I’m adoring reading the book Fruitflesh: Seeds of Inspiration for Women Who Write by Gayle Brandeis. This is a beautiful, soulful, permissive book that encourages women to enjoy and make peace with their bodies and to know the physical through the engagement of the senses. I love it! I’m going to give here a sneak peak into some of the mindfulness based activities from Fruitflesh.

1. Establish a ritual to help you enter the creative process. At Creative Focus, I turn on a special and beautiful light, I refresh the flowers and I light a candle. What could you do to create an acknowledgement of your creative space.

2. What landscape has informed and constructed you? What corner of the Earth have you felt a deep union with?  Are you of a mind to bring this place – and your body’s response to it – into view, onto the page, in writing, or visually? Remember and name each little detail – trace the course of your walks or play. These places form a deep part of who you are today. When you make a mental pilgrimage to this homeland you make a mental pilgrimage to your self.

3. “It’s important to remember that one of the most important words in any writer’s, and any woman’s, vocabulary is ‘no’. When we learn to say no, without guilt, to those things that keep us from our desire, it creates more space for the things that make us say yes.

4. A fruitflesh meditation: “A kiwifruit is like a fuzzy brown egg, rather dull and unassuming on the outside. When you cut one open, though, a bold and glistening emerald fruit greets you. Take a tentative bite of the kiwi skin. It takes like cardboard and may even make your tongue itch. Bit further, past the skin, into the heart of the fruit. Let its sweet deep colour fill your mouth.”

5. “We are fruit with breath inside, as Maria Teresa Horta writes. Breath is life. Breath invigorates us, fills our blood with oxygen, fills our bodies with vitality, fills our language with possibility. Breath, literally, ‘inspires’ us.

Too often, as women, we walk around sucking our stomachs in, holding our breath. This is a sad commentary on how our society expects us to look, but the consequences run even deeper. Withholding breath withholds circulation, not to mention sensation. When we try to look like our stomachs are flatter than they are, we also flatten the sensation we could be experiencing in the lower half of our bodies. We disconnect ourselves from our creative centre.

Suck in your tummy as tight as you can. Try writing about how this feels without exhaling or letting go of your muscles. It’s not so easy, is it?

Now let your stomach be soft, whole, relaxed to its natural self. Let your breath be full, natural. Take the world and all its inspiration deep into your lungs. Exhale; give yourself back full to your environment. Feel yourself as fruit filled with breath, filled with vital, vibrant, aliveness. Now write about your belly, how it feels when you don’t constrict its movement. Let your breath imbue your words with its supple, subtle flow.”