Episode 56: [GUEST] Poses and Prose with Writer and Yoga Teacher Adrien Terrell

This week on the podcast, Elizabeth chats with Yoga and Writing Teacher Adrien Terrell about the benefits of integrating a yoga practice with your writing practice. 

During their discussion, they touch upon the following and more:

• releasing energy in the body through yoga poses
• creating a ritual for yourself when you're ready to write
• finding time to write and your path to being a writer that's uniquely your own
• using storytelling to navigate grief and challenges you face

Adrien Terrell is a writer and yoga teacher. She found yoga during a time of grief and found solace and healing in practice. Her journey was so powerful she felt compelled to share her yoga passion with the community. experience. She has been published in numerous family publications and self-published a young adult novel when she was eighteen. Writing was put aside while she dedicated herself to raising four children and growing a woodworking business with her husband. The enthusiasm to return to writing resurfaced when she was training for her yoga teaching license. She realized the ritual of combining writing and movement added a layer of creativity to both passions. She leads workshops and courses to inspire others to explore their imagination in yoga practice and various forms of prose.

Connect with Adrien:

​Composed Yoga Website​

​Instagram​: @adriencompose.yoga

​YouTube​: Compose Yoga with Adrien

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Transcript

Elizabeth: 0:00

Wired Writer Collective podcast. I'm your host, Elizabeth, and today I am here with another great podcast guest. We have Adrienne Terrell here. She is a writer and a yoga teacher and a fellow Coloradan, and she has previously published some work. She put that aside to raise her kids, support her husband, and then her enthusiasm for writing returned. Alongside her training as a becoming a yoga teacher, and now she combines the ritual of writing and yoga in order to increase the creativity and passion for both. She leads workshops and courses that help people combine poses and prose, translating muscle tension into plucks. plot tension, or breathing techniques into character development. So Adrienne, it's an honor to have you here today to help give us a little bit of insight as to why being in our bodies is so important, why the ritual around our writing practices and incorporating movement can be really beneficial, and I just want to say that in preparation for this recording, I had been sitting at my desk doing some of this end of the year wrap up stuff, and I was like, Oh, you know what, I'm going to do some yoga poses and some stretches for about 15 minutes before I hop on this recording with Adrian. So you've already inspired me to do a little bit more for my body and myself today. So welcome to the podcast.

Adrien: 1:30

Well, thank you. And that's such good news to hear that because, um. You know, it's, it's a fact of the matter of as writers, we are heady. We're in our heads a lot. And so just, um, we remember that we are a full union, a unit that we need to unionize that movement as well as our words. Um, it helps free those things up. Um, just even. It doesn't have to be, you know, a big jump on your mat, do 10 warriors or whatever it might be. It's just that simple act, like you said, of, um, opening up the body, moving out some energy. And it's amazing how that translates on the page. So I'm so glad that you found that this morning. That's perfect.

Elizabeth: 2:15

Thank you. Yeah. I did some like shoulder rolls, kind of open up that heart space. My hips work are chronically tight side. Some hip openers and just some lower back stretches because I've been sitting for an hour. Um, so, I'm really curious what, I don't even know where to start exactly, so feel free to start somewhere different if it makes more sense. But, sure, why should we do this? How are we, like, what are we tapping into as writers when we can first, like, get into our bodies, or we can, you know, shake our wigglies out, or, You know, is the movement going to inspire the motivation that we need to actually sit down and write? What, what are the perks?

Adrien: 2:54

Absolutely. So, um, to start off with, I think, um, the ritual of it is a nice way to kind of set yourself up. Um, for myself, whether I'm coming onto my yoga mat or whether I'm sitting down at my desk to write, if I tell myself, okay, Go do yoga or go go right my brain and my body kind of freezes up It's like well, where do I start? Where do I begin? How do I do this? But if I have like kind of like this idea of it's it's a treat to myself. It's a welcoming. It's an orientation Because again going back to yoga Every time I invite people to come to their mats and come to my practices I don't expect people to just immediately be able to shut down everything that's going on outside the door, and just all of a sudden be able to go into a great, you know, flow and a practice. We kind of need to take time to kind of almost set like this imaginary bubble around ourselves. Of saying, okay, what I've got going on outside of my mat outside of my writing desk is still going on out there and the mind is meant to work. So sometimes it's overworking, but we just have to say for now, for right now, I'm going to be here in the space. So what does that look like? Well, it's a lot sometimes to say, okay, I'm going to start this new chapter or I'm going to do a full hour of yoga. So we have to start a little bit. I'm going to sit down and I'm just going to take three deep breaths, or I'm going to sit down and I'm just going to let that reel that's going on in my brain finish out of like, you know, maybe my to do list my grocery list or whatever I'm holding onto from earlier. I'm going to let that play out and I'm going to say, okay, thank you. But now let's stay here in this space. The actual tangible thing about, like, lighting a candle, or, um, you know, kind of rubbing hands together, or doing those kind of things is that setup that is so good for any time we're switching gears, you know, um, because we're not meant to just, as writers, to kind of be in that cage, you know, you hear so much, so often about, sit your butt down, get it done, and I do believe that, but it's also, that's a lot of pressure to do that, so maybe if you go, Okay, I'm going to say 15 minutes here, write the scene, write these sentences, or whatever it may be. But before I begin, if I can kind of just loosen some things up. Because our hand is directly connected to our heart. Our heart is directly connected to our brain. I mean, it's all a full line of connection. And if anything is closed out and tightened, then it's really hard to get those words to come out on the page. And so doing those

Adrien (2): 5:43

simple things, just like at bedtime, you have that kind of, um, ritual that triggers your mind, like, I'm brushing my teeth. These things are ready, but it's not the same thing. What I try to do with whatever I eat is to take, go, okay, I need to do this. So, before my morning yoga practice, I sit down, I journal what I change for the next, depending on the timing I have, and then I go into my practice. And it's just kind of cool. Right now, I'm kind of working on my body a little bit more. Where I do it a little bit opposite of when I think about it right at my desk, where I do it to kind of get, you know, that stamina energy out, without forgetting about, you know, the lack of gas there. Lymphatic system that needs to be cleared, and then I can go, okay, now I'm, now I can be more in my mental body. So that's how I, um, how I usually do that to get started.

Elizabeth: 6:46

I really love that idea of, like, rubbing the hands together. Like, because, like you said, writing, we think of it as being so, like, intellectual, but it is such a physical art form, you know, as we're, I know we used to handwrite, and we used to use typewriters, and it used to be a little bit more physically active, and it's less so with technology nowadays. But I think that's such a great way to, like, tap into the, like, the physical element of writing. So I love that you share that as one of the ways that we can use our body and use movement to sort of prepare ourselves. I'm certainly one of those people who, you know, I tell myself or I schedule like, okay, I'm going to sit down and write for however long. And then the brain, the mind is instantly like, Oh, where am I going to start? What am I going to do? And, and just having something to like kind of calm and not, not be so outcome oriented, but just allow myself to be in the process of it. Um, I think that's really helpful and probably something that. A lot of writers struggle with, um, would you share with us a little bit about what your writing journey has looked like and how yoga has, has helped and assisted you with that?

Adrien: 8:06

Absolutely. And, and just to touch on that one more time with the rubbing of the hands, we have thousands and thousands of nerve endings within our palms and in yoga philosophy, they're called Nadis. N A D I S. And so that rubbing of it is that kind of igniting all those thousands of nerve endings and so to do that and then like sometimes I like to touch down on just spaces after I ignite that of spaces that made me feel tight and stiff or feel a little stuck. Um, and I think, again, going into our throat chakra as writers, we are saying some words, we are, you know, we're writing some words. And so if we feel stuck in those spaces, things are going to come out a little bit locked and stagnant. And so we want to open up all of those spaces too. So to revert back to where my journey began, um, I have been writing, My entire life, I think, since the moment that I could put pen to paper or crayon to paper. Storytelling was a big thing for me. I loved it. I loved reading. I loved writing and just that whole unlocking that, that, that arc of being able to share with, with words. So I always knew deep within me that I was a writer and that that was going to be something that I was going to do forever. Um, I've been I've been on a lot of different journeys. I've been on journeys where I'm a writer that's not writing, and that's kind of a sad place to be, but it's also something, um, just like we need a hibernate, just like we need some time off. Um, sometimes those things are good that we need to sit and marinate. Um, and whatever else is going on in our life. Um, but even in those times, I think even if it's, um, just scribbling, you know, while you're at the grocery on the back of a receipt or, you know, those, uh, walking and what I call like walking and writing where you're not necessarily writing, but you know, you're transcribing how your characters are talking or anything like that. Um, those, those are very important too. Um, so I was actually, I wrote, Okay. Like I said, off and on throughout my childhood and then, um, had my children very young, um, had my four children. Our family grew very quickly when I had four children, uh, at one point all under the age of, um, well, actually Morgan was eight. So I had a lot, I had three in diapers at one point and it was just kind of organized chaos. I don't know about organized, but it was kind of chaotic. And it was interesting because especially at that time, I mean, when the babies were little. I actually felt a little bit more, um, inspired to do writing. And so I wrote in journals quite a lot more, and I remember our youngest, um, I would stick her in a little ducky jumper in my office door so she could bounce, bounce, um, her little chunky legs in the door while I wrote at the computer at that time. And I would have these little kind of stolen moments, um, between preschool drop offs and naps and everything else. And so I was very inspired during that time to be writing, which seems, um, Kind of wild to think about being able to find that time amongst everything else, but I do think there is something again back to that physicality of when, you know, nothing more than giving birth and carrying a child and doing those things that part of your body is awakened to that. You know, creative side. So it's probably not a surprise. And that's something maybe I need to go back and explore through my journals. That's why that time was so creative for me. Um, but then over time, of course, as the kids got older, um, I was actually working for a. In print magazine locally, I was working for a family magazine as a calendar editor and also as an on staff writer. And of course, I thought that was the moment that I was achieving all of my dreams of being a published writer and little did I know, you know, um. Of course that, that, that satisfied me, but it also didn't mean that it was the end of my journey or making me be, um, so established that I didn't need to still have climbing footholds, you know, um, and before that time I actually self published a book before it was really kind of a thing, um, like it is now, and, uh, I just went with the process with that and, um, it's, Sat like a bump on a log because I knew nothing about marketing. And a OL was actually just becoming a thing. It wasn't really like a, um, it wasn't a thing at that time. So I'm aging myself here, But um, so I was in that process and then as the kids got older. Just the, the difference of not being home as much, having to go to playdates and school drop offs and pickups and just everything so busy, busy, busy, and their, their schedule is crazy. Um, and then my husband's business was taking off. We own a cabinet shop and I was involved in that and so my writing took a backburner kind of situation and It was through that time, like I said, I was a writer, not writing, and I would get, um, very, very inspired to do something, and then I wouldn't be carrying through with it because of everything else that has been going on in our life. And then, um, I went on to actually We lost our oldest son when he was 19, um, and that grief throwback again, um, just, you know, is, is inexplainable. Um, it's a, it's a heavy, heavy thing, but, um, interestingly enough, I was actually just writing about this in my writing group the other day. The moment that I knew that I was coming to a point of a little bit of healing was when I could. Read a full sentence again in a book and when I could actually write things and I started sitting down and writing to Morgan You know back and forth and those those were so healing because there were points where I couldn't, could not read I could not write because I was also just trying to do the functioning things of reminding myself to breathe So in that journey My daughter asked me she was And I was in seventh or eighth grade and she said, you know, mom, I want to go to a yoga class. And I said, yes, let's go try it out. And we did go try it out and fell in love with it and started doing some healing on the mat. And we both enjoyed it so much that they went on, both my daughters, both daughters ended up joining, they went on to become, um, doing yoga teaching and living up in ashrams and things like that in their, um, teens and early twenties. And they kept saying, well, mom, when are you going to become a yoga teacher? And I said, oh. Not for me. I've got enough going on. I'm good. Um, and so I actually, finally, I went on a retreat with my mentor to Spain, um, with my girls and my husband. And, um, I thought, Oh, I do want to explore this world of teaching, um, or at least taking teaching training. What I'm going to do with it. I don't know. And so then I started taking my teaching training and. In the middle of my teaching training, I got this like little spark of like you need to go back and finish your book, the book that I had started 24 years, well, 24 years now, but at that time, years and years and years before, and I thought, Oh, what a crazy idea. That's just silly because, you know, I've got businesses to run, children to, you know, keep in line, grief that I'm dealing with now doing teaching training and, you know, Here, over here. Why don't you overload your schedule and start to write again? And so, um, I thought, you know, I, I just, it's been on my heart for so long. Where am I going to find time? Where am I going to find space? The only time I have like kind of carved out for me is my yoga practice in the morning. And I thought, well, you know, maybe I add a couple extra minutes to that and sit down with my journal and, and maybe some days I'm just reading what I wrote all those years ago. Or maybe I'm starting to write back into that story. And then the more I did it, the more it just kind of intertwined. And it made sense for me to be doing both of those things, you know, even though it sounded like. I was adding way more to my schedule, which is not unusual for me, but I was like, finding this space of like, Oh, well, again, I had this creativity that was being reborn, that was resurfacing. So kind of in a way of like that phoenixing of, you know, my life had felt burnt down. Of course it wasn't. I still have, you know, my three children and my husband and so much. But losing my son, I did feel like this like ashes kind of situation. And then that yoga and then returning to my writing did feel like that rebirth, really felt like that phoenixing. And as I was doing this, the more I realized, you know, everybody is sharing their stories with me when I come onto the mat, may it be in a physicality way of they just come and tell me, you know, my hips are tight, Adrian, my neck is sore. I've been working on this project, so I feel hunched over. And so then those are the words that they're telling me, but they're like physical movements. They're sharing this energy and they're sharing the story with me. And I was like, well, yeah, they're sharing this. And so what happens if I ask them, hey, bring a journal to your class? And whether we write down about this physical journey, or maybe something else comes up out of this, of, you know, changing our perspective on something that we have been, um, telling ourselves a story of. Does it happen if we are in an inversion, if we have our head down between our legs and we kind of see things a little bit differently? How does that change not only the way we feel, but how would that change if we wrote that down and said, what if we looked at something from a different viewpoint? So it was just kind of that marrying those things together. Um, and so since then, um, I offer those type of things of what I call poses and prompts where, you know, different movements open up those different parts of our body. And then I give a journal prompt and. Go with a journal prompt or go with something else that came up out of those movements. You know because I'm sure a lot of people that anybody that's familiar with yoga you're going to hear a lot of that saying that the hips are where it holds a lot of a lot of emotion and so sometimes, you know, there's going to be some crying that comes up when you start to open up that area of the body. Well, in my opinion, there's all of those spaces of the body. There has been a lot of tears on my mat, and it's going to come from different spaces that I didn't even realize that, you know, I'm holding tension, and I hear all the time when somebody's telling me, Oh, this part of my body is feeling tight and stiff, and I think, well, if I don't know this person's histories, then I may prod and ask, you know, what else is going on in your Day to day. And so if I hear somebody talking about, Oh, my knees are always hurting. And by the way, my children are leaving home, they're going to college, or doing something. And I know that as a fact that knees tend to be a fear of moving forward when you have knee pain. And so I think, well, you know, there's other parts to tap into that than just, you know, um, working in the knee area. The physicality part of it, absolutely. But there's other parts of it of like, you know, is there those things that we need to sit down? with that family member or with our journal and talk about, you know, the sphere of moving on of that chapter of moving forward. I think I covered

Elizabeth: 20:24

so many great gems in there. I started to take notes so I wouldn't forget all the points I want to like emphasize of what you shared. For what, I just have to say that Stephanie, my co host and business partner, she and I met at a yoga and writing class. So that is how we connected one of our local yoga studio in the winter time. had this like Friday evening, you know, yoga and writing and it was, it was always yin yoga. So it was, you know, the sustained poses and writing prompts. And sometimes we would do the journaling at the beginning. Sometimes it would be intermittent. Sometimes it would be at the end, but either way it was meant to kind of go together. And they would do a similar thing of like, here's a prompt, but if your, if your mind, body took you somewhere else, do whatever with it. And I, I had so many profound revelations in doing that, things that I didn't realize were bothering me, that I, Um, and I just found it to be incredibly helpful. And because that's how Stephanie and I met, I just wanted to provide that little background to the listeners who may not know that. Um, I also really appreciate that validation of. Still maintaining that identity as a writer, even when you're not writing. It's like, there's just something about how our brains work, the way we connect individual moments in life into a story arc, or, you know, we take real life experiences and imagine a fictionalized version, or, you know, maybe some of us are like me and practice conversations over in our heads, or review conversations over in the mirror the next day. Um, you know, it's something that's just kind of always there, and I so appreciate you, um, really holding space for the fact that we are still writers, even if we aren't actively working on our writing, whatever that means to us, whether it's just journaling, quote unquote, or whether it's, you know, just the stuff that's going on inside the internal dialogue that's not really ever, Bye. Bye. You know, being expressed outwardly. Um, if it's just even that internal processing, like, it's all so valid. Um, so thank you for that. Another thing that you brought up, which you please explore this more because I think it's so fascinating because I also. felt that creative spark post childbirth. Um, I think Ember was, gosh, two and a half, no three, three and a half when I decided to start working on my memoir. That's still really young, you know, to have like a young kid underfoot. And maybe it is something about having those nap times that you still get these breaks in the day versus, you know, the older kids, uh, school age kids where it's all about school pickup and, you know, any sort of after school extracurricular and then dinner time, family time, and it just seems like the whole day just disappears in an instant. Um, I've really been A little hard on myself, I think, within the last half a year. I, I, once Amber moved to kindergarten this year, I took a part time job that mirrors her school schedule, and so I only have like an hour before, between when my job ends, and I have to pick her up from school, and I've been pretty hard on myself about not being able to like, You have that time for writing, even though I have the time available on my calendar. It's so hard for me to just change tracks like that and sit down. Um, there was something magical about those, like, younger years. Um, where you could just strap a baby to you and they would nap or, you know, I don't know. There was, there's gotta be something to that. So that's really cool that you experienced that too. And it's validating that. Maybe this is just a season where the work doesn't look exactly the same. The progress isn't quite as quick. Um, but we have to recognize that it's all about the process and we're still becoming. More attuned to who our characters are or to, you know, plot twists or things we can add elements to the story even in that downtime.

Adrien: 24:52

Absolutely. And I think that, you know, as you're saying this, I like developing the ideas behind it because, you know, that, that self doubt and, and, um, and that guilt that we put on top of ourselves as people and as parents and as mothers, um, it is so real. It is so real and especially I think when they're a little bit older is because you writing is a very sometimes it can feel like a very selfish act because you're doing something that can sometimes you're think well a especially at that time you're like I'm not I'm not making money at this. So, and, and I'm supposed to be focused on being able to financially provide for my family. Um, so either the hats that I'm supposed to be wearing is as a provider financially or as a provider nurturing, and I'm also supposed to get groceries done and somehow decorate the house for Christmas, probably dozens and dozens of things. And so not to say that it's not. Um, more difficult when they're younger and when they're closer to you, but I think there is, and you'll have to excuse me because I'm literally processing this as I'm, as you say this, because it's just, again, sharing that, that story. I think at that time when we are pregnant or nursing or taking care of a young child, there is so much of that energy into that person. But there's also that reci there, there's that receiving too. Mm-hmm So we're taking care of ourselves and we're identifying things in our body that doesn't normally happen. You know, we've become this resource of of, of literally growing a human being. And so for once, even if you don't want to slow down and pause. You have to, to, to do that, to nurture and take care of yourself and take care of this being, and then the same thing when you have this baby, it's also those times that kind of, a little bit of a slow down season, and it's also one of those times of like, I recognize that a lot, I was actually just talking to somebody in my class this morning where she said that when I have people like tap into their chest or tap into their body, she said it just feels so, it feels so good. Nurturing. And I said, well, if you think about it, when you're holding a newborn or holding a child, you rock, you cradle, you, you tap, you nurture. And so when we do that, we're self soothing as well as soothing, you know, a child that's in our lap. And so when we're taking care of ourselves like that, you know, um, it's, it's not a surprise that it can come out to like become something creative for us to like, Oh, I think that I, I want to sit down and do a little bit of writing because I'm taking care of that side of me. That means care for, and that's what I still like to translate right now is because I think that old adage, that old idea to be a creative, um, unfortunately used to be kind of a destructive idea. It would be drinking, it would be drugs, it would be those things that, you know, to be a good artist that you have to tune out and kind of like, um, quiet the brain and become, Um, an alcoholic, and do those things, but what if we kind of change that perspective and say like, well, instead of thinking about, um, a destructive way, what about caring for ourselves and taking care of those parts of our body, um, parts of our, of just that holding ourselves, then what happens to our writing then? You know, does it, would it, does it look different than saying, you know, that we have to look a specific way, do a specific thing to be able to be good at our craft? Um, I think that's a disservice to ourselves. And, you know, that's one of the things I say a lot of, I have a lot of goofy things I say in class, like, you know, get the fidgets out before we get our digits out. I'm kind of shaking, but I also say. I offer a lot of props and ideas in our classes, especially when you're talking about a yin class. And I always say, you know, I'm offering you to use your blocks, your pillows, your everything else. But I'm not offering a gavel to set those gavels down, set that judgment down. You know, and instead of, you know, judging about where we're at at that moment, I meant to get this thing done. I meant to do all these day to days and somehow fit in writing this chapter today. And then it doesn't happen, and then, you know, you're laying in bed or journaling in your journal about how I must not be a writer, I must not be good at what I'm doing because I'm not finding time to do that. There, you know, there's a lot of props in yoga, there's a lot of props in our life, but a gavel should not be one of them. We shouldn't be judging ourselves so harshly.

Elizabeth: 29:55

I think that's so beautiful and such a nice way to close. We're going to be releasing this episode at the end of January, which, you know, we can imagine that the listeners have set some tensions for the new year for their writing or whatever, and that's such a strong, helpful reminder. Regardless of how it ultimately turns out, it's The focus is on the process. It's on the being in there. It's the coming to the mat. It's the coming to your writing. It's the opening your journal, whether like you said, just reading old journals and reflecting on how you've changed or how things are still the same or any of that and just putting that judgment to the side. So thank you for sharing that with us. I know you have a freebie for our listeners today. Please tell them what it is and where they can find that.

Adrien: 30:42

Absolutely. So, I just offer, um, three days, three yoga poses and prompts, um, so where people can, uh, come to my website at composedyoga. com, C O M P O S E D. Yoga, Y O G A dot com. Um, and you can sign up on there and then you get three emails that will come your way, um, that will have, um, some short practices. I think they're about 15 to 20 minutes of doing a yoga flow and then with a journal prompt at the end that they can carry on their practice with. And so that's a great way to, um, unite with me. And then, of course, in color, if you're in Colorado, I do a lot of in person workshops. Um. Working on getting some more virtual things out there so people can join me, um, other places than Colorado. But, um, yeah, I would love to have anytime anybody wants to practice with me or send me, um, any of their, I'd love to connect. I'd love to hear, like, how this helps them or how they feel, different ways they could connect with their writing or just with their yoga practice or both.

Elizabeth: 31:50

That's amazing. Thank you so much for being here with us today, Adrian, and for sharing this wisdom with us and just your story. Um, and if you do get those virtual sessions up at some point, let me know, we will send it out to our email list and let them know. Um, and link back to this episode, um, again, listener, all that information about the freebie is in the podcast episode description as well as social media links where you can connect with Adrienne and support her, support your own writing as a gift of self care, um, and just thank you for being here and happy writing everyone.

Adrien: 32:31

Thank you.