getting started, inspiration, rituals, tips

Ground, Receive, Flow, Ground – a yoga sequence for creative flow

Olivia No Comments

This is a guest post from our Episode 14 interviewee, Divya Kohli of Yoga With Divya (London). We asked her to share a yoga sequence for creativity, and she has really come through with this one. It can be done slowly or more flow-y, but give yourself a minimum of 10 minutes – 15-20 is optimal – to get through it. 

Here’s Divya’s post:

 

Ground, Receive, Flow, Ground:
Ready to Write!

Yoga practice can help ground restless or scattered energy, including dealing with procrastination! Postures with deeper breathing can open our physical and imaginative centres. Sequencing of certain postures will literally ignite our internal energy – including creativity – and get it to flow. Conscious engagement with our breath can set up a steadiness of mind and clearer outlook.

Here is a sequence I’ve put together to ground, open up, release and then re-ground, taking you to a place where you feel centred and ready to engage in writing flow. Ideal preparation for when you want to get creative; but also a grounding sequence for anytime you feel a need for that.

Sequence credit: Yoga with Divya

Photo credits:  pictures are the original creations of illustrator and senior Yoga Teacher Bobby Clennell, apart from the last photo, taken of Divya while engaged in Alternate Nostril breathing.


Virasana (Hero) pose, with block

Kneel on all fours, put a block or fold a blanket and place between your heels and ankles, sit back onto the block, press the tops of your feet and toes evenly into the ground.

Now sit tall, lengthening the crown of your head upward and sense it’s poised above the tailbone. Feel even weight between both sitting bones.

Relax palms of hands up or down on the thighs.

If you feel pain or strain, add another block or raise the height under the hips to lessen tension on the back and knees. You can also place padding under the feet if there is strain there.


Ujjayi, (Victorious) Breath

After a few moments, start to connect to your breath as it is. Find it and follow it with awareness, how it’s flowing or not, wherever it’s moving to or not moving to.  Spend around a minute following your breath.

Then relax.

Take a deliberate fuller breath in and then out.

Take your attention back to your breath and start to cultivate Ujjayi Pranayama (Victorious Breath), often referred to as the ‘Ocean Wave’ breath as it sounds like an ocean wave rising and falling in the distance. Channel your breath along the back of your throat (where you vocal chords are), it will feel like you are filtering the breath as you inhale and exhale through the nose, mouth stays closed. Develop a smooth, no grasping rhythm and soft ‘hushed’ sound.

Stay here for 2 to 3 minutes.

Then relax and absorb the benefits.
If your knees or back ache, stretch out the legs while you relax and absorb the benefits. Or even lie down your back with your knees bent and observe for a while.

Maryjasana & Bitilasana, Cat & Cow movement

Come onto all Fours – stretch one leg back at time, from hip to toes.

Then return to all Fours.

On an inhale, tilt the tailbone up and send the heart through the arms, allowing for the spine to concave (Cow); as you exhale, draw the third eye (forehead) and tailbone in towards each other, curving the spine upwards (Cat).

Take a few rounds, synchronising breath and movement.

Allow for any neck releasing movements, and for circling the hips if that feels releasing.

 

 


Ardho Mukha Virasana (Resting Dog)

Sit back on your heels and stretch your arms out, allow the head to naturally low.

A great stretch for the whole body and particularly helpful with opening the back, regulating the kidneys (said to be ‘the seat of wellbeing’), stretching the stomach (to release tension and allow better flow of breath), and releasing tension from the hips, shoulders and head.

Stay for as long you like.

You can place head and arms on a bolster/cushion or block for added support.

 

Ardho Mukha Svanasana (Downward facing Dog)

To stretch the whole body, engages every muscle and joint and helps to calm the mind.

Totally fine to have the knees bent if the legs don’t straighten, or if that helps lessen rounding in the spine, or both.

Stay for 1-2 minutes.

Stay less time if feeling stiff or tired; in which case, move in and out of the pose by moving into Child Pose when needing a breather.

 

Balasana (Child) Post, regroup, release the back and shoulders

Like Resting Dog pose, only place the arms by the side, reaching back, with the palms up.

Head on the mat, or supported.

Take at least one minute here, tuning into the natural flow of the breath.

 

Surya Namaskarasana (Sun Salutations)

A classic flow sequence, hundreds of years’ old and practised by millions every day in the world as a vehicle for waking up the body, engaging every muscle and joint, and getting our Prana (internal energy, which is a mix of our consciousness and the energy of life) to flow to every part of our body.

This version keeps things simple – not much to have to remember.

Try for 3 rounds – or up to 5 if you have the time and energy.

Alternatives:

  • When lowering to the floor, feel free to lower the knees first, then the chest, then the whole body.
  • When pressing up to the floor, feel free to keep the knees and hips down on the earth.

 

 

Supported Setu Bandasana (Bridge, or… Heart Over a Roll)

Set up a yoga bolster, and a folded blanket in front. If you don’t have a yoga bolster, or one to hand, a rolled up blanket will be perfect too. Or a couple of cushions (one on to of the other) is just fine too. If you don’t have a blanket to support the head, just ensure whatever you’re using to lean back over isn’t too high so your neck and head can relax back without strain.

Sit on the support (bolster/blanket/cushion), slowly slide the legs away, and recline back, supporting the head just before it hits the blanket or earth if not using blanket.

Let the arms fall to the side, tuck the shoulder blades down the back and send the tailbone away towards to the feet.

Settle in. Ensure there is no pain. If the lower back is not happy, bend the legs and keep the flat on the earth.

Aim for at least 3 minutes, 5 is ideal for the nervous system to chill and regulate itself. This posture and set up is also great at opening the chest, releasing fear and stagnation, and relieving stiffness from the back and hips.

 

Savasana (Corpse pose)

After carefully sliding out of the Supported Bridge pose, roll onto your back.

Support your head with a folded blanket or pillow if that makes your head, neck and shoulders feel more comfortable.

Let the legs roll out, arms fall out.

Settle in.

Absorb all the effects of your practice, relax and let go.

If the mind is busy or goes into planning mode, let your attention rest on the gentle unforced rise of the belly as you inhale and exhale.

Aim for 3 – 5 minutes, 5 minutes is optimal.

Whatever time available, try not to skip Savasana as it’s when you’ll absorb all the benefits of the practice. Plus it takes at least 3 minutes for your body’s muscles and joints to let go of any tension residing there. 5 minutes is optimal.

From Corpse pose, stretch, sigh, yawn, let the neck roll to one side, then the other, then slowly bring the knees into the chest, roll to your right side, and carefully press yourself up without tensing the neck.

Bring yourself into any comfortable seat.

 

Nadi Shodana (Alternate Nostril breathing)

If you want to prop your back against a support (back of a chair, sofa, bed or put a cushion there) that is fine. Otherwise, any comfortable seat (for example, Sukhasana, Cross legged, or Vajrasana, sitting on the heels, or even siting on a chair with an upright spine).

Take one hand up to the face, and place the index and middle finger (second and third fingers) on the bridge of the nose. Breathe in and out through both nostrils.

Breath in to and out again, and close off your right nostril with your thumb at the end of the exhale.

Breath in through the left nostril for the count of 4, then close the left nostril with your ring finger (fourth finger), release the thumb from the right nostril and exhale through the right for 4. Inhale through the right for 4, release the ring finger and exhale through the left for 4. This is one round.

Repeat.

Aim for 3 minutes.

If breathing in and out for 4 is hard to maintain, drop to 3. Or up to 5 or 6 if the breath is naturally flowing for longer and you can sustain that count without strain.

Finish up by exhaling through the left nostril.

Rest both hands on your legs or lap.

Relax.

Breath naturally through both nostrils for a few rounds.

Relax.

Sit quietly for a few moments with however you feel.

Before moving out of the practice, bow to your heart and offer gratitude to something, or someone that you feel thankful for in that moment.

Stretch out the legs, and now you’re ready for whatever you want to focus on next…

 

Tips:

Go at your own pace.

Use a timer on your phone or a clock.

Enjoy it, rather than striving to get deeper in the poses.

Don’t beat yourself up over how you do the postures or breathing, and try not to evaluate your practice!

If time is short, you can flow this entire sequence in as little as 10 minutes (spend less time in Savasana and on the Nadhi Shodana).

Otherwise, 15 or 20 minutes is ideal for this sequence.

 

Finally, do go to Yoga class – real contact with a teacher cannot be matched online.

In Peace, Divya x

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inspiration, podcast, rituals

Episode 14 is up, and we’ve decided to ditch writing for yoga (kidding! Mostly)

Meghan No Comments

For this episode, we sat down with Divya Kohli, Olivia’s yoga teacher and friend, to talk about how the practices of yoga and writing relate to each other.

Divya teaches yoga and meditation for “the whole being”, a practice which can enliven  our bodies, minds and consciousness and help us throughout our path in life. London-based and a dedicated practitioner since 2000, she’s been a full time senior level teacher since 2006 offering community classes, retreats and bespoke tuition. A former newspaper journalist, she has a continued passion for writing… and using words like we use the breath in yoga, as a way to connect more fully.

As always, please rate and review us in Apple Podcasts, as this helps other listeners find the show.

Full show notes are here.

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inspiration, prompts

November writing prompt: Olivia’s response and Meghan’s comments

Meghan No Comments

As promised last week, we’re posting our responses to November’s writing prompt, with comments. The rules are short — note something positive, and make sure suggestions for improvement are constructive. Simply put, don’t be mean.

So here’s Olivia’s response, and my comments below. Remember, these are first drafts written in 15 minutes or so, not polished submission-ready material (although I was super impressed with Olivia’s). My response and Olivia’s comments are here.

Grace froze when she heard the knock on the door. One arm was outstretched, her hand grasping the hairy-barked pine log she had been feeding into the dark mouth of the fireplace. She was glad she hadn’t lit the fire yet. She propped herself up on the other elbow.

The knock came again, harsher this time. Impatient. It knew she was inside.

Both of her arms were starting to shake. She ease the wood onto the sooty stone hearth, silently, then dragged herself across the floor. Her thick skirts picked up twigs, beetle carcasses and small clumps of mud, leaving a clean-swept trail behind her.

Another knock. Not even waiting to listen.

As she moved, she searched the sparse room again, pointlessly scanning the dusty surfaces for a girl-sized crevice. Even the kitchen had only shelves, no cupboards.

The metal latch clicked but did not give itself up. And so the cheap door began rattling in its frame, asking for entry at first, then demanding it. Fierce.

She pulled herself up onto the austere wooden chair behind the door, arranging herself into her most natural position. This always took time, otherwise something about her angles were wrong. Gave her away immediately.

But she didn’t have time. Her leg dangled awkwardly as the door gave way. A panting bearded man swept in, blue moonlight and frost swinging in on his cape.

And the comments:

  • I loved the tone — it’s so creepy from start to finish
  • The ending! It is a surprise, but a logical one. The signs are there, but I loved how they were only clear in retrospect. The whole piece moves quickly and is full of tension.
  • The only thing I noted for revision is the way the intruder’s actions are given to the door, the door latch. I do like how it masks all details about the intruder, but it is a bit distracting.
  • The language itself works really well — beetle carcasses, hairy-barked pine log, and my favorite, blue moonlight and frost swinging in on his cape. Just lovely.

Did you write something for this prompt you’d like to share? Email us, or leave it in the comments!

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inspiration, prompts

Writing Prompt 1: Meghan’s response & Olivia’s comments

Olivia No Comments
As promised on today’s podcast, we are posting our responses and the mini-critique comments we discussed on the show. Of course we’d love to hear your responses as well. The rules of the mini-critique are that you should pick out something positive, and then where you see potential suggestions or improvements, be constructive. Basically, like in so many spheres, the rule is “don’t be mean.”
Read Olivia’s response and Meghan’s comments here.
October writing prompt: Your boss calls you into their office. What happens next?
Anyway, this is Olivia – I am posting Meghan’s response* and some comments below. So first, Meghan’s response:
“Roz.” Margot beckoned from the doorway of her office. Her face was blank – for me, or for my coworkers’ benefit, I couldn’t tell. I unhooked from the network and stood.
I waited in front of Margot’s desk while she closed the blinds on both the office-facing window and the one that overlooked the street outside. Margot shut the door.
“There’s been a mistake,” she said. Then she disappeared.
Just — gone. I ran over to her desk and looked behind it, frantic. I crawled on the floor — maybe she was hiding under the desk — but she wasn’t there. There was no sign of her, nothing left behind, except me.
Sweat rolled down my sides from under my arms, and I sat back against the gray steel cabinet in the corner to think. No one could know. I had to get out, fast.
The handle of the cabinet dug between my shoulder blades and I turned. The drawer wasn’t closed all the way. Something [[i don’t know what – I haven’t figured that out yet]] was wedged inside. I pulled it out and slipped it in my waistband.
With one last look, I slipped out of the door. “Thanks, Margot,” I said as I closed it. “Yep, I’ll take care of that.”
I couldn’t leave right away – I needed to know if Margot’s absence was discovered, and I couldn’t look suspicious. I needn’t have worried. The afternoon crawled by and by the time I left, I was a wreck. I hadn’t done a thing, unable to face connecting again in case someone was able to read what had happened, and I had no idea how I could find out about the [[[whatever thing]]] I had found without being tracked.
As soon as I got home, I checked both rooms in my apartment, every cupboard, every corner.
So, in terms of comments:
  • First of all, I really liked how the suspense builds here, and the way the reader is drawn into a world and infers so much from the scene and the setting just from the small amount of text here.
  • I also really liked the image of the “afternoon crawling by” – it’s not a phrase I’d heard a lot and it’s a really good image.
  • I thought, in terms of things that could be done differently, I am a little bit weird in that I have a logistical mind, and so I spent quite a bit of time trying to figure out where the door was, compared to the desk and the window. I couldn’t imagine it, so I suggested to take another look at that part at the beginning.
  • And finally, there were a few points where I liked the phrase, and they short cut us to the feeling we need to get, but I thought they could be more vivid. For example, “by the time I left, I was a wreck” and the word “frantic” in the fourth paragraph. What did that look like? What would it smell or sound like? And so we talked on the podcast about the importance of being in touch with all your senses in describing something.

But overall, we really enjoyed this process – although it was scary – and we look forward to hearing from you all.

 

* As we said on the podcast, this is really draft and we haven’t particularly edited it – we wanted to be genuine with you and hopefully to get you guys to participate with us in future ones!

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inspiration, magic

Do you 10Q?

Olivia No Comments

(Disclosure: I actually do not like that slogan – not sure of the grammar of it, but I will use it because it’s what they use.)

There’s this thing I’ve been doing since 2011, or in other words (but coincidentally) as long as I’ve been doing my “corporate drone” job. It’s called 10Q, and was inspired by the time of reflection between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, but you don’t need to be religious in any way to participate.

As you might have guessed, there are 10 questions that it sends you – one question per day, that you can reflect on (stuff like, how did a significant experience affect you) and write an answer to. At the end of the 10 days, you lock your answers away in a vault until the next year. Sure, anyone could do this for themselves any time, but there is something about the process and the community that I like. It probably adds some accountability.

You can choose whether your answers are public, or you can make them public but anonymous, or totally private. It’s up to you.

Also, you can answer all the questions on the last day, or only answer some of them, or answer a few at a time if you’re busy at work and haven’t gotten to it (speaking from personal experience). So I like that it’s not super rigid, but it has a structure.

There are lots of things I love about it, but these are probably the biggest ones:

  1. It’s for a specific period of time. So you can only read your old answers for a short period of time (the “vault” opens a bit before 10Q and closes a bit after). So it is part of a rhythm of a year for me – the sort of autumnal reboot, since I am not Jewish, but for a couple of years I observed some Jewish holidays and met with a rabbi, and so the religious rhythm also has some significance for me. In any case, I like that this is not about constant naval-gazing and more about a process of looking at your year and assessing it, and then saving something to consider for next year.
  2. It reminds me why I am writing. It gets me out of my day-to-day grind and makes me think about why I do what I do and why I want to write. And going back a few years (2011-13 especially), before I started really trying to write or taking writing classes in the evenings, I felt so frustrated that I wasn’t writing – I felt a need but wasn’t doing it. That’s really helpful to read about.
  3. I love reading my old answers. Again, this is sort of like reading your old journals and laughing at how you thought things would be. But the questions are thoughtful enough that you answer them in good ways. (For example, last year I wrote this: “I would like to be finished with my novel, maybe pitching it for publication.” HAHAHAHA.) For something a little bit more meaningful, I wrote this in 2012, which still really resonates when I read it again:

“When I was in university, I believed that I wanted a life in pursuit of knowledge and wonder. I think I need to add “joy” to that list. I have been pursuing knowledge for some time, but not with the wonder and definitely not with the joy. I have been making rules for myself, and that means as well making rules for others. I need to be myself. I think it is still important to seek knowledge – to evaluate and analyse – but I need to do this because of a deeper pursuit of joy and love.”

We’d love to hear from you if you’ve done it before, if you enjoy it, if you are going to do it again?

(olivia)

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getting started, inspiration, rituals

Inspiration week! Olivia’s writing music

Olivia No Comments

I loved talking about week inspiration and motivation on the podcast this week. This is one of my favorite topics because it means I get to go back to the things that make me excited to write, and read or listen to them again. It’s a good way just to start noticing what is working for you – and maybe what isn’t.

This morning, while writing, I noticed how much I was loving Bill Evans’s album Everybody Digs Bill Evans – a great album. When that finished, I went on to Bonobo, a totally different type of music, but the album Migration really gets me into a good writing place. It’s a mix of melodic and some beats that make me feel cheerful and creative. Lately, I’ve also been writing to Philip Glass’s Piano Works, and before that I just listened to Mendelsohn’s Songs Without Words on repeat.

I can’t write to music with words (although I can listen to mellow and folky music at my day job). In college, I played through an old CD of Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overture – the one with the yellow label on the front and a canon – literally hundreds of times to write a paper in college. It also had a couple other Russian composers; I guess that was helpful for all my Slavic Studies classes.

(As an aside, I have started to feel sort of annoyed at how many playlists I have been listening to, curated or automated by Spotify, and am trying to consciously listen to albums. Have you ever felt that? I just feel like I’m not really listening to music anymore – more like I am just sitting in a lobby with random music on. I like the wholeness of an album. But maybe that just makes me super old.)

All that is to say, music is one of those things that can make a big difference in my motivation/inspiration to work.

And, despite having said all the above about playlists, I have a playlist of music I work to here on Spotify, if anyone’s interested. I like following other actual humans’ playlists; probably my favorite is Teju Cole’s Jetlag playlists, although he is in general a good music curator.

We’d love to hear your favorite writing music!

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getting started, inspiration, productivity

Rituals, the brain … and writing

Olivia No Comments

I’ve read a lot about rituals and how important they are when you’re doing creativity. There’s a lot out there about how the muse will only show up if you actually put your ass in the chair and wait for her. In fact, I think, if you’ve only got a very short amount of time to write or be creative (like all of us day-job-workers), then this is even important: we need our muse to show up on time, right?

And yet, if I’m honest, I think something in me is somewhat resistant to the idea that I need to make a special ceremony for my muse. Like, why isn’t it there already?? Maybe there’s something wrong with my muse? Maybe my will for the muse isn’t strong enough to summon her, etc.

So I was sort of encouraged to read this post about how rituals affect our brains. It’s a very scientific explanation of how that whole “put your ass in the chair” thing works: we perform better when we have a ritual.

Well, if science proves it, I guess I can let myself and my muse off the hook and start doing what the scientists tell me to. I am going to work on a ritual – nothing too intricate, but something to get me going in the morning. As we are heading into autumn/winter, I’m thinking my ritual should involve candles and maybe wonderful tea.

What does your writing ritual involve?

We’d love to hear from you, especially because next week’s podcast is about inspiration, motivation – and I think a big part of that is making it easy to stay motivated. A ritual can be a big part of it.

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getting it done, inspiration, magic

Matters poetical

Olivia No Comments

The title of this post is totally stolen from a Times Literary Supplement podcast I listened to today, which had this lovely interview with the British theatre director Peter Brook CBE. You can listen here, or on iTunes or wherever else you get podcasts. The interview starts around 27:10, and it’s lovely.

Next week on the podcast, we’ll be talking about inspiration and motivation – what’s the difference, and what makes a difference for us. This is totally inspiration for me. I’ll give you bits of it if you are interested, but obviously listen to the whole thing if you want more.

First of all, he talks about the need to try but let go – we will have a longer discussion about this idea on a future podcast, because it’s something I’ve learned about through yoga. Here’s a quote from Peter:

There is something very subtle that can come through if we, just for a moment, try the best we can, and then quietly let be.

He then goes on to talk about what he calls “the formless hunch,” which I’ll let him explain:

I had to have gone through all the impossibilities. I had this very early on in my career, where people said to me, if you’re a young director, you must prepare. So I took it seriously. … I had a great ball doing this. But then I came into rehearsal and just saw simply that none of it was any good. And I think all one needs is to be able to say to oneself, ‘It’s no good.’ And at that moment, things fall away, and that’s what the formless hunch is about.

I really loved how he talks about the separation of the form and the meaning. He says that, for the podcast, they have a microphone, a table, whatever, but continues:

but they are not the cause of whatever good may come out of anything we say to one another. That will happen. And that’s why I say the formless hunch. People get obsessed with the form, and the form is just a starting point. It’s something we need… We need words, but words are just a form. Gradually you can find that the word is either a dead piece of useless bone, or it is vibrating because within the word there is more.

And then, the magic (bonus tip: I basically love anything about magic used in this way):

Yes you have to prepare and now, when you come to it, you have to trust the true magic of intuition, and the intuition only comes if you’ve prepared the ground and if you then have the simple good will to stop taking yourself so seriously.

 

*

We’re collecting inspiration for our podcast next week. What type of thing do you learn to hear about?

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