The Proprioceptive Writing Foundational Program is designed to give participants extensive personal experience with the proprioceptive method and a thorough grasp of its intellectual underpinnings. The program is open to anyone interested in evolving consciousness through a deeper engagement with Proprioceptive Writing® (PW).
Before beginning the foundational program, spend time focusing on your own themes through PW. The more you sink into the practice and experience its effects personally, the more you will get out of the foundational program. Five-day immersions, weekend immersions, and conference call series offered through the PWC under Getting Started with PW are all great ways to delve into and support your practice.
Participants complete all courses in each unit before moving on to the next unit. Upon completion of the foundational program, those interested in becoming Proprioceptive Writing Center (PWC) teaching faculty go on to apprentice with PW’s founder, Linda Trichter Metcalf, and PW teaching faculty.
Delving Into WMA
Digging In
Hearing Writes Proprioceptively
Unit 1: Delving into Writing the
Mind Alive through Guided Writes
Delving into Writing the Mind Alive, The Proprioceptive Method for Finding your Authentic Voice
A twelve-week series of conference calls with a Proprioceptive Writing (PW) teacher. Private, semi-private, or small group.
In this series, your PW teacher discusses key concepts in Writing the Mind Alive (WMA), the basic PW text co-authored by Linda Trichter Metcalf and Tobin Simon. To help you relate these concepts to yourself and begin to think with them, your PW teacher suggests passages from WMA for you to explore through guided Writes.
Unlike regular Writes, guided Writes require that you allow your attention to be guided by your subject matter. guided Writes are used throughout the foundational program as a tool for entering and interacting with another’s thinking.
Students are encouraged to have at least 3 guided Writes weekly. They post one or two of these guided Writes to the class board in advance of each week’s conference call.
Unit 2: Digging In
The four courses in this unit introduce you to PW terms and give you the opportunity to assimilate PW concepts. The subject areas explored in these classes include proprioception as a mental sense (i.e., the mind’s capacity to know itself); and in the context of the mind: proprioceptive communication, proprioceptive experience, proprioceptive information/information deficit. This vocabulary constitutes a theory of mental development that can enrich participants intellectually, imaginatively, and emotionally.
Participants engage subject matter through guided Writes in weekly conference calls with Linda Metcalf and/or PWC faculty. Participants will already be familiar with guided Writes after working with them in Unit I: Delving Into Writing the Mind Alive. (See Unit 1 above).The writings of William James and D.W. Winnicott, among others, are introduced in each series.
Each series takes place over twelve weeks. Students are encouraged to have 3-5 Writes weekly, posting one for discussion during the conference call. Dates and times to be announced.
The Sense of Self & the Mother Dance
This series builds on D.W. Winnicott’s theory regarding the communication system between infant and good-enough-mother figure that kickstarts the sense of self. The series posits that the creative impulse derives from this same communication system. It explores the effects of this connection on our ongoing sense of self.
The Hearing Intelligence & the Many Speaking Voices
This series proposes a new approach to self-expression, self-awareness, and the capacity for psychological growth. It posits an inner life of the mind, or consciousness, as a play of voices that the mind senses inwardly through the activity of the Hearing Intelligence. Proprioceptive communication between the many speaking inner voices and the mental ability to sense those voice allows the mind to learn from itself and mature.
The Influence of Sex-Gender on Subjective Experience
Of the mighty forces shaping consciousness, (e.g., racial designation, economic status, class affiliation), sex-gender is arguably the most powerful. This unit explores the impact of sex-gender on the subjective sense of self. Whether you identify with the sex-gender you were assigned at birth or in the course of life chose another, sex-gender defines you to yourself and to the world. In this unit we question some of its most basic assumptions.
Proprioception: a New Model of Consciousness
How does writing according to the proprioceptive method transform self-experience? This series explores the genesis of the theory of mental proprioception, the mind’s own identity and movement sense, and entertains such questions as: how is consciousness expressed, what is self-awareness, how do minds expand?
Unit 3: Hearing Writes Proprioceptively
This phase of the program introduces you to proprioceptive Writes as textual documents that may be studied and learned from. Concepts explored in Unit 2 are directly applied to this study.
Here the goal is to absorb the Write as is, without additions or distortions. You’ll learn to detect movement and/or stasis within Writes. Proprioceptive experience, proprioceptive information/information deficit, and eidetic imagery are some of the structures that we’ll identify and explore in Writes.
Participants study sample Writes in weekly conference calls with Linda Trichter Metcalf and through guided Writes of their own. (See Unit 1 for a description of the guided Write).
Each series takes place over twelve weeks. Students are encouraged to have 3-5 guided Writes weekly, posting one for discussion during the conference call.
Studying Writes from Writing the Mind Alive
In this course, we will identify patterns Writes take during a mental growth experience. As examples, we will use the Writes and commentary found in Writing the Mind Alive and in “Becky Has A Write,” a paper written by Linda for the American Association for the Study of Mental Imagery.
Studying Anonymous Writes
In this series we consider a range of Writes, each deviating from the proprioceptive pattern illustrated by Writes in Writing the Mind Alive. Students should expect to have a minimum of three guided Writes on each anonymous Write under consideration. Anonymous Writes are volunteered by PW practitioners for study purposes.
