Writing as part of your yoga practice

GUEST POST: JENNY ELLINGHAUS

I wrote Yoga for Travellers during a difficult time in my life, a time when I needed my yoga practice more than ever. When my relationship ended after 12 years, I lost my partner, my best friend and my regular travelling companion all at once. I questioned what I wanted to do with my life, questioned the things I had previously enjoyed doing and felt abandoned and scared. I was literally overwhelmed with fear, in particular, the fear of being alone. With a little space, time and thought, I knew that I was still keen to pursue my two great passions — yoga and travel. I would find a way to combine the two, to use my practice and travel to work through the fallout of my relationship. So I made a new year’s resolution to go travelling — alone.

Yoga and travel have always been the perfect couple in my mind. My passion for yoga began while on an eight-month trip to Thailand many years previously, when I attended a workshop about establishing a ‘home practice’. Even at this time, after just a few days of yoga, I remember thinking to myself how beneficial yoga could be for travellers, since it requires little space or equipment, and can help to ease out the aches and pains associated with carrying a pack, sleeping in beds of different quality and so on. On a previous one-year trip I had searched for a yoga book that contained everything that I needed to keep me going — yoga theory, suggested sequences, meditation practices, and advice on how to incorporate yoga into daily life — but the book didn’t exist. I didn’t know it at the time, but this experience planted the seed to write the book myself. And writing the book became part of my yoga practice.

I started my adventure with a couple of girlfriends for a few days in Borneo. On arrival, I grabbed my mat and searched for somewhere to practice. Even at the airport hotel, there was a small, if a little grotty, space on the communal walkway or balcony, with a stunning view of palm trees. I looked at my well-used mat, with hand and foot marks, on this grotty floor and for some reason thought I would take a photo. I went back to the tiny room that I was sharing with my friends, sat on the bed and said ‘You know I’m thinking of writing a book — Yoga for Backpackers (as it was then called), offering advice about travelling in general and different yoga sequences for different moods and climates and the space available for your practice’. A few encouraging words from my friends and I was off. And that first photo on the balcony? It is actually included in the book, together with a bunch of other places that I practised yoga on various trips.

Putting ‘pen to paper’

If you have considered writing a book, or a blog, or a private journal entry, maybe now is the time to start? But rather than being attached to an outcome, such as your writing being published, can you focus on the process? One way to do this is to find an alternative motivation for your writing. I had a strong motivation to complete Yoga for Travellers which had little to do with people reading it — my father died while I was writing it. He had been diagnosed with cancer a few months before I left my home city of Melbourne to go travelling. Post-surgery he had been given the all clear, albeit with a high likelihood of the cancer coming back. His surgeon gave him a 60 percent chance of living five years, which was devastating at the time, but my dad made me promise that I wouldn’t cancel my trip, so I didn’t. Little did I know that he would be dead four months later. Four weeks after a three-month check-up and blood test showing no sign of cancer, he was in hospital literally riddled with it. Just over one week later he died.

I knew then that, more than anything, I wanted to finish my book and dedicate it to my father. Sure, ideally I wanted it to be published so that I could see that dedication in print, but somehow I felt like I ‘owed’ it to him to at least finish it, as a mark of respect. He would never get to read it, but I had to finish it, for him. I suppose I felt like he would see the dedication or find out about it somehow, even though my beliefs aren’t certain enough to know that to be the case. This determination to finish the book gave me a focus during an extremely difficult time. Rather than fall apart and hide under the duvet, though a perfectly understandable response to the death of a parent, I channelled my grief into writing. In this way writing and time on my mat each day together became my daily yoga practice, a way to stay present and centred, to reflect and release.

‘They’ say that writing a book is the easy part, getting it published is the challenge and that is in many ways true. But I would suggest that much of writing a book or writing in general is about writing the book, about the cathartic element of this process, about getting your thoughts down in some sort of order or structure. About testing and researching your topic of choice, exploring it from different angles, breathing life into it — like our asana (posture practice). Can writing also be an opportunity to practice observation and identify habits, again like our yoga practice? Do you often think about writing but never get around to it? Do you start writing but never finish? Do you write but then fear letting others read it, worried that they will judge or misunderstand you? Can writing encourage the practice of aparigraha (non-attachment), an opportunity to enjoy the process of writing without attachment to outcomes such as getting something published? Without wanting to be clichéd, can your writing be about the journey rather than the destination, as your asana is about the process rather than an end result. And, perhaps most importantly, are you ready for the journey? You will never know if you don’t take that first, deep breath and start. I look forward to reading your work.

Jenny is the author of Yoga for Travellers, a how-to guide for anyone wanting to practise yoga on the road, both on and off the mat. She loves yoga and travelling and hopes to pass these passions on to others. You can connect with Jenny via facebook, twitter or Instagram. Jenny currently teaches in Melbourne, Australia. For information about her next retreat please visit Bliss Bomb Retreats.