Nervous energy, breathing and hula hooping

Maya having a go at hula-hooping at Shambala Festival, 2011

I have a bit of a problem. I think I've mentioned this before, but when I sit down to write I have a huge amount of nervous energy in me. Partly it's because I am like a child before their birthday party: hugely over excited. And partly it's because I don't know quite how to get going again after a week away from my characters and the story they want to tell. I know that on occasion this nervous energy simply hasn't dissipated and it's been horribly counter-productive with me doing a bit of writing, then quickly checking my email, then doing a few more lines, then getting up to make a coffee, then playing a few notes on the piano, then sitting down again and doing some writing whilst fiddling with my hair - aaaaaaaaaggghhh! This is NOT good.

So today I tried a different tack. I could feel this energy fizzing all around me as I sat down to write and I thought NO - this is my day, my precious day to write and I really cannot spend half of it making coffee and bashing out a few unsatisfactory chords on the piano. So I tried an exercise that comes from my book 'Writing begins with the breath' which suggests that you spend a few minutes on the floor on your back, palms up and eyes closed, breathing deeply. According to the author of this book (Larraine Herring), this posture helps stimulate the imagination and 'because you're on your back, your heart is open, allowing you to experience both vulnerability and surrender. Your body is experiencing a place of safe openness - a place of trust from which you can dare to risk.'


Well, I definitely liked the sound of that so I gave it a go and then managed to get up and have a good hour of utterly uninterrupted and very satisfying writing (I know, this doesn't sound like much but for me it is!).Inspiration comes from different places for all of us, but for me, it definitely comes from that still, small space of calm, so perhaps I ought to be doing this more often.

After an hour I got very cold (this is another problem I have, because when I'm really into my writing I honestly don't think, fingers aside, that I move a muscle) so to get my circulation going I put on some loud music and did five minutes of hula hooping! I know this sounds a bit nuts but it is my latest craze and I love it. So let's see if this is something I can do every thursday - calm breathing at the start of my writing day and then hourly hula-hooping breaks!