Being In Your Body

As a writer, I’m in my head a lot. I’m using my imagination. I’m sitting at a desk and typing on a keyboard. Let’s not forget staring at a screen.

And it feels so good to get into my body. To go take a walk, or go to the gym, or head to a yoga class or even just doing some household chore that needs to get done. Being in my body brings me back to myself.

When I’m in my head, I can get pretty far away from my body. Especially when I’m in my imagination, say, writing a story. I’m living in that world for the moment. I could be miles away in some other city or country or I might not even be in this world at all. Needless to say, I need to reconnect with my body at certain intervals or I might not come back at all. 🙂

It feels good to feel my heart rate rise, or to sweat or to feel my muscles working. It feels good to be using my senses and to be focused on the sensory information I’m getting. And it just turns my mind off for a while (usually, sometimes it just won’t go off) because I don’t need it on all the time. I can listen to what my body is saying for a while.

Even when I’m sitting at a desk and looking at a computer screen, I can still quickly and frequently check back in with my body. Notice my breathing for a few breaths, look out the window at what’s going on outside, get up and shoot a few baskets at my small basketball hoop, get up and stretch. It’s really essential for staying fresh in my mind and serves to ground me in the here and now, which as a fiction writer is harder than it seems.

Amanda Linehan is the author of North. Her newest novel is called Lakeside, about an unusual teenage girl in an unusual small town.