Yoga & Writing: Overcoming Inner Critics | Kimberly McElhatten

Kimberly McElhatten (00:00) With my clients who do yoga, I'll call the yamas and the niyamas out. If they're not a yogi, we'll talk about the terms, but we'll talk about the plain English terms of it. And the two that I liked, I mean, all of the niyamas, the yamas and the niyamas, mean, writing is a yoga practice. So the eight limbs and then also the yama, you know. tucked inside the yamas and the niyamas. But I think ahimsa, nonviolence shows up a lot. And there are kind of two ways I see it. I specifically nonviolence to the self as a writer. We have inner critics that show up and have all kinds of messages that they want to send to us that can keep us avoiding our work, procrastinating, or even playing small. And that's why I have on my team, have a wellness coach. that does all of our inner critic coaching for our writers so that they can work through and develop a compassionate relationship with their writing practice. And then there's this other part, and I see this more in my editing work with literary magazines, where we have to not only be compassionate with ourselves, we have to be compassionate with the people that we're writing about and the characters that we're developing in order for them to be well-rounded and to go after truthfulness, satya as well, right? We have to be compassionate, ⁓ yeah, with the people that we're writing about. And so then the other one that shows up is tapas a lot, like the fire of transformation, especially when I'm working with writers who are going after truth. We can't get to the truth until they have gone through the the cauldron. And they've put themselves to the fire and they've done that inner work that allows them to have access to truthfulness. Because otherwise a writer will often ⁓ have an easy cliched end or an easy cliched thematic content that has been written about a hundred over, know, hundreds and hundreds of times. And so helping them. do that work on the page. While I'm not a therapist, and I'm not a counselor, and I'm not a peer professional, I'm a writing coach and my job is to help them through some of that stuff so that they can access the unique truth that's on the other side of sitting in the heat of transformation. So yeah, I love doing that work with writers and being a yoga teacher and being familiar with that framework allows me to really be seated in a pos- and a position to walk them through that journey. Again, whether they're someone who is a rote ⁓ yoga practitioner or whether it's someone else, still the ⁓ perspective and point of view that I'm approaching both my own practice but my work with others. Brendon Orr (02:45) Hmm. ⁓ Cool. Gina Clingerman (03:01) wondering if you had a moment where you had this, where you were like, like an aha moment where you were like, oh, here's how yoga's in my writing and you were like, oh, this is the framework and now I'm gonna, like now this is where I'm headed. Like did you have one of those moments or many or none? Kimberly McElhatten (03:07) You Yeah, no, I think that co-writing is where I discovered that that's the lens that I was bringing to my work with writers. I was using the same class structure for the most part as a Capraolo structured class. And what I noticed when I used that framework is writers would tell me over and over again, they lost track of time. They got into the flow. much more easily, that the time that they spend in co-writing is way more productive than any other time of the week. Brendon Orr (03:50) Hmm. Kimberly McElhatten (04:00) And so I then took a step back because I'm a trained educator. taught middle school and high school for 16 years. So then I want to go, well, what created these conditions and what's really going on here? And so they're having these flow experiences. We're talking about limbs of yoga. Those are our later limbs of yoga where they're disassociating with themselves in a good way. And they're connecting with that higher source. The ego is dissolving in those moments. And I thought, well, hot damn, here we are. And I think it was also moments where I had, because so many of my clients are yoga students, we share that common language. And when they were stuck, especially with ⁓ convenient truth instead of pushing through the transformative element, if I just would say the word tapas to them, Brendon Orr (04:33) You Gina Clingerman (04:34) you Kimberly McElhatten (04:58) It would be a trigger moment. So you have to sit in this. We can't take the easy way out. ⁓ And so, both co-writing and then working with. clients who I share yoga, you know, who we share yoga in common with, allowed me to see that more clearly. And then, like I said, I transfer that into my work with all of my clients now. Just adjusting language depending on who I'm working with. So I think yoga just provides such a nice ⁓ perspective and language for working with folks on writing projects. Brendon Orr (05:31) Mm.