A Conscious Living practice also works to put you in touch with your physical being as a method for being more in touch with your emotions. For most people, emotions manifest in our body, even when we aren’t aware of them consciously. You might feel your shoulders tense before you realize that you feel stressed. You might feel sick to your stomach before you acknowledge that something is making you feel nervous or afraid.

Hendricks recommends deep breath meditation as a way of connecting emotions to physical sensation. This can work in both directions. When you feel tense or have some physical unease, take slow, deep breaths and try to connect that physical feeling to your emotional state. In contrast, when you identify a moment of high emotional upset, use deep breathing to find how that emotion is manifesting in your body. Where do you physically “feel” this emotion?

What does that have to do with writing?

Staying in touch with your emotional state is a healthy practice that can only benefit your creative mindset. Stress is one of the greatest contributors to writer’s block, so maintaining your emotional equilibrium can help keep your creativity flowing.

You can also apply this directly to your fiction. The better you understand how your mind and body interact, the easier it will be to portray this on the page. Showing how someone reacts to emotional stimuli is much more effective than telling the reader how they feel.