Embodied Journaling and Three Questions with Cassandra Cotta
Grief, travel, and the pilates instructor who has helped me through it
I am not going to mince words: this summer has been hard. I have had a lot to grieve, a lot to do, and little time rest. Fortunately, I have also had a lot of support, and some wonderful things that happened too! Today’s newsletter focuses on the latter.
First off, I launched my first IRL writing-based workshop—Embodied Travel Journaling. It was so nice to teach people in-person and to write together in the same room. This program was part of a six-day Pilates retreat in Alajuela, Costa Rica at a gorgeous retreat center. I taught with volcanic mountains and the Central Valley as my backdrop. I joined Cassandra Cotta (learn more about her work and her take on wellness in Three Questions with Cassandra Cotta) and Pilates People for this retreat. Pilates, like weight lifting, can also be a powerful tool to tap into your body and make friends with it.
In this month’s essay, Why Journal From An Embodied Place? I share with you some of what we covered at the workshop—namely four big reasons to get into your body before your write. At the end you will find a gentle movement practice you can do at your desk to help you get into your body before journaling or doing any other writing.
In this month’s Until Next Time, I share with you a collection of essays that I am rereading as I navigate these tougher times, a delicious tomato sandwich recipe that I am making a couple of mornings a week, and a podcast appearance by yours truly.
AND… speaking of travel, writing, things that make my happy, and embodiment— Lifting Heavy Things is available this month in twenty five major airports in the U.S!
This is a big deal and the sort of thing I wanted to happen but I never thought would! The month is almost over but if you are traveling through National Airport, Raleigh, Denver, Kansas City, San Franciso, Los Angeles, New York - Laguardia, Orlando, Newark, or Nashville this week, you can pick up a copy for you or a loved one!
Why Journal From An Embodied Place?
This month I had the pleasure of traveling to Alajuela, Costa Rica to lead a daily workshop on embodied journaling as part of a pilates retreat hosted by Pilates People. I designed the program to support retreat participants in making space for self-reflection, as well as to help them preserve their memories of Costa Rica. Because I did not know much about the participants, I designed this workshop for people with all levels of journaling experience— from none and a belief that they will have nothing to write about, to regular notebook keepers. At the heart of this program is my belief that the best way to write, whether we are writing for ourselves or for an audience, is to write from an embodied place.
We think of writing as a cerebral act but it is a physical act as well, whether we are writing with a pen and a notebook or typing away on a keyboard. Our bodies, seated, standing or even lying down, manipulate tools that get the stories that are inside of us down on the page. Yet when we write we tend to only mind our thoughts. It can be very tempting to just tap into our what we are thinking and put it down on paper.
But if we can resist that urge. and write from an embodied place—meaning that we are paying attention to what it feels like in our body as we write—our reflective writing practice will take us deeper, be more honest, be better for our bodies, and be more healing. Here’s why:
We Feel Our Feelings
Our nervous systems are taking in information about what is happening around us at all times. It then sends signals to our endocrine and movement systems to help us respond. This can produce sensations in our body that tell us how we really feel about something before we start to pick it apart with our prefrontal cortex. This is important because among other things, our prefrontal cortex thinks about thinking, and filters our feelings through what other people’s opinion of us are. If we are journaling to process something or to figure out our authentic goals, wishes, and dreams, then we need to listen to our unfiltered feelings too.
Physical Wellness
Embodied writing can help protect us from repetitive use injuries or other sorts of desk dweller ailments because it allows us to notice more subtle pain signals. In school, some jobs, and certain social settings, we often forgo comfort in order to follow the rules. Over time we can forget to tend to our physical needs even when it is okay to do so, and this can come at a cost. We can burn out, get small injuries like blisters, or larger scale repetitive stress injuries like carpal tunnel, if we don’t notice and care for our bodies.
Nervous System Wellness
When we recount an unpleasant or worse experience in any sort of writing we may be doing, and we are not paying attention to our bodies, we may not notice if we are working ourselves up into a lather more than processing and integrating the experience. When we seek catharsis through journaling, or we are writing an upsetting story, we can overwhelm ourselves. We might begin to feel spacy, drained, irritable, or hypervigilant. These are all signs that we are becoming overwhelmed and that our limbic system is about to take over for our big-thinking prefrontal cortex. In a limbic state we will not be able to process anything. We will be best suited to fight, flight, freeze, or collapse.
However, if we are staying embodied and noticing what our body is telling us, as we journal, we are equipped to know when we are headed toward a limbic state, and we can pause and re-regulate. Then we can make an informed decision to either go back to writing or skip it for now.
Capturing the Moment More Completely
This is a lovely reason to journal from an embodied place. You are generally documenting and reflecting on your experiences and things that interest you. When you bring those experiences to mind, and stay in your body, you will be better able to capture many sensorial details - like colors, scents, textures. When you revisit your journal your memories will be richer for it.
And remember, we feel our feelings, so if you are able to stay in your body as you recall an experience with great detail, you will be better able to know how you really felt about something as opposed to what you think you felt about something.
Our imaginations are powerful and when we take ourselves back in time using a lot of sensorial details, we can feel the same feelings in our body again: butterflies in the stomach, relaxed shoulders, or an open gaze. We can transport our nervous systems back to the moment and we can tap into how we truly felt.
Try it!
Being able to get into your body with ease takes practice, but there are a thousand ways in. Here is movement-based approach we explored on retreat for you to try:
Set up with a proud seat or stance. Notice yourself on the cushion or floor. Give more weight to what is below you.
Scan and notice your body. Are you comfortable? If not, ask yourself what might need to be more comfortable and take a moment to provide yourself with that comfort. You may need to change your position, sip water, or use the restroom. Whatever it is you need to do, please prioritize your physical comfort for this practice.
Once you are comfortable, return to your proud seat or stance. Stack your head above your heart, your heart above your pelvis, and allow your shoulders to fall away from your ears.
Bring your palms together at your heart center and actively press them together, keeping your elbows high. Take a breath, and then release the press, keeping your palms together.
Press a second time, being sure to breathe and pause. Release. Press again and this time notice what happens to your arm position as you press.
Press a third time and notice what happens in your upper back and the tops of your shoulders as you press, hold, breathe, and then release. Continue to press, hold, breathe, notice, and release at your own pace.
Release your palms.
Now extend one arm out in front of you with your palm facing up. Try to keep your shoulders down and away from your ears. With your other hand apply pressure to your fingers to stretch your wrist. Notice how it feels to stretch. Please only stretch as much as feels good to you. If you notice you are holding your breath or your shoulders are creeping up, decrease the stretch and notice how that feels in your shoulders or ribcage.
Switch sides. Notice how even though you are stretching your wrists and forearms, if and how the rest of your body responds. Notice shifts in your position, breath, sensations, or feelings.
Release the stretch.
Keeping a proud posture bring your chin towards your chest. Notice the back of your neck. Slowly come up.
Keeping a proud posture, slowly lower an ear toward the same shoulder. Notice the stretch. Notice your breath. Decrease the stretch if you are not breathing. Come up to center.
Repeat on the other side. Come up to center.
Carefully gaze upwards, keeping your shoulders away from your ears and then slowly tuck your chin again and come up to center.
Scan your body and notice yourself. Ask yourself how you are feeling right now both physically and emotionally.
Three Questions with Cassandra Cotta
Laura: Part of my work is to reclaim the word "wellness" from marketing teams inside the beauty, diet, and fitness industries. On your social media, you share ways in which you tend to your own wellness, so I know this is something you think about for yourself. I am curious how you would define wellness for yourself?
Cassandra: The answer I keep coming back to is: wellness is when you are able to create a space for yourself and others where your thoughts, words and actions align.
Wellness is also a place you can arrive at in the moments that you are able to notice the distance between a thought, a word or an action and hold curiosity and grace for yourself while you navigate your way from point a to point b.
So I think that means that wellness might also be the ability to maintain an open mind and an open heart.
“People like to put wellness in a box and say it’s when you eat this food or do this specific movement or cultivate this habit or routine, but the reality and truth of our world—and the “wellness industry”— is that all of it is ephemeral. None of those carefully cultivated choices can remain fixed in every situation for the rest of your life.”
People like to put wellness in a box and say it’s when you eat this food or do this specific movement or cultivate this habit or routine, but the reality and truth of our world—and the “wellness industry”— is that all of it is ephemeral. None of those carefully cultivated choices can remain fixed in every situation for the rest of your life. No matter what, all of them will need to ebb and flow in some way because your schedule, your choices, your life, you and the world around you will all change - if not on a daily basis at least gradually over time.
Wellness allows for flexibility, possibility and humanity to exist in each of us so that these very normal daily life changes aren’t a crisis moment but something we are ready to navigate due to the practices and mindsets we are able to create for ourselves and therefore others as well.
Laura: As a pilates instructor you are part of the fitness industry, however I know firsthand that your approach is holistic and supports my overall well being. What are some ways in which your approach to pilates supports clients' wellness?
Cassandra: First off, thank you. It’s so nice to hear that what I hope to do and am attempting to do is (at least sometimes) what I’m doing!
I look at Pilates as a tool - one of many - that can be used to support a human in whatever it is they ACTUALLY want to achieve. Sure, we can talk about how to do the absolute perfect teaser, and if that’s your goal, I’m here for it! But I’m much more interested in a session where someone comes in with an “I want to be able to walk up my stairs with a greater sense of ease,” or “I want to know how I can still play golf post spinal fusion,” or “I want to be strong enough to pick up my grand-baby without worrying about whether or not I’ll drop them,” or “I’m training for a marathon and need some cross training that will tend to my body’s needs so I don’t fall apart.” Those are full 3-dimensional human goals. And with those goals, I get the chance to learn and grow alongside my client while we both go through the ups and downs of the thing we all like to call progress.
I think you were the one who told me that we attract the clients we need, and I’d never thought about it before but, I think you’re absolutely right. At this stage in my life, I need people who illustrate what it is to live a full life where movement is a tool they get to use in order to help them live more completely - where movement (and Pilates) isn’t necessarily their end all be all - and I’m lucky enough to have mostly worked with exactly those people, which just gives ME more experience and more tools in my own personal belt to better help the next full dimensional human who walks through our doors.
Laura: You've shared with me that you hated pilates when you started taking it! I find this interesting because I was a very unlikely fitness professional. Can you tell us when that was and how you got from that place to owning your own pilates studio in New York City?
Cassandra: Ha! Yes…this is one of my mother’s favorite stories about my life.
I hated Pilates immediately. I mean, IMMEDIATELY. The mat was on the floor and I was already like, “nah.”
Pilates was presented to me when I was a teenager. I was a dancer who, at the time, wanted to become a Radio City Rockette. Unfortunately, for that version of myself, my growing stalled at 5’3.5” and you generally need to be 5’7” to even audition, let alone get that job.
So all I needed was a way to grow, and Pilates was presented to me as the solution.
And that was my problem. On day one, I was already put into a position with Pilates where there was something “wrong” with me and this practice was going to “fix” it.
Those first Pilates classes felt horrible. It made me nauseous, it was boring and most importantly, it was taking me away from dancing, which at the time was the only thing I wanted to do.
Cut forward to my college years where once again, Pilates was a requirement of my dance program and I did all the work a person would have to do to become mat certified, except test out.
This time height wasn’t an issue - there’s no height requirement to be a modern dancer and that’s the world I transitioned into once we all agreed I probably wasn’t about to spontaneously grow several inches, no matter how hard I planked. It was my scoliosis.
In college, I was used as the example of what it looked like to do the exercises “wrong.” I remember being brought to the front of the room so my teacher could show everyone how my spine wasn’t doing the movement the way it should be done, but she was going to “fix” it for me before their very eyes.
Spoiler alert - nothing was “fixed” in those 5 minutes of torture. If you know anything about dancers, you know they don’t really need anyone to say any more negative things to them about their bodies and in that moment, that’s the only thing I knew Pilates was definitely doing for me.
I wrote Pilates off and said I would never do it again. I didn’t want to constantly be seen as this thing that needed fixing.
When I moved to New York, I was working very hard to become a successful, professional dancer (whatever that means) and was constantly taking class to get to know people and to better hone my skills.
I found something called Floor Swimming with Daniel Giel and fell in love. He never told us what things should or shouldn’t look like. He never said something was right or wrong. He let us play and explore and live in our bodies and honestly, I did SO MANY MORE things and surprised myself every time I stepped into his class.
“I felt safe and that safety opened up a world of movement and body possibility for me.”
I felt safe and that safety opened up a world of movement and body possibility for me.
Turned out, he was a Pilates instructor and kind of coerced me into finishing the training I started in college because he told me he thought I would be really good at teaching people and that this practice in particular could help me help people in the way he knew I wanted to.
So he helped me finish my certification and showed me how to approach Pilates through his lens of open curiosity and warmth.
My absolute favorite lesson learned from him seems so simple in hindsight, and I don’t know why more people in the fitness industry don’t adhere to it except I guess maybe they all haven’t been lucky enough to meet him…or maybe it’s not a good marketing scheme…but it’s been the most successful approach for me as a person and a movement guide.
He taught me not to look at a person’s weaknesses and try to strengthen them but instead find a person’s strengths and use them to support the things that aren’t as strong, yet.
And that’s where I found Pilates. In that space where I get to help and show a person just how strong they really are.
That’s what I love and why I’m here.
The studio is a whole other story but founded on the same principal. I was alone, jobless and stuck in a global pandemic…but I desperately wanted to help however I could. I felt totally and completely useless. I’m not a medical professional or an essential worker so I couldn’t fight on the front lines like I wanted to…all I had was Pilates and a ton of space and time.
So I used it to reach out to other people who were also maybe feeling lost and alone. Turned out, there were a lot of those people at that time…and here we are four years later with an actual, physical location and more movement friends than I could have ever imagined!
Laura: Thank you for taking the time out to share your thoughts and story with us! Please let interested folks know how they can learn more about Pilates People and working with you!
Cassandra: Thank YOU for asking me to share!! People can find us at www.pilatesppl.com. Our email is info@pilatesppl.com and our phone number is (646) 484-6624. We’re also @pilatesppl on instagram!
READ Brenda Miller’s Season of The Body: Essays. (Sarabande Books, 2002). Brenda is an essayist and poet and I reread her first collection of essays this summer when navigating my own feeling of grief as well. Beautifully written Miller captures each moment as well as the language of body.
MAKE this tomato sandwich from Melissa Clark. I have been devouring this (no bacon version) as my breakfast a couple days per week this month.
LISTEN to me and and Dani Bruflodt, a systems and efficiency expert and energy optimizer on her podcast
Congrats on all the airport placements!