to imagine—like a river—dried up. I could not picture anything—just infinite darkness, eyes shut or wide open. This was shocking for a poet who made a living at one point helping others tap into this capacity to see beyond the obvious.
In an act of desperation, I tried EMDR — eye movement desensitization processing — during the depths of the pandemic, taking long drives into the city at night from Skokie for strange, candle-lit sessions with a therapist. The streets were eerily empty in those days. For the first time in years, I started to dream again, to think and feel again in images. We never called it hypnotherapy but I am beginning to refer to it as such.
Let your mind float, from one image to the next, my therapist said. Link up with feeling and association, shake the memory tree with all its skinny branches of shame and shock. I was guided to grasp at sounds and symbols, listen for visions and voices, rumors and rooms long ago locked and buried.
I’ve had plenty of time since then with the old poems, sifting through boxes and boxes of bad ideas in the basement packed down around a few good ones, all musty and moldy with time—and I marvel at how they still managed to survive skunk invasions, possum piss, cockroach crumble, feral cat carcass, squirrel swarm, rabid rabbit stench! Feathers and shells, hair, fur, webs, nests.
I shredded many of these old documents, yet through self-hypnosis I know now how to restore, revisit, revive, and revise any narrative line that crosses my soul’s path. There are grand libraries within us of personal records—ancient hallways, elaborate painted ceilings of our hero’s journey painted into the skies! We can access any of these truths at any time, bend them, too, for our healing and survival.
