Writing and yoga have a lot in common.
To write or practice yoga, you have to tune everything else out so you can be in the moment. Writing and yoga require practice to maintain a certain level of skill – years of practice to be really good. You could argue, though, that students of writing and students of yoga never reach an ultimate state of “goodness,” they just keep working toward it.
If you stick with writing or yoga long enough, you start learning certain things about yourself. Strengths. Weaknesses. Habits. If you can identify your habits, you can decide whether it would be good to change them. As a writer, I tend to write long. Even on short pieces I go over. That’s a habit I’m committed to changing. In yoga, my hips don’t naturally align for poses like alanasana, or lunge pose. I have to consciously shift them into what feels like a weird place to get into the pose. But the longer I work on it, the less weird it feels, and the more solid the pose feels once I’m there.
Why should writers care about yoga? Practicing one can help the other. The pranayama or breath work yoga students do at the beginning of class is supposed to help the mind rid itself of thoughts in order to focus on the now. Writers can learn from that. When you’ve got a deadline and you really need focus on writing, it’s easy to let thoughts wander to other things – checking email, reading the newspaper, looking to see if anyone’s visited your blog, checking email again. I know, because if I let myself, I’m one of the worst offenders.
I’m just making this connection, but a lot of other people have already figured it out. Do a Google search on “yoga and writing” and you’ll see books and articles like this one and this one on the subject. You can go to cool places like Taos, Tulum, Mexico and the Hudson River Valley and pay a lot of money for yoga workshops meant to stimulate your inner muse. You can even consult with a yoga instructor-writing coach over the phone.
But you don’t have to go to some exotic locale or hire a coach to incorporate yoga into your writing life. Sign up for a class at your local rec center. Or check out a beginning yoga book from the library and spread out a mat on your living room floor.
Then, the next time you’re on deadline and your mind starts to wander, try this. Take a few minutes and do a couple of long, slow, deep breaths. If you already practice yoga, do some ujjayi breathing. Then open the document you need to work on, focus and write. If you sense your mind starting to wander, make a conscious decision to bring it back. If it wanders again, bring it back again. And again. See how much focus you can maintain for 5 minutes, or 10 or 15.
Namaste.
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I think for writing and yoga we should have discipline as well.
Beautiful connection. Nicely written. (I wonder in what moment of procrastination that you came up with that idea??)
You actually touched on several discipline practices that yoga incorporates: dharana (concentration)- the effort to stay focused on just one thing, and pratyahara (withdrawing the senses of external stimuli) the effort to not let the senses keep one from their concentration, but to become one with your surroundings. The work that we do “on our yoga mats” always relates to our regular lives. Whether it be writing for a living, vacuuming the carpet, standing in grocery lines or driving in rush hour. Challenges are put forth only to test how we deal with them.
And lastly, remember that asana (yoga pose) originally means “seat”. When you sit at the computer to compose your story you are taking your seat not just in the office chair but in your seat in life. Do you rest in your seat, are you confident, comfortable, at ease and aware? The seat of our selves is where the writer gains creativity, where the mother fosters her compassion, where the artist finds their passion, where the teacher finds their wisdom.
thanks for sharing,
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