And you’ll also get the bonus of improved health and well-being!
If you are a writer — or even if you are not — have you ever considered a Yoga & Writing Retreat? Yoga is more than just exercise for the body.
At Sewall House every fall we see the transformative power of Kundalini yoga combined with writing prompts during our annual workshop with writing teacher Maria Massei Rosato. Maria is a mother, a businesswoman, a competitive athlete, and an overall amazing writer. She’s a woman whose screenplay tells the story of her cross-country bicycle trip while dealing with her mother’s declining health due to Alzheimer’s disease.
Whether you’re struggling with your writing for any reason, or maybe you just need a kickstart, here are 5 Reasons a Yoga & Writing Retreat might be just the thing for you.
1. Yoga is exercise for the mind and soul
Yoga is much more than just a physical activity. By also exercising your mind and soul, yoga is an excellent complement to writing, because both provide therapeutic benefits.
Plus, when you combine yoga and writing with group-sharing, as we have done at Sewall House’s yoga & writing retreats the last 10+ years, we have seen people experience profound insights. Some of our guests write vivid, detailed accounts from their childhoods, while others explore creative writing forms like poetry and fiction.
2. Yoga can release emotional blocks and open your heart
Yoga can help release emotional blocks and open your heart to being more alive.
One of our yoga teacher trainees this year was a Russian poet. He shared a poem about a woman he’d met in class while learning English. She became a mother figure to him. His poem was a tribute to her after she died, and his words brought several of us to tears. Over the years we have observed this same thing happening in our yoga & writing workshops time and time again.
One of the simplest meditations that is extremely effective for opening the heart is Meditation for a Calm Heart, which only takes 3 minutes. What we observe in the workshop each year is the difference between our writing before and after these simple practices. Instead of writing only from the head, we write from the heart.
3. Yogic breathing techniques alter your mind
Practicing methods that change your breathing, such as chanting and specific breathing techniques, can alter your mind to be more calm, quiet, receptive, and open.
According to Harvard Health, yoga can affect your mood by elevating levels of a brain chemical called gamma-aminobutyric acid (GABA). GABA is associated with better mood and decreased anxiety. Meditation also reduces activity in the limbic system — the part of the brain dedicated to emotions.
4. Yoga improves cognition and memory
Kirtan Kriya, a popular Kundalini yoga practice, has entered the mainstream for it’s ability to enhance brain health. At our writing workshop we offer these simple Kundalini yoga meditations.
According to the Alzheimer’s Research & Prevention Foundation:
Clinical research has shown that practicing Kirtan Kriya for just 12 minutes a day can improve cognition and activate parts of the brain that are central to memory. Replacing the Kirtan Kriya sounds with other sounds, or replacing the meditation as a whole with other relaxing tasks, has not been shown to be effective.
5. Writing (and yoga) can decrease the symptoms of stress
Lastly, but certainly not leastly — okay, that’s not a word but we like it! — writing can decrease the symptoms of stress, like headaches, chest pain, and high blood pressure.
In yoga we have a saying: “Our issues are in our tissues.” What a great reason to write! Get down on paper (or into your favorite writing software) some of the stuff that’s causing your anxiety!
There is research to back this up.
Karen Cangialosi, in her article Healing through the Written Word for the Permanente Journal, wrote the following.
Writing is not only a salve but often a tool that opens our minds and hearts to things that are deep inside us. The famous American poet, E. E. Cummings, said, ‘To be nobody-but-yourself—-in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else—-means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight ….’
I agree with E. E. Cummings that people need help to fight the battles of their lives, but first people must be aware of and accept these battles before they can move on to conquer them. As David Spiegel, MD, said in the April 14, 1999 issue of JAMA, ‘… Smyth and colleagues demonstrate that merely writing about past stressful life experiences results in symptom reduction among patients with asthma or rheumatoid arthritis.’
… Mara Bovsun concluded that ‘The simple act of writing about bad times can be a potent, and low cost, method of relieving pain and symptoms of chronic illnesses ….’ This research points out and supports the idea that emotions left unattended can change into symptoms that cause confusion when they present in physicians’ offices. Through a weekly writing workshop …, people become aware of their battles or issues, how to accept them, and how to move more fully into a personal healing process.
Emotions, if they are not acknowledged and confronted, can cause the body to react in ways that lead to misdiagnoses in doctor’s offices. We must dive deeply into ourselves to get to the root of our physical stressors.
Conclusion
As you can see, there are many reasons that a Yoga & Writing Retreat — even if you never thought of yourself as a writer — may be just what you need to heal and create.
Consider joining us this October 10-15, 2024, for Sewall House’s annual Yoga & Writing Retreat. There are just a few spots left, and we’ve added expanded lodging at the cute apartment across the street, so contact us even if our reservation system says we are full! As is true of all our retreats, this one will be personalized with plenty of tender-loving care.
