The Yogic Writer: Uniting Breath, Body, and Page

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Description

Fusing the craft of writing and the philosophy and practice of yoga, The Yogic Writer charts a path to the heart of your creativity through the practice of yogic breathing, somatic exercises and meditations. With the tyranny of outcomes and product paralysing writers in this modern world, Jennifer Sinor summons her 30 years or experience teaching creative writing and yoga to guide your focus back to process, to discover your inner landscape and how writing, when undertaken with intention, transforms our creative potential. A call to sit within the mess and to not have all the answers, this book directs you to seek inspiration from within the body, to recognise it as a vessel, vehicle and teacher that generates knowledge and ideas separate from the cognitive brain. Connecting craft with the body throughout, it maps notions of writing - creating space for ideas and intentions, drafting, revision and sitting in sites of possibility and potential onto the four stages of breath. Less curriculum and more contemplation through insights offered in brief essays, Sinor meets writers at the point of need, offering practical craft advice whilst meditating on deeper subjects being pursued: how to look, who is really writing, and how to listen to our bodies. With ideas owed to ancient wisdoms, knowledge informing creative writing pedagogy and composition, and Sinors own experience, The Yogic Writer offers a unique, alternative approach to finding creativity that forsakes external validation for internal knowledge and experimentation. Inspirational, affirmational and personal, this book is for anyone seeking permission to embody the life of a writer that they already know, deep down, to be theirs.

Reviews

The Yogic Writer is an essential and exhilarating approach to creativity, helping writers to silence the negative critical voices in favor of an intuitive, meditative practice tied directly to our breath and body. * Dinty W. Moore, author of The Mindful Writer *

Author Bio

Jennifer Sinor is Professor of English at Utah State University. USA. She is the author of several books of literary nonfiction, including Sky Songs: Meditations on Loving a Broken World and the memoir Ordinary Trauma. A teacher for thirty years, Jennifer Sinor holds a PhD in composition and rhetoric from the University of Michigan and is a certified yoga instructor (RYT 500). Currently, she offers creative writing to undergraduate and graduate students as well as community classes on writing memoir. In addition to teaching weekly yoga classes, Jennifer helps facilitate the Amrita Yoga Satsang, has offered meditation in the Cache County Jail, and taken numerous courses and classes in yoga history, philosophy, and practice in both the US and India.