Yoga and Creativity: Om Yoga Magazine July/August

Yoga and Creativity: Om Yoga Magazine July/August

I can struggle sometimes to sit down at my laptop and get the ideas and thoughts in my head out onto the screen. Writers Bloggers block is pretty common and incredibly frustrating when you've got limited time, and a whole bunch of amazing posts that you know are in there somewhere!

Yoga and writing may at first glance not seem to have much in common, but both involve creativity and exploration. While writing can have a tendency to be a head activity and yoga one of the body, both can be whole body experiences and the best results always come from the combination of the two.

An article in the latest issue of OM Yoga Magazine talks about retreats which combine yoga and writing, and enable people to see the positive impact that a yoga class can have on the creative process. It appears that the more that you relax your body and mind, the more the creative juices flow!

In fact workshops have shown that when doing asana practice before writing creatively people may have easier access to their right hemisphere of their brain, where creativity lives.

A yoga class can be a therapeutic tool that allows emotions and feelings to be accessed and released, and writing can be a way of capturing all those thoughts that come flooding out. Yoga can in fact be a vehicle to inspire your writing.

The value of attuning our attention can also make us better writers. By paying attention to the body and the world around us, we become aware of details and insights and can add them into our writing. Yoga is all about questioning and exploring on the mat, and this tool for self-discovery and self-awareness offers a new perspective for creative writing.

I know that I will definitely be tempted to do a few downward dogs the next time I want to write, and think about how moving my body can help to free up my mind...

How do you deal with writers block? Do you find that yoga helps you feel more creative? 

Beki x

To download the latest issue of OM Yoga Magazine to your phone, tablet or laptop visit Pocketmags.