This
past week I started doing yoga. And I liked it. For those of you who know me
well, you know I’m not really a fan of exercise. I attempt it as necessary; I
know it’s important for one’s overall health, but I’ve never really enjoyed it.
But I enjoy yoga.
As
I was reading “Yoga Minds, Writing Bodies” by Christy I. Wenger for my Emergent
Pedagogies class, I kept wondering about the claims of the author. Could yoga
really help that much with writing? Which led me to trying it. And I’ve got to say,
I do think yoga breaks during a writing day would lead to more productive
writing. I don’t have a writing project for this summer, so I can’t experiment
with that right now, but my yoga breaks from teaching and reading have led to
increased energy and focus.
But
the real argument being made for yoga and writing is yoga’s ability to ground
one’s physical body. Writing is often looked at as a disembodied act, with the
writer focusing solely on the mental energy used to create the words on the
page. But writing is a full body exercise, with our physical location and positioning
impacting the writing process. Now I do not see myself actually using yoga in
my writing classes, but there are other tools in “Yoga Minds, Writing Bodies”
that I can see myself adapting, as well as from this week’s reading, “Prolific
Moment” by Alexandria Peary. Not all of these exercises are focused on embodiment,
some are more focused on ways to be mindful in writing.
So
before getting to the exercises, let’s talk a moment about mindfulness and
mindlessness. Both have important roles in the writing process. From Wenger, we
have this description of mindfulness:
“[W]hen
we cultivate mindfulness of our thoughts and feelings, we can choose our
behaviors and move beyond the habitual action-reaction cycle, which dictates
how we tend to respond to situations. A re-theorization of the writing subject
as a writing yogi, a contemplative writer skilled in embodied imagining, is
needed in composition studies precisely because the dominant action-reaction
chain that dictates how we approach students’ and teachers’ subjectivity is unresponsive
to matter, and mindlessly so.”
And
I love the idea of being this kind of mindful writer, but at the same time
there is a time and a place for mindlessness. From Peary, there’s this
description of the balance between mindfulness and mindlessness:
“Mindful
composition looks for a combination of directed and undirected thinking, a
healthy balance between mindfulness and what would be called an inspired
mindlessness. With a mindfulness approach to writing, we strive for clear
awareness of our mental actions, trying to avoid outcomes of undirected
thinking such as preconceptions and outcome fixations.”
Mindlessness
has several benefits. When we are mindlessly engaged in nonwriting activities,
we can be inspired with ideas and solutions for our writing problems. Agatha
Christie is quoted as saying “The best time for planning a book is while you’re
doing the dishes.” That is precisely because the mindlessness of the task
invites contemplation. Our minds are skilled at filling empty time, and working
out solutions during down time. I think this is why yoga could lead to writing
breakthroughs: your body is engaged in the yoga moves and in your breathing,
your mind is invited into a state of meditative mindlessness. While you’re not
concentrating on your writing project, your subconscious will still be at work.
“Prolific Moment” talks about that moment right before you know what you’re
going to write about, the moment of not knowing. What if we lean into that
moment right before we discover an idea to write?
More
importantly, how do we bring this embodied mindfulness into our classrooms?
Here are some activities to try with your classes. I do recommend experimenting
with these on your own first, so that you better understand what you’re asking
students to do.
1. Guided
meditation. There’s a great guided meditation at the end of “Yoga Minds,
Writing Bodies” that I hope to adapt for classroom use.
2. Free
writing session. These are relatively common, with the only rule being not to
stop writing.
3. Assign
a narrative essay. I use a literacy narrative in one of the freshmen
composition courses I teach. I tell students to focus this essay on a strong
memory associated with writing, to explore/lean into their relationship with
writing. A colleague from one of the colleges I teach at shared that she assigns
a narrative essay that calls on students to consider what their future in their
chosen field will look like.
4. Disposable
writing. This idea comes from “Prolific Moment.” The idea is to assign students
to write something that they will later delete/shred. Personally, for me, this
idea makes me cringe, but I can see how this could be a valuable exercise for
someone who doesn’t like writing or who is intimidated by the idea of writing
for an audience.
5. Mindfulness
breathing exercise. This is also from “Prolific Moment.” The idea here is to
preform a simply breathing exercise. Students are to focus on their breath for
a period of time, and when their thoughts wander they are to quickly record the
wondering, and then get back to mindful breathing. The wanderings are recorded
as “pas” for something in the past, “fut” for something in the future, or “eva”
for an attempt to evaluate the current moment. No other notes are needed.
And
of course, these can be mix and matched. A guided meditation can be followed by
a free write session. Mindful breathing can come before or after some
disposable writing. Basically these are tools to bring your students to a state
of being more mindful in their writing.
Hope
this has been helpful. I’ll be back next week sharing more ways to be
intentional in your writing instruction.
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