Keeping A Journal, published in the new Sheldon Mindfulness Manuals series, is all about what happens when meditation and writing meet. The author, Philip Cowell, tells more.

I had a hunch. Wrestling with keeping my mindfulness practice alive and kicking, I noticed that whenever I dropped into writing mode, something a bit like mindfulness seemed to be happening. I slowed down. I became more aware. I noticed things more. I could feel the insides and the outsides of my lived bodily experience as I wrote. Somehow, or so it seemed, writing my felt experience down was something akin to mindfulness meditation. Was it possible, I wondered, and could it help me nourish my own mindfulness practice?

If mindfulness is about fostering present moment-to-moment, non-judgemental awareness, then mindful journalling is exactly the same, just in written form. With this work, our breath and body become our best friends as we write ourselves towards and into awareness. So just as mindfulness is an invitation to notice where the mind wanders, and importantly not to follow it, so the mindful journal becomes a place to notice where the hand wanders – and also not follow that. After all, just as you are not your thoughts, you are also not your sentences. With mindful journalling, as in mindfulness meditation, we simply, kindly and firmly bring our attention back to the breath or the body – the feel of the hand crossing the page as we write – as many times as we need to.

I think we have been mindful journalling for centuries. We just happen to call it literature. Mindful journalling is when you write as if your life depends on it. It’s when your mind, pen and journal are so intertwined, it’s difficult to separate them. Mindful journalling is what happens when what you write scares you; because you care about it. It scares you, but it does not scar you. Mindful journalling has an inbuilt safety net; if done properly, it cannot harm you. And the evidence, in fact, points towards expressive writing being extremely good for you.

With mindful journalling we write our thoughts down, in sentence form, or as plain words either by themselves or listed. We write our plans, our dreams, our aspirations, our fears, our felt sense of here and now – all with an embodied awareness of our feet on the floor and our hearts beating inside of us. We write from and with our senses – the five classic ones but also proprioception and interoception, those crucial extra senses to do with spatial awareness and interior sensation. The page in our mindful journal becomes the sky of our awareness, each word a cloud for exploring how we are relating in this moment. In this sense, our notation becomes the awareness; the journal our expanded spaciousness.

I can see the resistance to this idea; writing is often seen as a kind of thinking, so how – through it – could you reach an embodied kind of mindful knowing? How could you even reach an embodied kind of mindful unknowing? My task is to show it is possible. The history of literature is full of great embodied, mindful writing, so I’ve not made anything up here – I’ve just spotted something that’s been there all along. For example, I’ve started reading Moby Dick for the first time. It opens with Ishmael talking about “a damp, drizzly November in my soul”. For me, this is a perfect kind of mindful journalling. Mindful journalling is what happens when we intrigue ourselves with our sentences, just as Ishmael here intrigues us – and himself probably! – with his accurate description of what might be called depression. Funnily enough, if you bring mindfulness to your writing acts, the fruits – both those in reach and those just out of reach – are plentiful. The point is not the fruit; the point is the plenitude.

In my new little book, Keeping A Journal (Sheldon Press), I explore the links between journal writing and mindfulness meditation and look at the history of mindful journalling. I investigate some of the well-being science behind writing things down, and provide 31 mindful journal writing exercises to get you going. It’s all about celebrating the gentle art of writing up our lives. I call it mindfulness-inspired self-study, and if the mind wanders, all the better – just be ready to write it down, with your compassionate pen and a very open heart! You can’t go wrong. As contemporary mindfulness guru, Jon Kabat-Zinn, says: there’s more right with you than wrong with you. It’s a good one to remember as you begin, again, to open your journal.  

www.philipcowell.co.uk

Keeping A Journal (Sheldon Press)
Available in all good book shops and online