Your Body Has Notes for You

Dear Luminous Writer,

Writing doesn’t only happen in the mind. It lives in breath, in pulse, in the subtle rise and fall of your body as it meets the page.

Have you felt it, the way your chest lifts when a line lands just right, or how your breath goes shallow when something rings false? Your body is already attuned to what works and what doesn’t in your writing.

A warm spot in your chest. A settling in your gut. A quickened pulse. These are all yeses from your body.

Tightness, restlessness, numbness. That’s information too.

The way your breathing slows when the right image lands—not the clever one, but the true one. The way your jaw clenches while drafting dialogue, a tightness that tells you something is off. The way writing about grief can feel like a knot in your throat, and when, instead of pushing past it, you pause, breathe, and pay attention, you realize that knot is information: where the wound still needs tending, or where the writing needs to go deeper.

Our bodies are concrete. They don’t traffic in abstractions. Those sensations we notice are our body’s notes in the margins.

And when we ignore them? That feels pretty yucky. That restless, slightly sick feeling when you keep typing through the numbness, or the way your shoulders creep up to your ears when you’re forcing a sentence that won’t come. Your body knows when you’re pushing past what it’s trying to tell you.

This week, as I assigned a craft exercise on noticing abstract language to a coaching client, my phone “assistant” chimed in mid-video call with an unprompted suggestion. Unlike my phone, we (as the embodied, the non-abstract) can listen with care and intention to what our bodies are telling us about our words.

Try This: Listen to Your Body As You Write

Open a draft you are working on and read the first part aloud, slowly, letting your body guide you. Notice your breath, your chest, your belly, and the hollow of your throat. Where do you feel a spark, a pause, or a settling? Mark those spots. Think of them as your body’s workshop notes.

As you write or revise, pause when something feels off. Lean into the moments that feel alive. Let the work emerge from presence, not from pushing.

Trusting our bodies isn’t about chasing perfection (we’re already perfect, thankyouverymuch). It’s about listening closely, attuning to each feeling and sensation, slowing down to notice what feels alive or what feels pushed, and remembering that your words don’t begin on the page—they begin in you.

Where did you feel your writing this week? In a lift, a knot, a spark? I would love to hear how embodied awareness showed up in your practice.

Warmly,
Rachel

—November 19, 2025

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