Writing and Yoga: the Perfect Blend

Yoga, like creativity, shifts our awareness from the outer to the inner world through discipline of the body and breath. This discipline is not rigid. Rather yoga opens up the flow between the inner and outer worlds. There is a continuous interchange wherein the body and mind communicate at a subtle and harmonious level that releases dependence on the outer world.

Writing is a visceral experience born of deep longing for authenticity that carry us inward to a self we often do not consciously know. As creative women, we hunger for this self that dances to a song the outer world cannot hear much less understand. Images, memories, stories, characters rise up out of our unconscious but are stored in different parts of our bodies. They race along with our blood, are held taut by the muscles, flow on the breath and remain hidden, sometimes stuck in our sinews. Yoga brings physical awareness to the creative process and thus becomes another avenue to retrieve these images, emotions and stories held in the body. The release may come from accessing a particular muscle, concentrating on the breath or opening to the stillness that arises from the continual flow of the inner, outer, inner worlds.

Join Emily Hanlon and Iyengar yoga instructor Cathy Eising at the Blacktail Ranch for an unforgettable week of creativity, writing and yoga, August 7-14, 2004. The ranch, at the base of the Continental Divide, is an ideal setting for a gathering of women passionate about their creativity and anxious to connect with others of like mind and heart. With every need attended to, we open doorways to new stories, characters, techniques and friendships with each other as well as ourselves.