Sit with the discomfort.

Often during yoga, the teacher will talk about “sighing something away” or “letting something go” when we’re in the midst of a challenging pose.

And I have no trouble thinking of something I’d like to not be worrying about. But I can only rarely visualize letting it go, or sighing it anywhere except right back into my head, just where it was.

Today she said that one of the founders of the kind of yoga we’re doing says that part of the point of doing it is to “sit with the discomfort.”

That, while still challenging, actually seemed much more doable.

I wasn’t trying to banish anything forever. I was just putting my body into a particular shape and staying in it until she told us to transition.

And I began to think about what it means to “sit with the discomfort” when we write.

It’s often literally sitting, sitting with the computer, or the notebook, or into space, when nothing will cohere, coalesce, or achieve coherence.

The discomfort can be decision fatigue, when you’ve figured out the mechanics of several scenes and you know these characters have to do SOMETHING ELSE AFTER ALL THAT but you have no idea what it might be.

Or you know what it has to be eventually, but they’re only at Point B and they need to get to Point X.

ARGH.

WHEN DO WE GET TO MOVE.

Of course, no teacher is going to appear to tell you it’s time to transition.

But sometimes if you sit with the discomfort long enough, something opens up, and you know where to go next.