Personal Growth
Handwriting as a tool for Personal Growth
Journaling is a time honored tradition around the world and across the ages. Bringing the Vimala Alphabet™ into play, journaling for personal growth becomes a powerful tool for those seeking to cultivate positive life changes. Whenever we put pen to paper, we are connecting our hand to thousands of neurons in our brain — pathways of thought that create our patterns in thinking, and from these patterns we form our habits and attitudes. Habits and attitudes imprint us in such a way that we automatically react to life conditions rather than responding authentically. Automatic thinking patterns, our ingrained mindset, continue to condition us by life situations rather than opening us to experience, enjoy, and change our life in meaningful ways.
As we write, we affirm firmly fixed attitudes by the way we write, the way we connect letters, how we space out our pages, how much or how little pressure we apply. There are many aspects to handwriting and every person’s handwriting is uniquely their own. What’s more, as we write we reaffirm these opinions, habits and traits.
Why the Vimala Alphabet™?
The Vimala Alphabet™ was created to affirm positive forward-thinking attitudes, a casual, fluid writing that reaffirms the writer’s vision for being in the world. Supportive of our inner strengths, motivating our highest aims, and inspiring innovative thinking, the Vimala letters are designed to enable us to express our thoughts easily and fluently. It is an unparalleled, clear, casual, legible script that engages the writer’s attentiveness and is fun to write.
When we face difficult situations in life, especially when we are confronted with similar problems year after year, it’s evident there is something holding us back, and that something lies hidden in our subconscious and our subconscious mind leaves telltale hints in the lines we write. Changing our handwriting impresses the subconscious with new ways of thinking, new neural pathways form, new ways of seeing and being emerge. This takes dedication to practice — 40-days of daily 15-minute writing practice with a few changes to adjust an attitude and adopt a habit. Life is counted, alphabetically speaking, in 40-day cycles!
You can read about this technology in Vimala Rodgers‘ book, Your Handwriting Can Change Your Life, and in her best selling kit Transform Your Life Through Handwriting. Though many go solo with this material, I do highly recommend having a Certified Handwriting Consultant help you with your journey, and it is a journey! Your life will change in most wonderful ways, however, the subconscious is a stubborn, sometimes jealous attendant whose strongest attribute is often resistance! To protect the ego, maintain the status quo (that all too familiar comfort zone — even if misery lives there), and stay in charge of running your life for you, on automatic, the subconscious presents distractions on steroids! Having a competent Certified Handwriting Consultant to guide and support you is most helpful to you on your transformational journey.
Key point: Consistency!! Daily, every day, for fifteen minutes write, preferably at the same time (morning is best) and same place every day. Unlined paper in landscape direction, writing across the longest width of the page. (note paper positioning diagram below)
For ease of writing, paper positioning is crucial. Write on a flat surface, aligning the paper with the elbow of your dominant hand. This is especially important for left handed writers to avoid writing with a ‘hooked hand.’ Aligning the paper with your writing hand’s elbow accommodates a clear, unobstructed view across the page.
Sample Practice Page
Choose up to three letters and employ one other optional handwriting change, such as margin, word spacing, slant, etc. Write lines of these three letters and lines of words that have them at the beginning, middle, and end. You can be creative in finding several words that include all three letters in the various positions in your words. Free-form journal for the remainder of the fifteen minute practice paying particular attention to your three letters. Finish by signing and dating your pages. Think of your signature as a self-portrait, your Autograph!
Keep a “Miracle Log” documenting changes in your every day life … like noticing how morning commute traffic is less stressful or that you are able to accomplish 80% of your “to do” list instead of only the usual 40%. You may note people are friendlier or you have more energy. Whatever it is … mark it down. Review your log from time to time. Celebrate the changes. Enjoy your life!
Key Point: Consistency! Daily, every day, write for fifteen minutes!
Remember, By the Yard, it’s hard. Inch by inch, it’s a cinch!
Need ideas for your free-form writing?
Here are 40 writing prompts for your daily journaling:
e-mail: prompts@alphabetpenandink.com
Reflections is a personal journal with fifty-two blank pages — one for each week in a year — to pen thoughts, insights, and reflections. For inspiration, each week features a reflective thought, a plant portrait, and a letter or ligature of the Alphabet based on the teachings of Vimala Rodgers, PhD and her Handwriting System, The Vimala Alphabet™.
