Meditation for People Who Can’t Sit Still

Erin Coyle
2 days ago
3 min read

A Writing Practice for Restless Minds

This post is part of my series How to Start a Writing Practice: A 7-Week Experiment. Read the full series here.

“Life is not orderly. No matter how we try to make it so, right in the middle of it we die, lose a leg, fall in love, or drop a jar of applesauce.”—Natalie Goldberg

People say that meditation is a great stress reliever, that it calms your mind and body, lowers blood pressure, and can lead to states of bliss and contentment. All true.

But for some people, sitting still on a cushion with eyes closed, focusing on the breath, can feel impossible—especially if you have a mind like fire and a body that wants to move. It’s okay. I’m not going to ask you to do that. (But please keep doing it if that style of meditation works for you.) Thankfully, there’s more than one way to meditate.

Writing is a potent way to unload all the mind gunk your brain creates. Mindfulness meditation trains you to notice thoughts, sensations, and images, and then let them go. A meditative writing practice helps you notice what’s actually there, name it clearly, integrate it and put it on the page.

Writing is also an embodied practice. It’s a way to get whatever is bouncing around in your sweet, little, floating, over-analyzing brain to travel down your arm, into your hand and fingers, into a pen or pencil, and finally onto the page. So yes, it’s a two-for-one. And today, I’d invite you to start a writing practice.

Much of what we’ll explore is inspired by Julia Cameron, author of The Artist’s Way (a life-changing book you should absolutely get), and Natalie Goldberg, author of Writing Down the Bones, a book that transformed my entire relationship with writing.

Introduction to Writing as a Practice

Sometime this week, get yourself a journal or notebook. It can be a cheap spiral-bound notebook from Walmart, a hand-bound leather one from a local boutique, or a few sheets of paper stapled together. Really it doesn’t matter. I’m not even going to tell you what size paper to use.Post-it notes. Your bedroom wall. Totally up to you.

Every day for the next 30 days, I invite you to sit down and write. You can write one page, one paragraph, one sentence—or one word. You can even sit for five minutes with an open notebook and not write anything at all.

I write three pages first thing in the morning with a cup of tea and a cat on my lap. It’s a bit of a balancing act. Some mornings I write in a small, neat script with my beloved Lamy 2000 fountain pen filled with special blue pigment ink handcrafted in Japan. (Yes, I’m a total geek.) Other mornings I write large, messy cursive because I’m in a hurry, but dammit, I’m still going to fill three pages with something.

Creating the habit is the hardest part for most people. We’ve been taught that building a habit requires pushing harder and giving ourselves hell when we miss a day. That’s not what this practice is about.

Create a practice that’s too small to fail.

Start with a word. Soon it becomes a sentence. Sentences turn into paragraphs. Before you know it, you’re saying, Well, that was easy—and kind of fun. Why not keep going?

Here’s how you’ll know you’ve found the right size practice for you:

If your body tightens at the thought of writing, the practice is already too big.If writing feels like punishment, your system will avoid it.If it feels like play or something you enjoy, your system will look forward to it. So go easy. And commit to writing something every day.

And remember—these pages are for your eyes only. Putting pen to page is the practice. You are not here to create a masterpiece. It’s nobody’s business what you write or don’t write, or even if you write.

No grades. No critiques.

This is something you’re doing for yourself. Period. Full stop.