20 Mindful Writing Breaths for Calm During COVID-19

I'm finding mindful writing to be an incredible practice each morning during the COVID pandemic. I'm grateful for the oasis of focus and calm it is providing me and would like to share one of my grounding techniques.

20 Breaths

Preparing to Write:

Find a quiet location and draw your mind to the point at which air enters and exits your nose. (Don’t listen to music.) Put aside your other thoughts: redirect your attention to your breathing for at least a minute before starting to write this exercise.

Next, breathing in, think “here.” Breathing out, think “now.” Repeat for a minute. If you find your mind wandering, it’s no big deal. Just gently guide your thoughts back to breathing.

Writing: 
Describe what a single breath feels like physically. Watching the inhalation, notice the breathing-in as a brand-new event—as though it has never happened to you before. Watching the exhalation, notice the breathing-out as a brand-new event—as though it has never happened to you before.

Stop for a moment. Number this breath: Breath 1.

Write 3-4 phrases or 1-2 sentences about Breath 1.

For instance, you could try answering a few of these questions: Where did you feel the breath in your body? With what did the breath make contact? What moved or changed in your body because of the single breath? How long did the breath seem to last? What was the temperature of the breath? 

To head in a more poetic direction, if the breath possessed a shape, what shape would it have? If the breath was an object, what kind of object might it be? If the breath came in a color, what color or colors? If the breath was a single word or phrase, what would that be?

Repeat until you’ve described twenty breaths.

The purpose of this exercise is to use writing to retrain the mind to pay attention to the present. For the times we're all living in right now, watching our breathing through writing can ground us and lead to a calm outlook. Ultimately, this will help you pay attention to the present while you write, which will carry all sorts of benefits in terms of your outlook about writing and the ideas you reach.

* Image from Shondaland.com

Notebook Thought 3

It is quite possible that we don't need to write, that we only need to breath, and by breathing, we are actually writing. Nearly every breath, observed with mindfulness, is covered in language.

Notebook Thought 2

As far as prewriting and existing in verbal emptiness go, sometimes it comes close to a state of sleep while at the desk, a thirty second shut down of the mind. I welcome this state for its egolessness, its openness to possibility. It's an elevator ride down to that best level of blankness. It's the bottom of the world underneath a sentence.

Notebook Thought 1

Who is the writer? Just as every writing teacher is a composite of all the teachers and experiences a student has had in the past, the writer is not a fixed identity but fluctuates based on his or her perceptions. The writer is whomever internal talk is providing in the moment. This is the basis for No-Self Writing.

Mindful Writing Workshop in New Hampshire

If you live in New Hampshire, USA, here's an opportunity in your area to check out these mindful writing techniques in person. I'll be offering this workshop through the New Hampshire Humanities Council:   https://www.nhhumanities.org/programs/present-moment-prolific-moment-using-mindfulness-write

I'll Be Your Reader [for writers living in New Hampshre]

If you are a current resident of New Hampshire, check out this opportunity at my other blog.

It's a form of mindful reading as I will be suspending evaluation, enjoying the pieces sent to me in the moment.

As state poet laureate, I'll be available to read one poem per week sent to me by a current NH resident. More info can be found at my blog: https://newhampshirepoetlaureate.blogspot.com/2019/12/ill-be-your-reader.html  

Link to my September 2019 TEDx Talk, "How Mindfulness Can Transform the Way You Write"

My TEDx Talk, "How Mindfulness Can Transform the Way You Write," is now available:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3yxnFac7CNA

Here's the description of the talk:

A few simple ways to observe the moment can make an immediate difference on how most of us feel about writing and how successful we are at it. Mindfulness gives us new writing tools, including internal talk, impermanence, and detachment. Every moment can become a prolific moment.