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A Workshop with Terry Wolverton by Nancy Shiffrin I am crouched over on my knees, arms stretched in front of me, breathing deeply. I visualize a rainbow of colors proceed up my spine. In yogic terms, I am in Child's Pose. I start with red at the base of the spine, (1st chakra) orange at the navel point (2nd), yellow at the navel point (3rd), green at the heart center (4th) blue at the throat (5th), violet at the 3rd eye point (6th), indigo at the crown of the head (7th). A wave of heat and cold rushes through my body. Images of a white porcelain Buddha flood my mind. It is a Buddha replication my mother bought at an estate sale. It has been in a box at the back of the closet. I have resisted opening the box. Recently, I have been trying to describe this particular Buddha image from memory. Along with nine other participants, I am seated on the floor at Golden Bridge, a yoga center in Los Angeles devoted to the tradition of Yogi Bhajan. We are using the practices of Kundalini Yoga and creative writing to move us beyond the rational into new areas of self-expression. The workshop is entitled Poetry and Spiritual Practice. The workshop leader is author, creative writing teacher and certified Kundalini Instructor, Terry Wolverton. She explains that the chakras are energy systems in the body related to different abilities. The goal of yoga, as well as other meditative disciplines, is to have all of the chakras integrated and working together. "Orange is the color most associated with creativity," Wolverton maintains. However, even if you worked a lot on your second chakra, and for example your heart center was blocked, your creativity would be also." Wolverton's two most recent books, Insurgent Muse: Life and Art at the Woman's Building (City Lights, San Francisco, 2002) and Embers: A Novel in Poems (Red Hen Press, Los Angeles, 2003), a semi-autobiographical tribute to her working class Detroit heritage, have received critical acclaim. She practices and teaches kundalini yoga in the tradition of Yogi Bhajan, a Master of Kundalini Yoga who brought this practice to the United States in the 1960s. "He understood where the world was headed, and believed people in the west needed this technology to strengthen their bodies, their nervous systems and the consciousness to meet the challenges ahead." Wolverton began serious study of Kundalini Yoga in 1997, and received her teaching certification in 2000. At first she perceived the training only as a way to deepen her own yogic practice, then discovered that she was using her training in her teaching and consulting at Writers @ Work, the school she founded in 1997. Wolverton perceives teaching as a form of seva, Sanskrit for service, thus the present four hour workshop, priced at a reasonable $35.00. Introductions by the other participants reveal varying degress of experience in writing and yoga. Some are published authors, as I am, and others have only just embarked on the writer's journey. Some of us are experienced yoga practitioners; others have had little training. I practice Hatha Yoga and have little experience with Kundalini. We are free to practice at our own level. This practice is self-initiated, and self-controlled. We all express the intention to work today with beginner's mind, which simply means to put aside our expectations and be present in the moment. Wolverton explains her theories; "to create, is, by definition, to produce something new; it's a risk to do what you don't know how to do, to make what hasn't been made before. We have to relinquish old ideas, habits, old conceptions of the self." This "dying" is not a tragedy, Wolverton tells us, it is part of the cycle of breath, prana and apana. The first part of the workshop involves yogic practices designed to open us to our own creative potential, to what we know that we don't know that we know. "If I write what I know, I'm bored," Wolverton maintains. "If I write what you know, you're likely to be bored. We are all infinite," she tells us. If we tap into that infinity, if we take risks, our writing becomes exciting and surprising. We chant "On namo", "I bow to the creative force of the universe" and "Guru div namo", "I bow to the teacher within". Then we chant "On" for eleven minutes. "Just open your mouth and let the sound come out," Wolverton says to those who look skeptical. "The Ong is one of the names of the Infinite Life Force some call God. This particular chant resounds at the top of the head and affects the patterns of the brainwaves to produce more calm, more awareness, and a deeper connection to that infinite source." It sets up a vibration. Wolverton believes that we do not so much originate creative work as we channel it, we allow it to flow through the body/mind and art is produced." So, by invoking the creative source, we are, paradoxically, clearing the path for our own, individual creativity to manifest. We chant to attune our energies so we integrate the practice on all levels. Finally we practice Breath of Fire. With our backs arched, resting on our palms, legs stretched out in front of us, we attempt a rapid exhaling sequence focussing on our navel point. "I often use Breath of Fire with students who are having difficulty getting stuff done," Wolverton says, though she really feels her Kundalini practice has had a more subtle effect on her teaching. As we chant and breathe, I feel my skin cells expand and glow. The Buddha image becomes more intense. He's a laughing Buddha, arms uplifted; robes open around his fat belly, a little bow tied underneath. His breasts and nipples are almost feminine. His ears hang low to his shoulders. Perhaps I will be able to create a poem about him. However, in the writing section of the workshop, we are asked to visualize our mother's kitchen, to recall or perceive our mother's kitchen through our five senses. What do we see? What do we hear? What do we smell? What do we taste? What do we experience through our fingertips? "So many students come to writing by standing outside and talking about a situation, Wolverton explains. Their work is disembodied. The writer is having a conversation with his/her own mind that doesn't take the reader into consideration. Everything we know, we know first through the five senses. Then our minds process the experience and draw conclusions about it. Wolverton believes that creative writing is most successful when it draws the reader into an experience, then allows the reader to draw conclusions; then reader and writer are engaged. We are asked to write "faster than we can think" making reference to each of the senses. We are asked to pay special attention to smell, as this is the sense most neglected in Western society. We do this several times, each time, reviewing our own work silently then circling or underlining words or phrases which seem especially vivid, meaningful, surprising. Wolverton wants to move us past narrative, past the stories we tell ourselves. It was hard for some of us to get beyond story, to the more associative parts of the brain. Sometimes it was "not my mother's kitchen" but "my father's kitchen", "my own kitchen", "my niece's kitchen", etc. The prompt was not intended to be taken literally, but to open a door. Most of us have at least some associations with mothers and kitchens, and some strong feelings to be triggered. We repeat this process several times. I try to put the Buddha out of my mind and "do the exercise". As I write, I see my mother as she is now, in her granddaughter's kitchen. She is gray-haired, balding, bent over, shuffling in beige orthotic shoes. This is not the mother of shapshots, showing off her curves in a bathing suit at the beach. I taste the gefilte fish and horseradish she serves for lunch. The horseradish burns the back of my throat. My great-nephews, her great-grandchildren, don't like gefilte fish. "Ew," the older boy says, knowing he can joke with me. My mother screams and the boys looked stunned. I feel a profound sense of loss. The image of the Buddha is still with me. He looks like the younger of my great-nephews, when tickled. I imagine putting my head to the Buddha's belly. I hear laughter. I am not able to construct a poem in the workshop. Yet, I have the insight that my Buddha and my mother's kitchen are intimately connected. I resolve to unpack the box when I go home. I wonder about other participants' experiences. For Jamie O'Halloran, published poet turned school teacher, "The workshop appealed to … twin desires to develop a yoga and meditation practice and to return to writing on a daily basis… The breathing exercises and chanting were energizing and awakening. I felt senses sharpen as I became more mindful of my breathing…I was surprised when we were told how long we were practicing some breaths or chanting - time had become irrelevant…I can connect the breathing practices to an acute sense of mindfulness I have experienced writing…When I become fully involved with the poem, with the act of poetry, I am in a state that I have described-I think, inadequately, as trancelike." She calls her poem "Open to All", combining images of comfort; a tea cozy on a kettle, an open door, a dachshund wearing a party hat, caraway and currants, an open door. For Cara Chow, another workshop participant, "The vibration of the "ong" in my throat, palate and inner ears was very pleasurable. I also loved hearing myself and others chanting." The sound reminded me of drops of water falling onto a pond, creating pleasant ripples." Chow, who has published in literary journals, feels that the workshop helped her access her creativity in a new way. "It was my father's kitchen," she writes, "his apron holds the smell/the fingerprints. He's the one who cuts the garlic into thin slices…the television was his, the arguments were his." I have not yet written a poem about my mother's kitchen or my Buddha. The effect of the workshop is that I can experience the connection, thus I have new starting place. I have unpacked the Buddha. As I run my hands over my Buddha's shiny belly, I know I don't want to write about discord and death. I want to open all the boxes, savor all the treasures, and appreciate the mother who knows what I like. copyright September 26, 2004 Nancy Shiffrin, Ph.D., is the author of The Holy Letters (poems) and My Jewish Name (essays), Booksurge.com. Through CREATIVE WRITING SERVICES she helps aspiring writers achieve publication and personal satisfaction. Reach her at nshiffrin@earthlink.net or POB 1506 Santa Monica CA 90406. Return to:
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