Right-brained writing
Right-brained writing (rbw) is a visual style of sensing, communicating, and recording sensory, emotional, and intuitive signals and information. It involves using colors, symbols, metaphors, textures, and lines to express or emulate the nature of an experience. Like writing, right-brained writing is both a process and an end product.
Many examples below are self-studies.
The power of rbw
Right-brained writing supports learning and integration
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Rbw is a journey as much as an output. The process is one of slowing down, listening, and observing with all of my senses. The pen and brush highlight, star, and underline subtle experiences I may have otherwise missed.
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The experience rbw can also become part of the learning process.
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Recording the experience in the present moment, helps me to recall how it felt and the deeper layer insights
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Embodying change requires understanding how an experience can be anchored and integrated in our daily habits and actions.
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The resonance of a felt experience often carries shared patterns or aspects others can recognize in their own experience
Concepts and approaches
My work is inspired by, explores, or builds upon the following concepts and approaches.
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I use the term “right-brained writing” to explain a style of communicating, expressing, and recording experiential, emotional, or metaphorical information. This style of recording information is often visual. Rather than words, right-brained writing involves using colors, symbols, textures, and lines to express or emulate the nature of an experience. Like writing, right-brained writing is both a process and an end product.
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I refer to experiential maps as the visual representation and result of tracking and recording a series of experiences. Experiences can include “places” one visits on a journey or elements of a given system such as people, places, emotions, qualities, or aspects of a situation. Mapping experiences can be a useful tool for reflection, learning, and integration.
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Systems sensing (Ritter & Zamierowski, 2021) can be a navigational tool to engage with uncertainty and create awareness of the relational dynamics with the people and context involved. By using creative, embodied, and intuitive ways of knowing, participants of the practice learn from the “deeper wisdom of a system that is often hidden from view” and gain new insights into relationships and dynamics within their system, be it an organization, a project, network, or other. Read more.
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Compassionate Inquiry (CI) is a psychotherapeutic approach developed by Dr. Gabor Mate, author, and expert on trauma, stress, addiction, and childhood development. The CI approach explores the root of an issue or the stories that people may be telling themselves. Using the Compassionate Inquiry system, both the individual and therapist unveil the level of consciousness, mental climate, hidden assumptions, implicit memories, and body states that words both express and conceal. Read more.
Resources
Articles
Ritter, L., & Zamierowski, N. (2021). Systems Sensing and Systemic Constellation for Organizational Transformation: Building Collective Capacity for Navigating Complexity. Journal of Awareness-Based Systems Change, 1(2), 101–115. https://doi.org/10.47061/jabsc.v1i2.1181
Blogs
Experimenting with an experiential map as a learning and integration tool