My Kind of Exercise

I have an on-again-off-again love affair with yoga. I love the simple contemplative art of it. I like to feel each muscle as it stretches and works with the others. I like to feel like I have a big ball of breathing light in the center of me besides a messy jumble of organs and half-digested food. I like the way my mind reconnects in its simplest form with my body - simply as a driver, not as a commentator. I love the focus of in and out and filling myself with new air and releasing the old. I especially like that it's a solitary form of exercise and that there is no need for bouncy pop music and overly enthusiastic cheerleading: "O-K! One! Two! Up! Two! Clap! Two! Feel the burn!" I like to do yoga by my wood stove in the winter for the whole Bikram experience in the privacy of my own home. It is one of the few occasions on which it is not only acceptable, but encouraged, to sweat like a farm hand. I imagine the tiny demons pouring out through my pores and dissolving in my salty sweat. This is the sort of exercise I love but alas, life gets rearranged with alarming regularity and my exercise ritual disappears for a while.

I have been doing a different sort of exercise lately. Not the kind that burn very many calories or keep my muscles strong and limber, but the kind that keep my brain oiled and focused. I picked up a book at the library, The Practice of Poetry: Writing Exercises From Poets Who Teach, that has become a useful tool. I dabble in poetry, don't really consider myself a poet in any sort of exclusive way, but the exercises are great for really any kind of writing. Most of them focus on freeing up your thoughts for breaking the bonds of regular association of words and for enabling the play and rhythm of language. That may sound like so much hokum to some, but my writing style lends itself to hokum. Besides, any sort of kick in the rear end in the direction of regular writing practice is a good thing for me. I want to share an exercise I stumbled upon last night that tickled my fancy.

It's called the "Ten Minute Spill" and is suggested by Rita Dove - she was a US Poet Laureate and has assorted hardware to her credit, so I think she might know a thing or two about writing.
Here's the gist of it:
Write ten lines in ten minutes- she suggests poetry, but I think it would work for lyrical prose, too.
These ten lines must include the following:
- A proverb, adage, or familiar phrase that you have changed in some way.
- Five of the following words:

cliff           blackberry

needle           cloud

voice                 mother

whir           lick

How fun is that?! I'm going to give it a go, but because one of the wonderful things about blogging can be the interactivity of it, I found myself thinking about what various other bloggers would do with it. I want to see. If you feel inclined, join me in this exercise and post a link or even just your ten lines in the comments or on my Facebook page. It will be fun. We will get to stretch our writing muscles, distill and focus, maybe sweat - but nobody will actually see us!