Art of Memoir writing course featured in Mindfood Magazine

The power of personal storytelling is primal, it’s deep and the need to share and express our stories is one of the most unique aspects to being human. I know my cat and my herbs can’t sing me a song or type me a poem! There’s spiritual, emotional and psychotherapeutic payoffs to writing a memoir with a structured and conscious process which matter deeply to me. So in this article, you’ll learn about how writing a personal narrative with the Art of Memoir framework is such a beneficial spiritual, physical and psychological process, gain insights into the power you have over your state of consciousness, PLUS read an excerpt from my interview with MINDFOOD on the benefits of writing a memoir this way for their February 2026 issue.
By Louisa Deasey

The Art of Memoir, Mindfood Magazine and Self-Awareness

Emma Castle interviewed me for a feature story in MINDFOOD’s Jan/Feb 2026 issue titled TELL SOMEONE WHO CARES, and she’s kindly allowed me to share the section on memoir writing here, as MINDFOOD didn’t reprint the feature digitally and you can no longer buy the print issue.
But first, I must share how serendipitous the timing was to see this article. The morning I saw it, I had just been conversing with a writer in The Art of Memoir who had commented that in the six months she’s been using The Art of Memoir process to write her book, she’s developed more compassion towards herself AND others, than in years of therapy.

And this is exactly why I teach this process and use it in my own writing practice (whether I’m working on a book draft or not). I use this framework, discovered through the process of writing memoirs for publication, as a personal growth technique. You cannot write a memoir in this way and NOT become more self aware and compassionate. Because when you start seeing your internal or external narrative as just that – a story – with people and players and characters performing ‘functions…’.. allowing yourself to consider new version of events, an alternative meaning, a more constructive and expansive end point and the idea that you truly are the most important person in this story, because everything is both your mirror and a creative construct you have the power to change…
It’s like you start to ‘play God’ with your own life. You get back in touch with your own Divinity.
You realise you’re the narrator, you’re the main character, you’re the Director, the set designer, the creator of the mood and atmosphere, and more importantly, you’re the one writing the script, choosing the meaning, the drama, the focal points, the ending and the significance.
Because you are!

The Art of Memoir & the Map of Consciousness

Have you heard of The Map of Consciousness?  Developed by psychiatrist, teacher and author Dr. David R. Hawkins, The Map of Consciousness is a scale from 1-1000 that measures and calibrates levels of ‘consciousness’ from low to high energy based on the emotions, attitudes and behaviours in each state.
So, for example, low-energy states like fear, shame and guilt measure way down below 100 on the map, where love, joy and enlightenment exponentially rise above the ‘critical calibration point’ of 200 which is courage.

At the level of courage – above shame, fear, anger, pride and guilt… we are honest. It’s the baseline of integrity – self-honesty. This is why all twelve step programs of recovery from addiction start with the person actually admitting there’s a problem.
You can’t move up in the scale without the courage to face the truth, which can only happen when we ‘lay down our arms’ and surrender. You may not be able to change the past or the events or the present situation, but when you face the truth courageously, your power rises exponentially. 
This is why, in the words of Dr Hawkins, “courage is the turning point to all positive change.” And, I would add, courage comes from letting go of the ego and control, and shifting into the heart (which is what makes you both human and divine).

Now. you might be wondering why or how I’m connecting Dr Hawkins’ seminal work on consciousness with a memoir writing course? Well, first, I want you to imagine (I know, it’s tricky right now) a world without shame.

A world without punishment, unnecessary suffering and guilt.
It’s peace, isn’t it? Peace, abundance, love, community, service to a higher power. It’s a totally different concept of humanity, of our purpose, of the value of our experiences.

And to reach that world, where shame and guilt and anger and punishment and pride are replaced with acceptance and peace and neutrality… 

It starts with our feeling that way about ourselves. It starts with awareness of how we are ‘scripting the show’ from the inside. That there is a higher ‘force’ governing all of life, and your energetic state of conscious awareness is the most important thing you can shift.

As within, so without. As above, so below.
Everything and everyone around you is your mirror.

DR DAVID HAWKINS’ DISCOVERIES ABOUT PERSONAL POWER

To summarise the most extraordinary discovery of Dr Hawkins’ work calibrating the map of consciousness: For one individual to make an energetic leap from fear to courage (100 to 200), or from anger (150) to neutrality (250), is an exponential rise in personal life force energy and power so great that many hundreds of thousands of people around you would feel a noticeable positive impact, even if you never speak to them or interact with them.

Consciousness, which is your energy, your beliefs, your thoughts, your unconscious assumptions and behaviour and the energetic fabric which makes up your everyday life… affects everything.

This means: the greatest thing you can do for the world and those around you… is to raise your level of consciousness.
You do this by first becoming aware of where you’re operating from. That awareness, in itself, is a monumental shift from ‘unconscious’ to conscious.

MOVING UP THE SCALE OF CONSCIOUSNESS INCREASES INDIVIDUAL LIFE FORCE POWER ON AN EXPONENTIAL LEVEL

Importantly, an individual’s personal level of consciousness (awareness, emotions, thoughts, perceptions and behaviour) shapes reality in ways we can tangibly measure on an energetic scale.

Concepts and behaviours like going to war, enacting violence, retaliation and punishment are unimaginable if you’re calibrating from a level of acceptance, neutrality and peace. Or, in fact, at any level above the critical level of courage, which is where the constructive life force energy begins. And courage is simply honesty and heart centred truth.

Which means…. reality, and the world we see… really is an ‘inside out’ job!
And it starts by telling the truth. To ourselves.

“The starting point to all positive change is the willingness to tell the truth…”
Dr Hawkins, Power Vs Force

And this is the opposite to the ‘program’ of the society as it’s been running for centuries: in anger and shame and domination and war and violence and perpetrators with their victims and a God who is a a judgemental, vindictive white man in the sky, and a core belief inherited by millions, that FORCE and SUFFERING are required for change.

In the higher levels of consciousness (once we start moving above 300, towards enlightenment because the scale rises exponentially), Dr Hawkins says, ’cause and effect’ cease to exist, and this is where instantaneous miracles – of healing and enlightenment – become an everyday occurence.

Dr Hawkins uses a wonderful example that illustrates the instantaneous shifts that occur as you rise in consciousness, in Power Vs Force. He describes a person operating at different levels on the map of consciousness, from fear to anger to courage to neutrality and enlightenment, as the same person witnessing a homeless man on the street. As I read that particular chapter, I realised how the level of consciousness actually changes the story you live and tell. Because the level of consciousness we operate from creates our feelings, our thoughts and our behaviour. Consciousness truly is everything.

Dr Hawkins’ work truly shows that perception of reality comes first. To a person operating at a higher level of consciousness (anywhere above 200, which is the critical juncture from destructive lower level states to constructive and life-giving states, like joy, love and peace), the same event is an entirely different experience.
The past is viewed differently, without shame. The present is experienced as a state of inner power and awareness. And none of it has anything to do with how someone ELSE behaves or the physical circumstance.

Your level of conscious awareness has the ability to shape and move your reality (so, it’s your biggest power).

An individual operating at the lowest level of energy on the map – say, someone in shame and guilt over something perceived to be ‘wrong’ – has little life force energy to impact the world around them.

Whereas, an individual operating anywhere above the level of 200 (courage, integrity, self-honesty) has power that rises exponentially. This is proven. A human with an energy of compassion and peace has the ability to positively impact hundreds of thousands of people around them – and they don’t even need to interact! We’ve seen this with meditation research.
Here is one example of hundreds of studies into collective consciousness and reduction in violence and crime across 206 cities in the United States.

THE WAY YOU WRITE YOUR STORY CAN COMPLETELY CHANGE YOUR REALITY

At essence, the story of an individual expanding in consciousness is about a shift from the limited, fearful and critical egoic self… to a unified self, someone who can see themselves almost as you’d think God would see you (however you understand Divinity or ‘God’). There is no separation between your life and the life of all. You’re at one with the universe and everyone in it. Someone fully surrendered and present in their humanity. You become accepting of your perceived ‘weaknesses’, faults and foibles. You become someone who operates from a higher perspective, seeing the deeper meaning and significance to experiences of pain and suffering. The story of someone raising consciousness is a story of forgiveness, of surrender, of letting go.

From ‘conditional love’ and self-critical feelings of judgement to acceptance, appreciation and freedom.
One of the most powerful statements you can make that helps you shift from one state to the next, if you’re caught up in conflict or drama, is “I am willing to see this differently”.

One of the processes I teach inside The Art of Memoir is working through the twelve stages of Joseph Campbell’s mythic hero’s journey to find this perspective on who you are and what you did. But it’s not a one hour job. It’s a deep process, where you explore the story week by week also understanding the archetypes, the character functions and the symbols inherent in certain actions and behaviour. It’s almost like writing your memoir as though it’s a dream you’re re-telling! Sometimes, when i use this process to write about experiences I’m going through that make no sense to my endlessly self-critical ‘human’ self, I see the real truth of the matter, the symbols and the significance of events immediately. It’s almost absurd, how fast it happens. Because I’m not caught up in the identity of ‘me’. The very process of putting it into physical written form, separates it from me, and i can read those words and those experiences, look at that poor character in the midst of such madness, and consider: what if i just rearranged the meaning of this?
It gives you a lot of inner power and freedom.

Because to get to a sense of ‘separation’ from your story, and the intensity of the experience… while still operating from integrity and courage (which must be there for you to even want to write it truthfully), you need to perceive it from your higher mind. The higher mind that looks at patterns and symbols, which explores ideas through reasoning and objectivity and consideration of multiple perspectives. In essence, the narrative framework helps you to get out of the glass so you can look into the glass as an objective observer. As though you’re watching a movie as you write it.
Writing your story in this way allows you to shift into a neutral perspective on your experience, literally becoming the ‘observer’ not the experiencer, which is a powerful position to view your pain and your stories.

Neutrality calibrates at 250, which is a level of consciousness that gives one individual the power to positively impact 750 000 people around them (see all of Dr Hawkins’ books).
Whereas shame, which calibrates at 20, is close to death, being a destructive force to all of life.

“Most people are preoccupied with survival… They have not learned that the state of lovingness is the most powerful of all survival tools.”​
Dr David Hawkins, Power Vs Force

Personal Narrative and your state of Consciousness

 

“Force can bring satisfaction, but only power brings joy.”

Dr David Hawkins, Power Vs Force: the Hidden Determinants of Human Behaviour

 

Which brings me to why I’m so passionate about the Art of Memoir, because of how the process itself transforms our consciousness. And these benefits – the awareness, the love, the compassion for your ‘human’ self and their stories and visions and experiences and challenges… actually have nothing to do with any material or publishing outcomes.
Which is why I want more people to know about it, regardless of whether they want to get a memoir published!The more we can bring ourselves into a conscious and accepting state, the better it is for all of those around us.
Even those we do not know.

And this is also proven by Dr Hawkins’ research into consciousness.

According to Dr David Hawkins’ research, just one individual operating at a level of neutrality, which calibrates at 250 on the map of consciousness – has the power to positively raise the energy field of up to 750 000 people around them.
That’s REAL personal power, and service to humanity.
The power you have to raise your energetic state of consciousness.

 

Writing your memoir with this process increases personal power

One of the reasons I teach personal narrative with a specific framework I call the Story Star Codes is because of all the research into narrative therapy and the health and emotional benefits of this process.
I experienced it myself, when I wrote a very difficult and complex personal narrative that did involve a lot of shame and fear, transforming that into acceptance, love and courage through using these techniques.
And numerous studies confirm what I’ve experienced first-hand.

The way you write the narrative impacts your health and wellbeing
I speak of a certain study in my memoir writing masterclass where two separate groups were asked to write about the most stressful events of their lives. One group was given a narrative framework to follow, the other was not. The group given a narrative framework to follow for the writing project reported better long-term health outcomes in really specific areas: less reliance on painkillers, higher levels of mobility. The other group – the ones asked to ‘just write about it’ (sadly, the advice given in 99% of memoir courses out there) didn’t just lack the positive effects of the group using a narrative framework. They actually went DOWNHILL! Reporting fear, guilt and shame, physical pain and anxiety.
I don’t just believe that writing with a conscious storytelling framework increases your personal power. I know that for the many writers working on a memoir who ‘just write’ without one, they end up abandoning the draft, feeling miserable, and feeling even more judgement and shame and guilt about their behaviour or the experience.

Here is just one of hundreds of studies into the positive effects of completing your story with such a framework.

Some writers in The Art of Memoir have never sent their book out to publishers but instead gone on to sell different books, after the liberation and rise in confidence from completing their personal story with this framework.

One memorable student was ‘CC’, who completed her memoir draft in two months after having tried multiple ways to write it over a period of five years. Then she found The Art of Memoir. Exploring traumatic events with the writing framework, reading comparative titles through exploring the publishing process, and expressing herself truthfully with the permission to not seek outside validation or opinions on her draft, she told me via zoom that finishing the revision process had her feeling as though a massive weight had been lifted from her.
“I’m at peace, I feel happy, I feel free.” Neutrality (250) towards the people and players had replaced the unresolved anger, fear (100) and confusion she’d felt about the experiences of her life when the draft was incomplete.

Another writer, initially propelled to started writing her memoir out of anger (150) at a specific event and seeking expression to get out of fear and victim consciousness about it (fear is 100) told me by the end of the revision process,  she saw herself in a much more enlightened state. She’d actually ENJOYED writing the story, where once she’d been afraid to even articulate it. Because she really was the hero of the story. In the 90 Day Memoir component, where you explore the 12 stages through specific questions and examples, she’d written it and processed it that way. She’d reached peace and acceptance by the end of this process, and felt neutral about the people and players involved in her story.
Neutrality measures 250 on the map of consciousness, an exponential leap from fear at 100.

And without the ‘dangers’ of sharing your story in a group dynamic, or an in-person workshop or via the feedback model so often used in most writing programs, you don’t get any of the added confusion of other people’s projections onto you and your story.
You’re reliving it, which takes courage, but also scripting it in a new way, in real time, without interruptions, interference and interjections.
This is how we process and create new meaning from memories and experiences. We pull them out of the unconscious and make them conscious, but using a framework based on the psychological process of character growth helps you to have a ‘container’ and particularly a middle and an end point, for a story that might otherwise keep looping around in messy tangents in your head.
And the process itself: giving yourself time and attention, ‘unpacking’ events and situations with an objective perspective, tells you that it IS safe to express this experience on the page. Writers often report getting into an enjoyably obsessive state when they’re in the midst of the process. I know when I was writing A Letter From Paris, I didn’t want to leave more than a day between writing sessions, because I was having all these epiphanies and clarifying ‘aha!’ moments bubbling up and revealing the deeper layers of meaning to me that I knew would dissipate if I put the draft aside for too long.

Exploring your story from a Higher Perspective

It’s important to remember that a human becomes a hero in any kind of mythic story not through physical feats, but through transcending perceived limitations. It’s a symbolic shift, and the real battle or fight or ‘ordeal’ is usually internal. The people and events involved are always symbolic of the inner state. Likewise, when you shift your awareness of limitations and experiences, you start to see that you (and they) really were doing the best you could with all you had, at various stages of the process. And on a psychological level it really was, all happening for you, not to you.

This perspective shift can only come through writing our story in this way.

Power Increases as you raise your consciousness

As the late Dr Hawkins states, in Power Vs Force: The Hidden Determinants of Human Behaviour

“Love is more powerful than hatred; truth sets us free; forgiveness liberates both sides; unconditional love heals; courage empowers; and the essence of Divinity/Reality is peace.”

And this is why teaching memoir in this way really matters to me.
I want to live in a world where more people have let go of those ‘old world’ stories, have let go of the destructive cycle of shame, guilt and fear and learnt to see themselves (and others) with the same awe and reverence we feel for the very nature of life itself. Writing your story consciously, and bringing it into your awareness with clarity and compassion, gives you a technique you can use to shift into a higher perspective on your life and experiences. The Art of Memoir is a process that can be used for any experience, and any story. It’s narrative therapy, in essence, which is the basis of all psychotherapeutic practice.

TO SUM UP…

While you might have started reading this post to get to the excerpt from MINDFOOD, what I thought was more important to share (as there was no room to talk about this with Emma for the article) is the connection between our state of consciousness and how we live, tell, and process our stories.
If you’re still with me (!) I’ve pasted the text from the article which Emma generously sent me to share. Below is your ‘reward’ for reading this far – the article excerpt!

MINDFOOD ARTICLE EXCERPT FEATURING LOUISA DEASEY talking about the therapeutic aspects of writing memoir

TELL SOMEONE WHO CARES by Emma Castle

We all tell ourselves stories. At various times, we might be victims, villains or heroes. The difficulty is that these stories, formed from memories, thoughts and other people’s input, are coloured by emotion. Our retelling is rarely accurate or objective and, in worst case scenarios, it can undermine our self-esteem and confidence. So how can we reclaim our story and write a new, better chapter?

MEMOIR WRITING

With two memoirs under her belt, as well as seven years of teaching memoir writing to others, Louisa Deasey says that the process of writing down your stories – also known as memoir or personal narrative – is as much a spiritual practice as it is an authorial process.
“Whether you’re an author or not, you’re always making up stories. And being aware that something is a story, changes your perspective on it,” says Deasey.
This is particularly helpful when it comes to the rocky terrain of more difficult emotions.

“No story is actually ‘wrong’ if we can face the truth of it. Some stories have this shameful power but that’s only because we haven’t brought them into our awareness,” says Deasey.
“The art of storytelling gives you a safe container to put those thoughts, feelings and experiences into it so that it can become a separate thing that can be examined and witnessed. When we bring things out into the light and face them, you can see them more clearly and it dissolves the shame. It’s about making something physical of something spiritual. When you journal, you think about an idea, you get a pen, you write it down. You are bringing something from non-material into material form, and that is an incredibly powerful spiritual manifestation practice. You’re tuning into the intuition and the ideas that were already there. Imagination is endless. What most people need to do, and what we’ve never been taught, is to trust your intuition and become aware of your ideas, feelings and patterns.”

Deasey maintains that journaling is essential to memoir writing but also to self-awareness, understanding and confidence.

Research shows that 12 minutes a day is the minimum to see the physical and psychological benefits.
“We’re conditioned from childhood to look outside ourselves for options and validation,” says Deasey.
“We’re not taught to look inside. This kind of writing is about finding your voice and trusting that you are worth listening to. Asking certain questions of ourselves, and then observing what happens in our mind, behaviour and bodies is the basis of all narrative and psychotherapeutic practice.”

You can learn more about The Art of Memoir by watching my free masterclass on the framework I teach via the link below.