Warrior Energy for Writers

During my yoga practice yesterday I assumed the Warrior 1 position: one leg forward, knee bent in a lunge, both arms stretched into the air. ?In Warrior 1, I often feel like my body is gathering energy, as all four limbs are equally tensed. ?Hold that a minute, then segue into Warrior 2: turn the body to the side, even out the legs, and stretch both arms straight out, one ahead, one behind. ?Keep your gaze traveling down the middle finger of the forward arm. I find this calming. ?For Warrior 3, segue into Triangle Pose: hinge at the waist and drop one arm down by the ankle, the other straight up in the air, your gaze following the lifted arm. ?In this pose, your goal is to make your body flat, as if its between two panes of glass. ?At this point, all that gathered energy is deeply focused.

In our Writing Revs group, we often mentioned “warrior energy.” ?This term, and the awareness of it, was a gift of Karen Blomberg, but all of us writers recognized that we needed it. ?It’s not easy to carve out time and energy in a busy life for something as amorphous as “writing.” ?Why, after all, do we bother? People are not exactly clamoring to publish our words. ?It takes a fighting spirit — warrior energy — to marshall energy and stay focused. We gathered together as a way of gathering energy, focusing, and breathing deeply. ?I don’t want to use past tense, because Karen is gone. ?The group will continue without her. ?And I am not ready to let her go entirely. ?May I continue to use present tense? ?Each of us WRevs writes different pieces, with different purposes, and has different dreams for success, but together we are more than the sum of those parts.

I am a mediocre yoga practitioner, and I never practiced yoga with KB. ?But when I want to feel her near, I will assume Warrior pose.