The word “inspiration” means “to breathe in.” As Alice Flaherty points out in The Midnight Disease, breathing is not only the most obvious sign that a being is alive, but it is essential to produce language, the very stuff of which writing is made.
The link between breathing and artistic creation is not accidental. We have an intuitive grasp that breathing is an important part of our work, that breathing mindfully and fully is essential for us to reach our full potential as artists.
Ironically, when people are anxious or in pain, they tend to hold their breath. Since writing often induces anxiety and, sometimes, emotional pain as well, it is easy to get into the habit of breathing shallowly or tightly when we’re at the page. If you pause when your writing gets stuck and pay attention to your breathing for a moment, you may realize you’re holding your breath, as I often do.
Learning to breathe deeply, slowly, and with awareness before and while we write offers surprising benefits to the creative process. Here are five of them:
1. Breathing increases alertness
Breathing aids alertness in several ways. For one thing, the amount of oxygen in the brain is tied to levels of serotonin, a neurotransmitter that wakes us up and enables us to focus. This is part of the reason we feel so alert after we work out.
Breathing also aids alertness because oxgyen helps our cells absorb nutrients. When you breathe shallowly, your body is actually receiving less nutrition than you need, leaving you feeling sluggish.(For more go to livestrong.com).
2. Breathing aids relaxation
Tension and anxiety cramp our writing and stifle our creativity. Breathing helps us shed them.
Hatha yoga, tai chi, and many meditation practices work with the breath as an aid to relaxation. Anyone who performs in front of the public—speakers, actors, musicians—knows that deep breathing before they perform is essential to calming nerves. “One of the greatest things that I recommend for everybody is relaxation breathing,” says Dr. Patricia A. Farrell, a clinical psychologist who specializes in stress management.
If you find yourself feeling too stressed to write or discover that anxiety is holding your creativity back, try deep breathing to restore a sense of tranquility.
3. Breathing helps induce flow
Flow is that wonderful state when ideas come to you as if by magic, when words pour out of your finger tips, when you are writing with such ease and focus that time seems to stand still.
There is no sure-fire way to induce flow, but breathing can help. Deep breathing enables us set to aside what is going on around us, to clear our minds of clutter, and to open up to ideas. Mindful breathing won’t necessarily bring on flow, but it sets the stage for flow to emerge.
4. Breathing brings you in touch with buried emotions
Deep-seated resentments, repressed anger, hidden pain. Most of us carry some of them deep within our psyches—some of us bear a lot. These buried emotions not only come out in unexpected, negative ways in our everyday lives—depression, anxiety, inappropriate bursts of anger—but they can hamstring our writing and stifle our creativity.
Deep, focused breathing can help us get in touch with those feelings. It can bring us to an awareness of suppressed pain and rage. Once we are aware of buried emotions, we can use them, transforming them into sources of creative energy, and ultimately releasing them.
5. Breathing unites the inner and the outer realms
Breathing is a constant exchange of substance with the environment around us. Each breath we take brings our immediate environment into our bodies to nourish and sustain us and releases substances from our bodies back into the atmosphere. Breathing is one of the primary ways we interact with plants and other living beings on the Earth.
Mindful breathing makes us conscious of our place on the Earth and our connection with all things, living and unliving. Few things can stimulate our creativity more than that basic awareness.
Great post and reminder to breathe!
Thanks, Alethea. Glad you liked it.
Thanks!