Source Text
Practice is our intention to avoid the mechanical and the habitual, our commitment to seek what is fresh, spontaneous, and joyful in the same place we looked for it yesterday.
You can practice yoga for fifteen or twenty minutes before you begin writing to focus your attention. You can take a short asana break during a writing session to clear your head. You can follow a stressful period of writing with restful poses and gentle pranayama to restore your energy if you feel depleted. Best of all, you can include yoga in the very act of writing, by sitting upright at your desk with a balanced spine, being mindful of your breath.
Wherefore enters yoga. Yoga doesn’t teach writing, but it is perhaps the most sophisticated, accessible, tried-and-true method of “inner disarmament” (to appropriate His Holiness the Dalai Lama’s words. See below).
Attuning himself to the spiritual development of each and every audience, his first turning was for those of beginning understanding, his second for intermediate and more advanced practitioners, and his third answered any leftover questions. In this way everyone’s needs were satisfied.
Since, as a writer, you are your own tool, what benefits you benefits your writing. Yoga is amazingly porous. Its principles and practices seamlessly morph into an aid that unearths the voice that is (and always has been) lurking in a writer’s heart.
When a posture is cultivated properly, the body (our felt image of it) lengthens and widens. “Coinciding with the infinite, ” Patanjali says. When a posture is practiced correctly, the practitioner extends beyond the skin, merging with the sky. Indeed, Patanjali describes relaxation as asana’s very essence. He uses the term shaithilya, which means “loosening” not merely the body, but opinions, concerns, hopes. The mind is naturally free. Through various persistent attitudes, this spaciousness contracts. Actually, the mind never contracts. It is the illusion of contraction that yogis address. As yoga unravels patterns, habits, obstructions, the mind’s cycles are interrupted. Aware of its activity, the mind lets go and sinks.
WRITING ASANA If a Prostitute Teaching a Parrot to Sing the Name of God Becomes Illumined, Then So Can Mirabai
Think of such places as opportunities to practice patience, the foremost writerly virtue. Usually there is no right or wrong. Usually there is room for your own unique understanding, over time, gradually to emerge.
Writing follows inner growth. Part of a writer’s process is to watch and, like a fond mother, rejoice!
GUIDELINES TO EASE YOUR WAY 1. Any of the writing asanas that do not come packaged with a prewriting hatha yoga asana can be mixed and matched with those that do. Each “immersion” is an energetic unit. Once you grasp its theme, the ordering is unimportant.
AI Summary
Writing the Fire! by Gail Sher presents key insights from the Yoga tradition. The 10 passages above capture the essential teachings.
Core Themes:
- [To be expanded]
Key Passages: Highlights 1, 3, and 10 are particularly representative.
This entry was generated from Readwise highlights. Expand with additional context as appropriate.