Motivation Mondays | Breathe. Write. Live. Repeat.

“To write in service of the writing, not the ego, is a radical act.” Beth Kempton, The Way of the Fearless Writer

Motivation Mondays: Breathe. Write. Live. Repeat.

The breath of the world flows through you.
Don’t let it stagnate.
Inhale.
Be still.
Exhale.
Be still.
Keep on breathing.
Keep on writing.
That’s all you have to do.
Flowing in rhythm, in sync with life itself.
Beth Kempton, The Way of the Fearless Writer

BREATHE
I am still reading Beth Kempton’s The Way of the Fearless Writer, so this isn’t a review of the book, but a reflection inspired by the passage above, which was recently shared in a writing class. “The breath of the world flows through you. Don’t let it stagnate.” Those words stayed with me. We breathe without thinking, yet when we stop to notice our breath, we don’t overthink it. It is the natural rhythm of our soul guiding us through life’s daily chores. We can choose to become present and witness the movement of our breath. We inhale. We pause, and we are still. We exhale. We pause, and we are still again. Memories flow in and out.

In the study of breathwork or pranayama in the yoga tradition, the pause, space, or retention between breaths is called Kumbhaka in Sanskrit. Every time we breathe, we experience Antara Kumbhaka, an inner pause held after a full inhalation, and Bahya Kumbhaka, an outer pause held after a full exhalation. The stillness between our in/out breath is called Madhya. This stillness, and each pause, sharpens our awareness and connects us to the source of life. Each pause, each still moment, confirms that we are still here in the land of the living, and connects us to the divine within. Take a moment to notice your breath; let its beauty calm and speak to you. Perhaps, writing asks the same of us: to pause long enough to take in the world around us, listen to what is stirring within, and go freely with the flow, expressing it through a medium of our choice.

WRITE
“Keep on breathing. Keep on writing.” I love the simplicity of that instruction. Sometimes the hardest thing about writing is allowing ourselves to write freely. We censor a thought before it reaches the page. We worry about grammar, structure, whether something is good enough, or what someone else might think. But what if we let the words flow? What if, like every breath we take, we let the words flow; we labor less over being perfect or over writing a perfectly constructed sentence. We write as we breathe. We’ll have time to revisit, rearrange, polish, or even discard some of our words. The first task is to write, trust the flow, and allow the words to come. Last week in my writing class, I got so into the flow of a story I was writing that time flew by, and I came out of my peaceful reverie when a pop-up warned me that the class was ending in 3 minutes. I had spent 90 minutes engrossed in my writing.

READ: Contemplations: The Space Between Each Breath Is…?

“This is the wisdom of listening, practicing, and trusting without trying to force outcomes.” Beth Kempton, The Way of the Fearless Writer

Motivation Mondays: Breathe. Write. Live. Repeat.

LIVE
To be “in sync with life itself”, we must be present. We can live in chaos or choose the stillness. We can return to what we have written and meditate on what is there, not only on the words, but on ourselves. Who was I when I wrote this? Who am I now? Who am I becoming? Writing can reveal things we didn’t know we knew. It can help us understand where we have been while making room for where we are going. As we explore life through our writing, we must keep living so we can examine and even inhale it all: the joy, grief, uncertainty, wisdom, mistakes, memories, and hope. Life, like writing, does not require us to have everything figured out before we continue. We need to be present to tap into our memory bank. I wrote a piece on 9/11 for my writing class, and the memories came flooding back. I was surprised by how visceral some of those memories were. I was living them again in the writing. I was fully present.

REPEAT
How do we repeat the process? Okay, it’s a rhetorical question. Every writer knows that we keep going back to the work. “That’s all you have to do… Flowing in rhythm...”  So we return again and again; we come back to our craft, our familiar space, the blank page, the unfinished story. We breathe. We write. We live. We begin again. “Flowing in rhythm, in sync with life itself.” Perhaps being a fearless writer doesn’t mean writing without fear at all. Perhaps it means trusting ourselves enough to keep returning to the page, to the breath, and to the life that continues unfolding within and around us. As Kempton reminds us: “Keep on breathing. Keep on writing.” Sometimes, that is enough. Now, we are centered and calm; let’s get back to work, to our blogs, our journals, and our stories.

Positive Motivation Tip: In life, everything begins with breath, God’s breath, and then the rest.

HERE

PHOTO CREDITS/ATTRIBUTIONS: All Photos via Pixabay; Flow, Breathe, Write, Live, Repeat.

Until Next Time…
Ask. Believe. Receive. ©
Elizabeth Obih-Frank
Mirth and Motivation
Positive Kismet