Writing and Yoga: the Match of a Lifetime

In both writing and yoga, we look for the seemingly opposite. We look for openness and courage. Softness and strength. Boundaries and possibilities. We look for flexibility and rootedness, all in the same breath. It’s this willingness for wild calm, a tolerance for crazy wisdom that can transform exercise into yoga and scribbling into writing.

A writer can form the strongest paragraphs and best dialogues, but if she is not willing to touch what is most alive in herself, her writing will be lifeless.

A yogi can move through a series of asana flawlessly, but without soulfulness and strength, it’s nothing more (and nothing less) than a workout.

To avoid merely flopping limbs around in a Lululemon legging or creating proper sentences, the writer-yogi, the wrogi, must be willing to drop down. She or he needs to shed the aversion to sweat, earth, darkness and moist. Because it’s exactly in those swamps, the tropical rainforests in our minds and hearts where life thrives. Our life, to be precise.

Both writing and yoga can take you there. When combined, they strengthen each other. When your writing becomes dull, the pulsating sensation of a contracted butt cheek will cut through your conceptual mind. When your yoga practice switches to automatic gear, writing will provide vision. Together, they create an awareness of this one great, unimaginably short and mysterious life that can’t help but turn into gratitude.

Write on.

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Editor: Lynn Hasselberger