Lesson 3:
Starting Your
Reflection Journal

Dancing with Our Emotions: Choreographing Thoughts Through Journaling

Bronislava Nijinska's "Choreographic design for Demons" perfectly illustrates the power of journaling for emotional awareness. Just as this pioneering female choreographer created a visual system to map dancers' movements through space, journaling creates a system to map our emotions through time.

Look closely at the flowing lines in Nijinska's design – they transform abstract feelings into concrete pathways, just as journaling transforms floating thoughts into written reflections. The structural patterns demonstrate how seemingly chaotic emotions can be organized into meaningful arrangements, giving form to what might otherwise remain formless within us.

Created in 1920 for the revolutionary Ballets Russes company, this design represents one of the first systematic approaches to recording emotional movements. Nijinska broke barriers as one of the first prominent female choreographers, developing notation systems that captured not just physical positions but the emotional energy behind them.

For students navigating complex feelings, Nijinska's approach offers valuable insights:

• Recording our emotions creates a map we can follow to understand ourselves better

• Systems and structures help us make sense of complex internal experiences

• Creating external representations of internal feelings helps us process them

• Regular practice in emotional notation builds self-awareness over time

As we begin our journaling practice today, think of yourself as a choreographer of your own emotions – creating patterns, pathways, and systems that transform invisible feelings into visible expressions that you can revisit, understand, and learn from.