Mindfulness and My Writing

Meditating kitten

Last time I was at my therapist's, he recommended that I do mindfulness meditation. I googled 'mindfulness' as he suggested and came up with a number of resources:

Online Yoga Classes: Mindfulness Meditation Series (and others)
Free Mindfulness
Mindfulness Exercises

All of the sites feature free MP3 guided meditations. Most involve being aware of your breath. Which is weird. But it seems to work pretty well. I like the first one because it's based on yoga and I used to do yoga including breathing meditation exercises years ago. Besides, it's a class with about 10 progressive lessons. And there is another class I can do after that.

This is the result so far: for two days in a row, I was planning to take a little nap in the afternoon as I often do since I'm so tired at that time of day. I decided to do a 5 minute meditation session--- the first lesson from the Online Yoga Classes. Each of these days, I couldn't nap but was more energized than if I had. Also on both days, I used the time I would have been napping to write poems. Both the resulting poems felt like they were a lot more inspired than usual.

I also have been doing the breathing meditation exercises while not listening to the MP3s. On the Online Yoga Class lesson, you are counting your breath--- you think 'in, 1' while you are breathing in the first time, then 'out, 1' while exhaling, then 'in, 2'.

I tried to do it with words to a prayer rather than counting.

inhale: 'Hail Mary, full of grace,'
exhale: 'the Lord is with thee'
inhale: 'blessed art thou among women'
exhale: 'and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus'
inhale: 'Holy Mary,'
exhale: 'Mother of God'
inhale: 'pray for us sinners'
exhale: 'now and at the hour of our death. Amen.'

What that did was that I was much less distracted than I normally am when I pray a Hail Mary. I was focused more on the meaning of the words I was praying. I tried this technique with the Our Father as well, but that was a bit more difficult. And I did the Glory Be, which worked out better.

Anyway, that's my Mindfulness update. Have you ever tried that sort of thing? If you write, did it have an effect, good or bad, on your writing?


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Writing and the Mindfulness Fad

Recently my shrink suggested that I google 'mindfulness' and begin mindful meditation to deal with some of my issues. Before this I had been unaware of the mindfulness fad. But my shrink said that there had been scientific studies done on mindfulness meditation techniques which showed they were objectively helpful.

In looking at the mindfulness resources online--- as well as mindfulness books I shall never be able to afford--- there seems to be a wide variety of material. Some of it is practical stuff that could help anybody no matter how they feel about the mindfulness thing.

Others, however, use 'mindfulness' as a way to push the superiority of their Buddhist/'Zen' faith on others, while still being able to look down their nose at Christians who evangelize. The problem with that is that Buddhism isn't true. (You may now freak out, screaming 'you are not allowed to say that!' even if you would have just smiled and nodded if someone had said Christianity wasn't true.)

I refuse to give up the truth for something less-true just in order to improve my moods, cope with my Asperger Syndrome, and/or improve my writing. If I believed that mindfulness=Buddhism I wouldn't touch it. But the shrink who recommended mindfulness to me is not only a Christian, he's a Christian pastor. So he's not out to make me into a Buddhist.

I found an article on Mindfulness tips for writers over at Write to Done blog: 7 Mindfulness Tips to Energize Your Writing | Write to Done   I've read it over and thought that the tips were pretty useful for writers generally. Though 'Zen' was mentioned, I think the tips can be used by writers of other faiths or no faith without compromising their religion. But I'd like to hear the opinion of my blog readers on this. Do you think 'mindfulness' techniques can be of use to the non-Buddhist writer?

And now, I'm off to do my morning mindfulness meditation.....

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