Reading with the Heart and not the Head. The Neuroscience behind Writual.

Last October, I launched Writual with a beta test of my offering. Since then, I have run twelve circles for close to 100 participants. Some of the people who came were all-in on the idea of poems, prompts and sharing. They were writers, or they already loved poetry, or they had experience of being ‘in circle’ with others. 

But some of the participants do not fit these definitions at all, and along the way, I started to notice a pattern in their feedback that goes something like this…

‘I thought I wouldn’t like it or that I couldn’t do it.’

‘I can’t believe what I wrote, what I shared!’

‘When is the next one?’

You might wonder why people were signing up for my Writual circles if they had doubts about them. Firstly, I have some amazing friends who joined my beta test just to support me, but in truth, they never saw this as their thing. Secondly, on the recent Return to Heart retreat I co-hosted, a few of the participants confided that they’d come for the other offerings but weren't very interested in the poetry and writing.

Today, these are the exact same people who are now messaging me with amazing poems they just read and that moved them. Not only that – they are sharing the words, stories and poems they are now writing themselves. Something in them shifted.

Looking back at those 12 circles, I can see three distinct things were happening – and I’ve found the neuroscience to support it.

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Permission to Not 'Understand’

Most of us were taught in school that a poem was something to analyse, solve, and find the right answer to. Further, they were something to be appreciated from a literary or craft perspective. No wonder most of us stopped reading poetry once we left school. 

Neuroscience tells us that when we stop analysing poetry and instead let the words wash over us, it activates something called the, wait for it, Mesolimbic Dopaminergic System. This is actually the brain’s primitive reward and pleasure system, and it’s the same place that gets triggered by a great piece of music. That’s why sometimes an amazing line of poetry (like the notes of a song) feels like it’s hit us in the chest or stomach. Or why we sometimes get goosebumps. It has bypassed our logical mind and hit our body instead. We process that deep, emotional language as physical nourishment, even if the poem is about something sad, like loss. We are reading with our heart, not our head!

The Power of Expression

When we move from poem into our 5-7 minute write, people who thought they ‘couldn't write’ suddenly look up to find a page full of words.

When we remove the internal editor, our brain moves into a state of psychological flow. Psychology has labeled this Expressive Writing. I like to call it Re/Generative Writing. When we feel heavy or experience messy emotions, it lives in our body as noise. Translating those entangled sensations into physical words on a page acts as a kind of neurological release. We unload the mental load we're carrying, physically lowering our stress levels and calming our nervous system. We don’t need to be professional writers to do this; our brains are already wired to think in metaphors and symbols to make sense of our lives. We are all natural-born writers!

Belonging and the Power of Ritual

There is a massive difference between writing alone at our desk and writing in a circle with others. 

Historically, humans did not process life in isolation – we processed it as a village. Modern neuroscience shows that the brain actually processes social isolation and the feeling of being misunderstood using the exact same neural pathways as physical pain.

When we step out of ‘classroom style’ rows and sit in a circle, the dynamic shifts from learning and competition to sharing, support and community. Sharing raw, unpolished words – and having others nod in recognition – creates what scientists call Neural Synchrony. The psychological safety of the circle tells our nervous system that we are safe, seen, and belong. Belonging is the ultimate remedy for self-doubt. 

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I didn’t start Writual with neuroscience in mind. I started it because I needed to get away from the often dry literary analysis of my Creative Writing and Literature degree, the pressures that come with craft and a gut feeling that if these were the kinds of spaces that worked for me, then other people needed them too. And so far it’s working. Writual honours how we were actually built to connect. We get away from our day-to-day, get into flow through a short meditation, let words hit our hearts without dissecting them, write to clear our mental load, and share to remember we aren't alone.

You don't need to be a writer or a poetry lover. You just have to be a human being, show up, take a breath, and see what spills onto the page.