Yoga and creativity:
And the connection I've found between them
“Yoga releases the creative potential in life.” – B.K.S. Iyengar
Last month I described how I’ve found exercise to be a helpful pathway to a different and more creative mindset. My relationship with fitness has changed drastically over the past 20 years, and I have learned—the hard way—that the way I work out is closely and unexpectedly connected with the way I create.
As a teen, I spent swim and cross-country seasons perpetually injured. I had regular stress fractures and a neuroma caused by cortisone shots I got to numb the pain. Despite these cries for help from my body, I told myself to work harder. But no matter how hard I worked, I would never be the best on the team. And so my harsh inner critic was in its heyday, with its constant barrage of not good enough. Perhaps not surprisingly given this inner voice, I also abandoned my childhood love of writing stories and making things during my high-school years.
Although the transition was gradual, the seed of change was planted the first day I stepped into a yoga class in college. To be sure, I did years of yoga in the same competitive and over-zealous way I’d done all physical activity up to that point—doing extra chaturangas and paying no attention to breath cues. But eventually, all the calm, centered talk wore my defenses down. I started to listen more closely to the teacher instead of comparing my plank form to others in the room, and the whole practice started to shift. I closed my eyes and found myself actually managing to pay attention to my breath for minutes at a time. Sometimes I even chose poses no one else in the room was doing.
Lessons I’ve learned from yoga translate directly into creative work: Yoga is about practice, not perfection. There is no winning or mastery. There is only the process, and the tuning in, and the letting go. Comparison gets in the way. Self-judgment gets in the way. Growth is never-ending and completely personal.
These days, I balance any higher-intensity exercise I do with yoga. I know I can’t run more than two days in a row without it. Not only does this keep me from getting injured, but it’s a great litmus test: If I go without yoga for too many days, I am probably not treating myself with the compassion and grace that puts me in the best mindset to write. This likely means I have started to talk to myself harshly. And that harsh talk translates directly into words deleted from the page just after writing them.
Yoga is my best litmus test for a creative mindset now. It is also one of my most reliable pathways from outside to inside, where creative work begins.