Learning to Write Through an Awareness of Breath

Abstract

Exploring writing as breath provides an escape academia’s dry scientific prose and an entry into writing’s life inspiring potential. Both breathing and writing can be regarded as life-giving and engaging acts. Breathing flows as ceaseless and continuous acts of inhaling and exhaling, stirring up life in the way a writer’s personal voice animates words. Breath, like air, is light and spacious, evasive, and carries multitudinous possibilities. By dwelling deeply within words, through breath, we can subsequently disrupt the familiar and engage in poetic and “breath-like” forms of writing, which brings us closer to its weightless and enduring dimension.