• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar

HollyRobinson

Writer & Red Dirt Rambler

  • Home
  • Bio
  • Blog
  • My Books
    • Haven Lake
    • Chance Harbor
    • The Gerbil Farmer’s Daughter
    • Sleeping Tigers
    • The Wishing Hill
    • Beach Plum Island
    • Folly Cove
  • Ghostwriting

On Discovering Yoga and Writing a Novel

Posted on 12.17.14 | Holly Robinson | 2 Comments

 

I lowered myself to the mat and felt every joint complaining.

“Honor your intentions,” the instructor was saying. “What intention are you bringing to the mat today?”

“Just to be able to get up off the mat again,” I muttered.

I never intended to be here, on this yoga mat. Yoga, I always thought, is for sissies. Or maybe for Californians. I’m a runner, a hiker and a backpacker. Or, in bad weather, a gym rat. I lift and climb. I don’t bend and stretch.

That’s for sure. My downward dog looked like it was dying, compared to that showoff next to me in her spandex and braids, her butt in the air. My Happy Baby pose was a dead opossum.

Meanwhile, the instructor looks like she’s floating. “If you can’t hold the bottom of your foot, hold your thigh or your calf,” she croons. “Make this accessible. Have a conversation with your body.”

My body wasn’t interested in conversation. It was too busy yelling.

“We are chest breathers,” the yoga instructor said. “Make this moment, this time on the mat, about filling your body with the oxygen it needs. Focus on your breath.”

Oh! She was right, I realized the next day, as I was charging through my grocery store and Christmas shopping lists. I was practically panting from stress. I made myself stop and have a cup of tea.

Gradually, I am discovering that yoga isn’t only about breathing and posture, but, like everything important in life, it is about intention. About embracing everything this moment has to offer. And that’s having an enormous impact on my writing.

In my work life, I’m a novelist on deadline. A tight deadline. I’ve been trying to wrestle my characters into submission, warning them that they’d better behave or we won’t make the editor’s deadline. They were fighting with me until I began asking them the same simple question my yoga instructor was asking: “What is your intention?”

In this way, I discovered that one of my characters had been unfaithful to her husband. She was trying to understand why she’d stayed with him despite having fallen in love with another man. Another character needed the time and space to understand why she’d abandoned her daughter.

“Make this accessible,” I begged the women who lived in my head, the characters I wanted to see come alive on the pages of my book. “Breathe.”

Sure enough, as I stopped trying to force them, they did. Instead of sitting at my laptop for hours at a time, feeling frustrated because everything I put on the page was crap, I took deep breaths and let the words flow without worrying about what they looked like on the page. That could come later. Right now, I just want the plot and characters to be accessible to me.

I also started taking more breaks. Instead of hunching over the laptop all morning and then through lunch, too, I got up, stretched and walked the dog. Yesterday I was outside, wandering aimlessly around the neighborhood at my Pekingese’s pace, when I saw my way through to the end of the book. It was as if doors had opened to show me a whole new room. Or maybe a new world.

That’s exactly it, with yoga: it opens doors and windows to let in the fresh air. To remind you that you are not important or extraordinary or even necessary. You are just you, living in the world for a short time, honoring your body and mind so that you can love and do good work while you’re here.

 

Share this:

  • Twitter
  • Facebook
  • LinkedIn
  • Pinterest
  • More
  • Email
  • Pocket
  • Print
  • Tumblr
  • Reddit

Categories: Beginning Writers, Essays and Random Thoughts, Excercise, Uncategorized, Writing, Yoga Tags: Beach Plum Island, breathing and yoga, Chance Harbor, downward dog, fiction writing, gentle yoga, Haven Lake, holly robinson, stretching, writing, writing a novel, Yoga, yoga instructors

Holly Robinson's avatar

About the Author

Holly Robinson is a novelist, journalist and celebrity ghost writer. She and her husband have five children and a stubborn Pekingese. They currently divide their time between Massachusetts and Prince Edward Island, and are crazy enough to be fixing up old houses one shingle at a time in both places.

Reader Interactions

    Leave a Reply Cancel

    Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

    This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

    2 Comments

  1. lorriethomson says

    December 18, 2014 at 8:17 am

    Yes! Thank you for reminding me why I need to go back to yoga. For me and my characters.

    Reply
  2. Reese Ryan says

    December 19, 2014 at 1:20 pm

    That’s why I love yoga so much. While it is helpful to the body, it does even more for my mind and outlook. I need to get back to it. I also need to get up from that computer sometimes. Thanks for sharing!

    Reply

sidebar

Blog Sidebar

Follow Me

  • Facebook
  • LinkedIn
  • Twitter

Follow me on BookBub

<span>Follow me on BookBub</span>

Click here to read my recent articles and essays

  • Home
  • Blog
  • Bio
  • Ghostwriting
  • My Books
    • Folly Cove
    • Chance Harbor
    • Haven Lake
    • Beach Plum Island
    • The Wishing Hill
    • Sleeping Tigers
    • The Gerbil Farmer’s Daughter
  • Articles & Essays
    • Essays
    • Articles and Essays
      • Interviews
  • Events
  • Non-Fiction
    • Essays
    • Articles and Essays
      • Interviews
Holly Robinson

What’s New on the Blog

running on Bothwell with dogs

Can We Ever Be Completely Happy?

I was driving through Boston recently when I stopped at a light. Next to me was a rust bucket of a car. The driver had long hair, a sleeve tattoo, and a sharp profile that said, “Don’t mess with me.” Clearly a guy with a hard life and an even harder past. Yet, in the Read More

20230507 094648

Why Stay Married When You’re Living Apart?

I’m unloading the dishwasher when my husband comes up behind me. “You’re making chaos out of my stemless glassware,” he says. “What are you talking about?” He rearranges the glasses I’ve just put on the shelf. There are only six of them, so it doesn’t take long. When he’s finished, there are two of each Read More

mammoWipe

MammoWipes and Other Medical Indignities

Why do pets get red carpet medical care, while humans are treated like livestock?

HollyBlaise

The Imperfect Mother

As we creep toward Mother’s Day, that Hallmark Holiday of flowers and chocolates and too many regrets, here is the most important thing for all of you moms out there to remember: Mothering is an imperfect art. No matter how hard you try, you will never get it right 100 percent of the time. Just Read More

20230505 141526

Winning at Hawaii Bingo

Let me just say this right up front: I never had any particular desire to go to Hawaii. For one thing, I’m more of a hiker than a beach lounger. I don’t like rum or boating or sunning or surfing, and men in Hawaiian shirts make my teeth hurt. Then my dear friend Toby Neal—a Read More

20230328 123906

Creativity, Cancer, and the Circle of Quiet

I walked to the bench today after my MRI. My doctor ordered the test to see if I have pancreatic cancer, not because I have any symptoms or suspicion, but because my mother died of it last year. “Better to know,” is what my doctor said. “We can at least get a baseline.” Of course, Read More

TwitterFacebookLinkedin

Copyright © 2020 Holly Robinson

Website by Bakerview Consulting