We’ve all hit slumps in our writing from time to time, we just cannot get the words on paper, or not everything we write reads as we want it to. Often when this happens, it means we need to take a step back from our writing and find another activity that will help our racing mind. For me that activity is often yoga. These are my favorite three yoga asanas or poses that help me to write better and more productively.
1. Vrksasna or tree pose.
I find this pose especially helpful when I’ve been sitting at a desk for hours and either writing like mad or trying to write and I can’t get anything to come out how I want. Tree pose is beneficial for a number of reasons but my favorite is that it releases tension in the body, straightens my spine when I’ve been slumped over a computer and it encourages you to breathe deeply as well. This in turn manifests calm and peace allowing me to come up with new ideas. You can find an awesome video with instructions for how to do tree pose here.
2. Adho Mukha Svanasana or downward facing dog pose.
This pose is a little more challenging and I can never keep it for long periods but it’s super helpful in dispelling tension in the neck, shoulders and head. Stress causes us to hold a lot of tension in these areas, which can cause pain in our back, shoulders and neck, and in turn cause very nasty headaches. At least for me it does, and makes it very hard to write much of anything, so in order to dispel that tension and stress in those areas often caused by sitting at a desk and computer for too long I like to do downward facing dog pose. You can find instructions here for this pose.
3. Savasana or corpse pose.
This pose is lovely to do at the end of a long day of writing (or when you’ve been writing for hours and need a break) because it is so supportive of your entire body, the spine especially. I like to turn on a little relaxing music and just let my whole body sink into the floor and have the Earth support you. And if you fall asleep for a bit, it’s so relaxing. Sometimes what we need to do when writing is just “relax” and this pose is perfect for fostering relaxation and dispelling tension everywhere in the body. However, as with all yoga asanas you need to make sure you are doing it correctly. For instructions for how to do corpse pose correctly, check out this video by my all-time favorite online yoga teacher Adrienne. She is in a word awesome! And that is the reason for my linking to three of her videos in this article.
So there you have it, my favorite three yoga asanas to help busy authors write better and write more. Because after all if you’re all bunched up and tense and hurting, it’s kind of hard to think clearly, let alone come up with anything to write!