I think about breathing a lot. I have had asthma since I was a child, but it was exacerbated by living in heavily polluted places for decades. It is a terrible feeling to be gasping for air yet being unable to catch my breath. I now use an inhaler so that I can climb flights of stairs. Last December, I was diagnosed with sleep apnea, which means that at night I do not take in air naturally when reclined in bed. Every evening I plug into a CPAP machine just to breathe regularly. These two diagnoses mean that I must pay attention to my breathing problems around the clock. Fortunately, both my asthma and my apnea are under control, but they remind me to think about the gift of the inhale and exhale.
I have meditated for decades. I stumbled into the practice in my early twenties when I attended a ten-day silent meditation retreat where I learned a great deal about the connection between my breath, body, mind, and spirit. I went to this sanctuary not to become more spiritual, but because I was traveling in Thailand and had run out of money. It was a free place to sleep and eat until my flight home. Of course they expected a donation at the end, but in my youthful naiveté I could not contemplate that contribution. That week and a half of silent meditation did change my life—first, for the worse and then for the better. For the year following the retreat, I was extremely depressed because I had gone so deep into myself that I was very sensitive to the hustle and bustle of the world around me. However, in the years since then, I have been very grateful because I am so comfortable with the practice of meditating. This gift has enriched my life in many ways.
Many people who meditate compare the flow of our life to the act of breathing. Just as we must breathe in and we must breathe out: we must learn and we must do, we must rest and we must act, we have periods in our life where other people take care of us and we have times where we take care of others. The breath is a good metaphor and constant reminder of the give and take necessary in our everyday existence.
Writing is a lot like breathing. By this, I don’t mean, if I don’t do it, I will die—though that may be true for me, it might not be true for you. When I say writing is like breathing, I also do not mean it is natural and easy because most of the time it is not. Instead, when I say writing is like breathing, I mean that you need to inhale oxygen to survive as well as exhale carbon dioxide to live. The writing process also necessitates the taking in of life experiences before we can share out those experiences creatively. Thus, it is my belief that many of the problems that we have with writing have more to do with the flow of the ins and outs than with ourselves.
Many new writers have an experience where they suddenly burst out with dozens of pages and maybe even a whole book in a few days or a few weeks. The words tumble out one after another like water bursting out from behind a dam. This can be an exhilarating process or a painful one, yet it is full of energy much like a balloon that has been filled with air only to be released before it was tied off. The air flows out quickly and the balloon whizzes around the room at astonishing speed. This writing spurt is often a response to pent up energy—a story (or stories) that has been building inside one’s head for many years, if not a whole lifetime.
On the opposite side of the writing continuum, many experienced writers will go through a doldrum after a large project is completed. They may stop writing altogether for a few days, a few weeks, or even a few months because they are all tapped out. They just want to live life, see friends, or be outside instead of writing. I liken this to the great breath of air a swimmer takes after they have been underwater for a minute or more. When all the air has been depleted from our lungs, fresh air rushes in to fill the void. Doing other things is the deep inhale necessary after we have pushed all the breath from our bodies.
Neither of these extremes is a sustainable place to stay. We cannot always inhale, nor can we continually exhale. We must find a healthy balance of breathing in experiences and exhaling our creative gifts. As a writer, I find that this requires sensitivity and calibration. To write sustainably day after day, week after week, and month after month we must find ways to deeply breathe life in regular gulps. Much like a swimmer who times their breaths to match their strokes, writers need to plan their days to give space for writing and for living.
I often think about two words that I related to both creativity and breathing: exhausted and inspired. These words are good guides to where you are in the breath cycle. Exhaustion usually means that you have exhaled too much and you need time for resting, learning, and being alive. If you are inspired, it means that you have inhaled life deeply and are ready to work creatively.
This week, think about where you are in the breath cycle. If you are doing too much, take a breath. If you are all filled up, breathe life into a worthy project. As with meditation, wherever you are in the cycle just observe without judgement. This is information, not a personal critique. Looking at our creative process as it is and not as we want it to be or imagine it should be is an act of radical acceptance. By seeing our place in the world more clearly, we are able to take the next breath and keep going.
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