Writing a Letter

Happy Monday. My book club recently read The Correspondent. If you are not familiar, this book is composed entirely of letters written to and from the female protagonist, Sybil. In our discussion we talked about the lost art of letter writing and we decided, in order to reclaim that art, that we would each write a letter to another person in our group.  

As I sat down to write mine last weekend I realized that the process (or practice) or writing a letter required several mindful steps. It had been a long time since I wrote a proper letter so I needed to find actual stationary. I selected a cream colored page with pink flowers around the edges and I noticed the thickness of the paper stock. Then I found a black pen I wanted to commit to for the entire letter and cleared off space at my desk to sit down and write.  As I thought about what I was going to write before putting pen to paper I was struck with the potential permanence of this letter. There was no delete button or back arrow to erase the words. This realization required pausing and mindfulness as I began to write. The thoughtful set of steps slowed my mind down in preparation to focus, it was a meditation. 

I began to ask myself “What if I approached everything the way I approached writing this letter?” Setting aside time, mindfully selecting materials, carving out both physical space and space in the mind for concentration; all with the understanding that I was creating something with my own words the could be kept forever, long after our electronic files disappear. This became the same question I asked my students on the mat this week. 

As we began our practice I asked students to approach it as a mindful set of steps like they were writing a letter to themselves; to notice each pose as well as the transitions. As we flowed through, pairing breath and movement together helped to keep us fully focused on the moment at hand as it became our moving meditation.

I also asked students to notice the letter writing in the mind; were they being kind and fair to themselves… as if they were writing a letter to someone else? Noticing the stories or “letters” we write to ourselves is the first step to “editing” them, because unlike this pen to paper letter I sent out a few days ago (after I found a stamp which took a bit of looking), the letters we write to ourselves are NOT permanent. We have the power with mindfulness to shift them into creations that can serve us both on and off the mat.

There is beauty and reverence in the creation of our words; especially for someone else, and written with care and mindfulness. Yet there is equal beauty in understanding that the words we share with ourselves hold the same weight and have the same power and with the practice of mindfulness we can shift them to serve us.