As a high school English teacher who moonlights as a palliative care chaplain, and a family physician, trauma therapist, and author of The Modern Trauma Toolkit, we have found that our disciplines—while they don’t share a syllabus—are rooted in the same soil: the belief that the body knows things the mind has not yet found words for and that the right kind of language can coax that knowing into the open.

We joined forces because we see the young people we work with contending with a precarious present and a terrifying future, and we have come to understand that providing them with the tools that will help them tend to their nervous systems with care is just as important, if not even more so, as teaching them about literary devices, historical dates, and biological processes. 

On any given day, young people scrolling online might stumble upon visions of war, climate disaster, police brutality, political fracture, and other traumatic footage—all before the day has barely begun. Approximately one in every five young people in Canada, where we live and work, has experienced what the medical establishment would call a mental illness of some kind. Our students’ nervous systems are being continuously lit up, and we know that the body metabolizes that fear-induced electricity, that trauma and anxiety, into clenched jaws, shallow breathing, hypervigilance, and even physical illness.

English class, at its best, is a place where the unspeakable might be spoken . . .

Yet English class, at its best, is a place where the unspeakable might be spoken; where literature gives students proxy bodies through which to rehearse their emotions; where poetry hands them compressed, electric language for states that ordinary speech may not otherwise manage to hold. 

Drawing on our individual areas of expertise, we set out to braid the insight that literature can provide with the understanding of the body and nervous system that science offers. Our idea was to create writing practices rooted in ecological metaphor and somatic awareness so that students could understand why their bodies respond the way they do, then transform that understanding into art—something they could make and hold and reflect on.

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In “Coal,” the poet Audre Lorde writes of words that live in the throat, “breeding like adders,” while others “seek to explode through my lips / like young sparrows bursting from shell.” That tension between what is trapped and what longs for release is the landscape of today’s classrooms. When the body is overwhelmed, the brain’s language centers go offline. The amygdala, which acts as the brain’s emotional processing hub, hijacks the system, making it near-impossible to communicate a clear response to the traumatic experience. This is why somatic techniques like the ones in The Modern Trauma Toolkit, including bilateral stimulation, conscious breathing, and tapping, can be useful in an English class as well. These practices communicate directly with the nervous system, lowering the level of alarm and restoring access to the parts of the brain that can reflect, narrate, and create.

Before a writing lesson on Mary Oliver, Lesley plays music to flood the room with birdsong and create what Christy calls a “brain tingle,” an auditory cue that stimulates both sides of the brain and eases the amygdala’s grip. Before students read about climate trauma, they try out two minutes of box breathing, a deep breathing technique that helps alleviate stress. 

You cannot ask a student to be vulnerable on the page if their body is braced for danger. You must calm the body to be able to ignite the imagination.

A regulated nervous system is a prerequisite for students to come down from an activated state. You cannot ask a student to be vulnerable on the page if their body is braced for danger. You must calm the body to be able to ignite the imagination. When writing becomes a tool for grounding and the page is a place for the body to be heard rather than to be overridden, I have seen students who mask pain with humor write with honesty and vulnerability and students who regularly freeze up in class find their voice.

Lorde also insisted that “poetry is the way we give name to the nameless so it can be thought.” With this as a kind of operating principle, what follows are just two of the many lessons we have developed that form part of a broader curriculum in which science and poetry are used in collaboration to free the body and mind to create.

Lesson One: Compost Heap Confessions

We believe that trauma responses (freezing, avoiding, scanning for danger) are protective mechanisms far more than they are pathologies. Healing doesn’t require that we uproot these responses or weed them out, but it does ask us to allow them to be, while simultaneously crafting the conditions that will allow more joy and calm to take root. We ground this lesson in Irene Mathieu’s poem “soil,” where the near-homophonic nature of the words soil and soul are the beginning of a meditation on how we become what we grow from:

soil
by Irène Mathieu

the way you say soil
sounds like soul, as in

after we walked through the woods
my feet were covered in soul

when it rains
the soul turns to mud

the soul is made of decomposed
plant and animal matter;

edaphology is the study of the soul’s
influence on living things

while pedology is the study of how
soul is formed, its particular granularity.

you are rooted in a certain red patch
of soul that bled you and your

hundred cousins to life, a slow
warm river you call home.

maybe there is soul under everything,
even when we strike rock first.

the way you say soil you make
a poem out of every speck of dirt.

— from orogeny (Trembling Pillow Press, 2016)

We also draw on Sophie Strand’s writing on composting: “Am I decaying? Well, yes. But decay is always a day, a microbe, a rootlet, away from sprouting” (from The Body Is a Doorway: A Journey Beyond Healing, Hope, and the Human by Sophie Strand). Her prayer, “Make me good soil,” became our guiding line.

We begin the lesson by inviting students to write a 23-line poem using structured prompts that move through five phases: 

• Naming the body’s protective responses (3 lines)
• Identifying what they are ready to compost (4 lines)
• Acknowledging supports (4 lines)
• Recognizing inherited patterns (4 lines)
• Arriving at a closing prayer (8 lines)

We provide a sentence starter for each line to guide students’ writing. With each prompt, the poem builds incrementally. 

Because this is a vulnerable exercise, it’s often easier for some students to write from another perspective. We make sure to let them know that they can choose whatever vantage point feels safest to them, whether that be a fictional character, an ancestor, or their own. We also let them know that if any part of the exercise doesn’t speak to them or feels too difficult or dangerous, they are free to skip it. 

Poem Prompts

The body’s response:

• My body learned to . . . [Name a protection mechanism—freeze, avoid, scan for danger.]
• When . . . [What triggered this response originally?]
• It was trying to . . .  [What was your body attempting to protect you from?]

What I’m ready to compost:

• Into my compost heap I place . . . [A protective mechanism that once served you but no longer does.]
• Another protective mechanism . . .
• A third protective mechanism . . .
• These kept me safe when . . . [What experiences they protected you through. You don’t have to be too specific here, write more abstractly or poetically if you like.]

Trauma-informed support:

• The people who speak to me with gentleness are . . .
• The ones who help me express my vulnerability are . . .
• The ones who watch for my cues are . . .
• Without them I would still . . . [What would you struggle to do without their support?]

Recognizing complex patterns: 

• The hurt I inherited was . . . [Use some adjectives to describe the hurt that shaped you.]
• It shows up in my body as . . . [How do you carry others’ pain?]
• But knowing this helps me . . . [What does understanding generational patterns make possible for you?]
• I am learning that . . . [Complete with “I never deserved it” or words of your own.]

Post-traumatic growth: 

• AsI transform, I want to . . .
• As I heal, I want to . . .
• As I grow, I want to . . .
• With my feet planted in my soil, I am becoming . . . [What will you nourish? What wisdom will you offer?]

The Prayer: A wave of expansion and awareness only possible because you’ve gone through the challenge.

• I am releasing the idea that I am . . . [What old form might you be releasing?]
• Let me be reborn as . . . [What new form do you want to take?]
• Let me learn about . . . [What do you want to discover about yourself?]
• Make me good soil, and . . . [Whatever final words you wish to add.]

Here are two student poems that grew out of this lesson: 

Compost Heap Confession
By Grade 12 Student

My body learned to flatten itself into silence
when the shouting started filling every room like water.
It was trying to make me small enough to survive.
Into my compost heap I place the flinching,
the way I rehearse conversations before I have them,
the habit of watching doors.
These kept me safe when the walls were thin and flimsy.

The people who speak to me with gentleness are my aunt, my best friend,
the librarian who never asks why I’m there before the bell.
The ones who help me express my vulnerability are the songs I play at 2 AM
The ones who watch for my cues are fewer than I’d like.
Without them I would still be holding my breath in every room.

The hurt I inherited was sweet, careful, dressed in good intentions.
It shows up in my body as a jaw that won’t unclench.
But knowing this helps me see my mother’s teeth weren’t always gritted.
I am learning that the shame was never mine to compost alone.

As I transform, I want to take up the space I was taught to vacate.
As I heal, I want to speak before I am asked.
As I grow, I want to build rooms where no one has to dissolve into the walls.
With my toes among the grass, I am becoming someone who stays.

I am releasing the idea that I am too much and not enough in the same breath.
Let me be reborn as a voice that doesn’t wait for permission.
Let me learn about the parts of myself that survived the quiet.
Make me good soil, and let something tender begin, again, here.

What the Sycamore Knows
By Grade 12 Student

My body learned to laugh when it wanted to cry
when the grief of my grandmother’s passing sat heavily on my chest, on a family
that didn’t believe in sitting with heavy things for too long.
It was trying to keep me from falling apart in front of everyone.

Into my compost heap I place the performing,
the pretending I’m fine over breakfast and dinner,
the running I do when feelings come too close.
These kept me safe when grief was the language my family couldn’t speak.

The people who speak to me gently are my coach,
who once sat with me saying nothing for twenty minutes.
The ones who help me express my vulnerability are the writers
who show me I am not the first to feel this way.
The ones who watch for my cues are the friends who text me
bad memes that will make me laugh in spite of myself.
Without them, I would still be burning up on a different frequency.
The hurt I inherited was Presbyterian, pursed and puckered.
It shows up in my body as a chest that tightens before I know I’m sad.
But knowing this helps me forgive my dad for not crying when I wanted him to.
I am learning that silence is not strength and tears are a good kind of language.

As I transform, I want to call grief something sweeter, by a new name.
As I heal, I want to sit with someone else’s sadness and not try to fix it.
As I grow, I want to be the kind of person people don’t have to hide from.
With my feet planted in my soil, I am becoming the sycamore
that sheds its bark every year and still stays standing.

I am releasing the idea that I am only lovable when I’m easy enough.
Let me be reborn as someone who grieves out loud.
Let me learn about the roots my grandmother left below the house.
Make me good soil, and she’ll grow again through me.

This is what students can do when they write from the body.

Lesson Two: Rewriting the DSM

The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders is the cornerstone of psychiatric classification in North America. It is also a document that speaks about human suffering in the grammar of deficit. Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder is among the “disruptive behavior disorders” causing “impairments in social communication” and “wandering off tasks.” Major Depressive Disorder is defined through “markedly diminished interest or pleasure” and “psychomotor retardation.” As we discuss with students, the DSM has been shaped as much by social power as by its “evidence,” as is clear when you consider how homosexuality remained in its pages until 1973. Clinical language is always political language.

Instead of dwelling on critique, though, we get students to take this language, crack it open, and reshape it. We provide curated DSM-5 excerpts and invite them to transform the clinical language into poetry that names the same experience with precision but also with dignity, injected with real experience. Each student selects a diagnosis, underlines the words that stand out, and writes a poem that shakes and reconstitutes that language, keeping at least five clinical phrases but placing them in a new context. 

To return to Lorde’s “Coal,” students take the “words like stapled wagers / In a perforated book” and “tear apart” and transmute them into something new, in words Lorde describes as “open”—“As a diamond comes into a knot of flame.”

Here are some examples of student writing that grew out of this exercise in Lesley’s class:

Attention (After the DSM-5)
By Grade 12 Student

They say I fail to give close attention to details
but I have memorized the exact shade of orange
the sky turns seven minutes before sunset in October.

They say I have difficulty sustaining attention
as if attention were a single beam of light
and not the way I catch everything at once,
the hum of the fluorescent, the crack in the ceiling tile,
the earring swinging when she turns away.

Inconsistent with developmental level.
As if there is one level.
As if development is a staircase
and not a river that doubles back, that floods,
that finds a dozen unmapped channels.

They call it deficit
but what if my mind is an estuary
where freshwater meets salt,
where ten thousand species thrive
in the very place others call mud?

Major (After the DSM-5)
By Grade 12 Student

Markedly diminished interest or pleasure,
they write, as though joy had a price
and mine’s the stock market crash.

But it is more like the tide going out, I’d say.
The sea still there, the water still salt,
only pulled so far from shore
you’d forget it was ever close enough to get into.

Psychomotor retardation.
My bones are not frozen, only wintering.
Beneath the ground, bulbs always know
the way back to being a tulip.

The manual does not have a code
for the way the moon disappears completely
and returns as a toenail clipping.
But still the moon,
still pulling the whole ocean to her feet.

Becoming Good Soil

The two lessons above sit within the broader curriculum we have designed. Other activities in this curriculum include our River of Life project, where students trace their journeys using water as a guiding metaphor, gathering objects to represent obstacles, turning points, and the larger forces (racism, poverty, culture, care) that shape their lives. As part of the project, the students read eco-focused authors, such as Sophie Strand and Bayo Akomolafe, and reflect on how water moves, how it seeps, soaks, overflows, irrigates, evaporates, and carves.

This work is not politically neutral. When we teach students that the DSM once pathologized queerness and that power is embedded in clinical language, and when we use ecological metaphors alongside Western neuroscience, we are practicing what it means to decolonize the grammar of care. For many of our students navigating racism, displacement, and the ambient grief of ecological collapse, these somatic tools are real survival practices, the same ones communities have refined for millennia, only now students can experiment with them without the diagnostic or pathologizing lens that often accompanies their use today in clinical mental health settings. In a time of book bans, political intrusions into curriculum, and growing violence in schools, teaching the whole person is an act of resistance. This is the work we must do.

The alarms are unlikely to abate anytime soon. The world will go on asking our students to metabolize more than any generation should have to hold. Not all of this can be mended from within the English classroom. That said, we can change the conditions in which students encounter them. We can make the classroom a kind of terrarium, like the ones Lesley’s students have made: a small, self-sustaining ecosystem where compassion, time, and the slow work of community-building lay the groundwork and nourish the soil for something new, some alternative way of being or thinking, to take root. We can offer a language for what the body already knows and the tools students need to steady themselves long enough to use it. Here we might yet bring a new world into focus, beyond this world on fire where, as in Irene Mathieu’s red patch of soil, something tender is already growing.

Features photo by Jonathan Kemper on Unsplash.