Morning Pages and Meditation

How to kill 2 birds with one stone!

I often recommend the practices of meditation and morning pages (from The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron) to my clients. These are both excellent practices for developing your ability to still the mind so you can hear inner wisdom - to develop what I call the Seventh Sense.

But, often the response I hear is

“Oh, I tried those years ago, they didn’t work for me”.

When I investigate further, what I then hear is something along the lines of:

”I can’t meditate - I can’t get my thoughts to stop”

and

“I can’t do morning pages, I can never think of anything to write!

How can this be?

How can thoughts be present when we don't want them in meditation, but not present when we do want them in morning pages?

Is it because we have a hidden agenda when we are writing morning pages?

To recap, according to Julia Cameron,

Morning Pages are three pages of longhand, stream of consciousness writing,
done first thing in the morning. There is no wrong way to do Morning Pages–
they are not high art. They are not even “writing.” They are about
anything and everything that crosses your mind– and they are for your eyes
only. Morning Pages provoke, clarify, comfort, cajole, prioritize and
synchronize the day at hand. Do not over-think Morning Pages: just put
three pages of anything on the page...and then do three more pages tomorrow.

The tendency, however, and the thing that blocks the free-flow stream of consciousness writing, is that we want to write something useful or have some profound insight or, for those of us who are writers, at the very least something that can be developed into an article or poem!

This is missing the point. 

We are asked to do morning pages simply to dump our thoughts. You know, those thoughts that are so pervasive they affect our ability to meditate! 😄

So, if you have struggled with both morning pages and meditation, here is as an experiment for you to try:

1. Sit down to do morning pages (suspend all objections, for now).

2. Close your eyes

3. Start to observe the inflow and outflow of your breath, perhaps at your nostrils or by feeling the rise and fall of your belly.

4. When a thought appears, open your eyes and write it down.

5. Close your eyes again and go back to observing your breath.

6. Repeat until you have written 3 pages of your thoughts. 

Voila! You wrote your morning pages! And you practised meditation - 2 birds, 1 stone! 😄

Doing this cut through resistance to meditation and morning pages for me and for my clients. Reframing the practices in this way by using the thoughts that are normally labelled a distraction in meditation as the material for morning pages made the writing of them easy.

No more searching for things to write about or worrying you are doing it wrong.

The thoughts keep coming and we keep writing them down.

Give it a go and tell me how it went. Did it change your experience? Was it useful?

And, if you are one of the many, many people who started The Artist’s Way and never finished it, leave a comment to be notified of my upcoming Artist’s Way Book Group. Going through The Artist’s Way in a group is a profound, often life-changing experience. I also offer 1-1 coaching through The Artist’s Way.

Here is what one client said

Our very first session gave me a realization so profound that I knew there was no going back. Susan has a way of sitting with you, allowing you to go within and find your own insights in a way I’ve never quite experienced before. When I began working with Susan, I was in the middle of a journey to really claim what it was I wanted to do and own my calling. I was stuck in a job that was big for my ego, but not for my soul. She allowed me to see that by using my own inner wisdom and by bringing out my true self, I could do anything I wanted to do. During our 12 weeks together, I felt more confident and willing to take on huge projects and knew exactly where I was going. By the end, I had produced my first music video and written my first screen play and had tools to keep going back to time and time again. My life has opened up in ways I could not have imagined, including finishing projects I had been working on for 4 years. It has given me the confidence to choose a different life path and believe in my internal compass…..finally. I highly recommend Susan.”

If you resonate with that and want to chat about working together 1-1 through The Artist’s Way, book a free 30 minute consultation by clicking the button below