Focused Writing Meditation for Writers

Focused writing. It’s what all writers long for. I know from personal experience that writing can be fun and focused and flow with ease. Whoever said writing is difficult wasn’t practicing writing meditation! 

To help you begin to access focused writing, I’d love to teach you a quick breathing meditation practice to help you calm your body and arrive into a steady and focused mind. 3-Part Breath is a yoga pranayama (breath control) practice that can bring sense of peace, ease, and wellbeing. 

This practice may be contraindicated if you have low blood pressure, dizziness or any respiratory disease, such as asthma, COPD, lung cancer, or other lung disease. Please consult with your healthcare provider prior to starting any new yoga practices. 

The Neuroscience of Creativity

When we feel stressed, the body tightens, and the mind becomes overly focused on the cause of that stress. This is a part of the body and brain’s beautifully designed system to help us survive in response to perceived threats. This system doesn’t really discern between real and perceived threats, so if you start railing on yourself in your own mind about how you’re not really a writer, your writing sucks, or you don’t know how you’re ever going to get this writing done, the brain signals the body to go into fight or flight mode to protect you, because it’s perceived a potential threat. 

This system can keep you alive if you’re in real danger, but when you’re not in real danger, it can become a hindrance to your writing and to your life. So it’s important to learn how to calm down when you’ve decided that there’s no real danger at hand. Because when the fight or flight system is activated, so is the part of the brain that is trying to protect you. And therefore, the parts of your brain that engage in creative thinking, reasoning, planning, and basically getting things (including writing) done, is less engaged. So when you’re stressed, you’re going to have greater difficulty accessing creativity and focused writing. 

Practicing 3-Part Breath can help to calm you down and bring you back to center. It sends the message to the brain that you’re safe, and signals the brain to activate your parasympathetic nervous system, which returns your body to a state of balance and calm. Then you have greater access to your creative brain. And you can more readily access focused writing when your creative brain is fully engaged! 

Breathing Meditation for Focused Writing

3-Part Breath Meditation

This is a practice that you can do anywhere, but I’m going to encourage you to practice it when you first wake up and then practice it again when you sit down to write practice writing meditation. You can also pause to practice it during your writing practice if you notice that you feel stressed or get stuck in negative or self-critical thoughts.

1. Adopt a posture in your writing chair that allows you to be alert but relaxed. 
2. Take a moment to notice how it feels to be in this body in this moment. You might notice whether the body feels tired or energized, tense or relaxed, heavy or light. See if you can regard whatever you notice with an attitude of non-judgment and friendliness. 
3. Place the left hand on the belly, just a few inches below the belly button.
4. Place the right hand on the top of the chest, just over the breast bone.
5. Take a deep breath in, breathing into the belly and lower 1/3 of the lungs, then breathing into the middle 1/3 of the lungs, and then breathing into the top 1/3 of the lungs. Feel the belly and chest rise with the inhale. 
6. Exhale, reversing the direction, so that you feel the upper 1/3 of the chest lower with the exhale, then the middle 1/3 of the chest lower, then the lower 1/3 of the chest and the belly lower with the exhale. 
7. Repeat for at least 3 breaths.
8. Take a moment to notice how it feels to be in this body in this moment. You might notice whether the body feels tired or energized, tense or relaxed, heavy or light. Try to regard whatever you notice with an attitude of non-judgment and kindness. 

Try it for yourself, and let me know in the comments below how it goes! If you’d like to learn more about mindfulness and meditation, be sure to check out my post “How to Meditate.” Here’s to focused writing!