sensuous reading & study
a monthly ritual for creative writers to practice reading and studying with our whole bodies
Throughout the past six weeks, during the Mako Study Hall, I’ve been slowly—and sensuously—studying the interiorities and intersections of Black disabled life, productivity culture, and trying to remain well as a published author.
The Mako Study Hall is described as “a weekly study space for culture critics and creative nonfiction writers to deepen their research on a topic of our choosing in a community of peers.” This space is co-facilitated by cultural workers Amber J. Phillips (also known as Amber Abundance) and Tia Oso.
My source material was (and still is) the three-day wellness diary by Akwaeke Emezi — Nigerian-born, disabled, and transgender storyteller and visual artist.
There are many ways I could’ve moved through the study but my intuition and the material’s spirit were giving clear instructions:
1. Let each encounter with the page be a pleasurable refusal to leave your body behind in the process.
2. Witness what’s possible when sensation and feltness guide the way you read, study, and access knowledge.
I listened.
That listening led to me creating a list of study practices focused on sensuousness (connected to Minna Salami, author of Sensuous Knowledge: A Black Feminist Approach for Everyone) and embodiment (connected to Alta Starr, author of Cultivating the Self: Embodied Transformation for Artists). These practices became an experiment I could explore each week so the wellness diary could affect my entire being.
Before I share a glimpse into one of those practices, I invite you to be in your body, too. As you’re reading and witnessing, notice how your body responds to a word, an image. Notice what sensations, thoughts, and memories start moving and tingling at the edges of your skin.
In the first entry on Tuesday, June 22 at 8:45AM, Emezi shares their slow morning ritual and repetitive breakfast recipe — because repetition offers the mind more ease when there’s so much to manage physically, day-to-day.
I wanted to imagine myself there, in the “soft and steady routine” they described. I wanted to re-enact the moments; to taste what they tasted.
On Sunday, April 19, the day after Study Hall, I went to the mercado to get a basil plant. It’s Monday morning now, 11:59AM, a minute from the afternoon. I gathered all of the ingredients in the kitchen but not until holding the first pill in my hand, taking more medications, checking my sugar levels, journaling, sitting at the altar with my cat, Nora, replacing the Dexcom G7 blood glucose sensor on my lower back, and getting water delivered. Then, I could start cooking breakfast.
Counting carbs after cracking eggs to baste them. I had to look up, “how do you make basted eggs?” I kept the basil plant outside on the porch so Iike Emezi, I too, could be forced outside “into the air, the sun, the plants.” The taste of basil is fading away from my tongue as I write this but after eating the breakfast—on a plate I painted, now saturated in egg yolk that dripped from the gluten-free toasts—I sat down to re-read their diary entry.
I wanted to read it again with the basil still alive, still lingering in my mouth while reading out loud. I can taste the lemon that I squeezed into the ice water. I never put ice in my water but I did this morning. I wanted everything to be as Emezi wrote it—adding in my imagination and the realities of my own morning rhythms. This entire process feels intimate, like I’m bending time and experiencing their words as I was meant to experience them—beyond the page, pulsing throughout my entire being.
Connecting more deeply and sensuously with the material each week became its own wellness diary — a small but potent record of my Black disabled life. I was there, studying and sensing long enough to also recognize the patterns in Emezi’s wellness practices and how they could support me in the wild task of trying to be well as a writer, too.
From slow mornings to garden pleasures to somatic therapy, tending to the body before writing anything at all is the throughline. Tending is writing. And studying this truth through the body is a necessary kind of savoring; a way of knowing I deserve to indulge.
By the last entry, what came through is a remembering of what’s possible when we invite our bodies to connect with the essence of literary expressions and media through feeling.
My body’s left with the desire to continue being inside this mode of study and inviting some kin and folk to do the same.
From June — November, I’m offering Sensuous Reading & Study: a monthly ritual for creative writers to practice reading and studying with our whole bodies.
The notes, dreams, and sensuous embodiment practices I’ve created during the Mako Study Hall have shaped this offering. They are, of course, rooted in my embodied, experimental concept “felt futures” too.
Each month, we’ll ask ourselves:
What if we let the materials, media, and texts we love transform and touch our entire being?
What if the art of reading and studying could be a ritual rooted in our sensuousness, an embodied practice that becomes a part of who we are, a feeling that carries us to freedom?
Covered in the belief that studying can be sensuous, I trust our bodies, minds, and spirits to feel the answers.
Here are the juicy offering details:
THE PEOPLE
This is for writers who desire more moments to slow down and fully feel within their creative practice.
Who want to explore what it’s like to read and study in sensuous, whole-bodied ways.
Who want to access knowledge through the senses, art, embodiment, dreams, and spirit.1
Who need a liberatory, care-filled space to connect with fellow creative writers, wordweavers, and storytellers.
Who are genuinely curious about building new reading and studying methods that begin with feeling.
THE CADENCE
Second Sundays of the month, from 1-3PM EST in Zoomland
You can commit to all six Sundays or join on specific dates.
The monthly dates are:
June 14
July 12
August 9
September 13
October 11
November 8
Centering curiosity and gentle exploration, you’re invited to:
Bring your own material to begin a multisensory reading and studying experience. This could be an essay, poem, song, podcast interview, video — any media you’ve been longing to share more time with. You can read and study the same material for the full six months or bring something new each month.
(Re)connect with fellow creative writers, wordweavers, and storytellers who are also genuinely curious about building new reading and studying methods that begin with feeling.
Experiment with a collection of sensuous embodiment practices while engaging with your desired material. Six practices from my “Sensuous Reading & Study Practice Guide” will be introduced in the gathering and space will be made for everyone to choose one practice for that month as you experiment in communal solitude, at your own pace.
Share what was felt and learned from connecting more deeply and sensuously with the material and ways you can commit to continue being in your practice throughout the rest of the month.
This will be lightly facilitated with an opening introduction, self-guided middle space and break, and a reflective closing.
Sliding scales are available with options for you to pay per gathering ($22/33/44) or choose the package option ($125/185/250) and commit to the full Sensuous Reading & Study experience.
6 monthly rituals, 6 sensuous embodiment practices to explore.
feeling our futures,
Denise Shanté
call me Denise Shanté (she/her)
I’m currently experiencing myself as a multidimensional designer, creative co-conspirator, and intuitive writer. If you trace my creative lineages—past and present—you’ll find memories of me (self)publishing experimental memoirs and collaborating with other designers and writers devoted to shaping communities of care that will also care for us. Through a creative social practice rooted in multimodality and sensorial knowledge, I’m also cultivating embodied experiments where (dis)abled storytellers and worldmakers can collectively dream, design, write, and feel the futures we long for and love. My work explores themes of intimacy, honesty, aliveness, bodies, interiority, inquiry, and the cultures of taking care. Every breath is a spell to move with “nothing less than love” (thank you, June Jordan). With love, I honor my Black disabled body from which cripped creations flow and the spirit of my ancestors who make it possible for me to express my multitudes—audaciously and freely.
current offerings to dream, design, write & feel with me
1:1 Care Centric Guidance
I’m bringing back guidance offerings where we go deep on ways to weave care into your creative practice and everyday life and collaborate on shaping a project or world you’re designing into existence. These Individual Guidance Sessions and Care Centric Guidance Journeys are for you if you want to make care your compass and want to begin the intimate, real work of making your dreams and desires a reality. Learn more about the offering and book your sessions.
ways we can collaborate & co-conspire
I’m currently welcoming opportunities to join creative projects, contribute to collective works, and facilitate gatherings. I also carry a deep love for sharing wisdom and luminous reflections during panel conversations, guest lectures, conferences, and community events. If you embody care and liberatory ways of making, let’s talk.
Connect with me for collaborations and hire me for speaking opportunities.
nourish my creative bodymind & social practice
If you find my writings and creative existence pouring into your life and ways of being/relating/making, I welcome your expressed gratitudes through financial resourcing. You can become a paid subscriber or make donations via Venmo, CashApp, and PayPal. Thank you so much for your care.
In the Emerge interview, Minna Salami describes Sensuous Knowledge as “a spiritual, combined approach to knowledge. It is knowledge that involves not only the mind and the intellect, but also feeling, the senses, and art, dreams, embodiment, spirit, and the idea of oneself as part of a larger whole.”