You have time to write, the computer is on, but your mind keeps straying because:

• There are bills to pay.
• Someone needs you to do something for them.
• You want to order that thing before you forget.
• Someone else’s writing, posts, messages, etc. suddenly seem like must-reads.

Quiet the nattering

You can stage your own intervention: a breathing exercise.

“Breathing exercises can lead to control over the mind,” writes Arthur Liebers in Relax With Yoga, which was published in 1960. Liebers shares an exercise from a Sanskrit text dating back to 1893.

Here’s a streamlined version of the breathing exercise. (I’ll share some of the more intense instructions later in this post.)

Start in a comfortable sitting position (this can be done in a chair at your desk) or assume Lotus Pose.

1. Inhale through the left nostril
2. Hold
3. Exhale through your right nostril
4. Hold
5. Inhale through your right nostril
6. Hold
7. Exhale through your left nostril
8. Hold
9. Repeat steps 1 through 8.

Recommendations:

• Feel free to use your hands on the sides of your nose to shift the breathing from side to side.
• Use whatever count for the breaths and holds that you find comfortable (for example, a count of eight).
• Repeat the pattern several times (maybe, four times).

The combination of the rhythmic breathing, the concentration needed to move the breath from side to side, and the length of four cycles helps me find my focus.

Original from Liebers

If you’re wondering what I consider “intense,” the prep work in Liebers’s book calls for one to “Cleanse the gullet with a strip of cloth, the width of four fingers, by swallowing it and then withdrawing it” and “Cleanse the nostrils by putting up a thread and drawing it out by way of the mouth.”

Also, here are the original instructions from Relax With Yoga :

“The Yogi assuming the Lotus Pose should draw in the prana (breath) through the ida (left nostril), and, having retained it as long as he can, exhale it through the pingala (right nostril). Again, inhaling through the right nostril, he should hold his breath as long as possible and exhale slowly through the left nostril. He should inhale through the same nostril by which he exhaled and having retrained the breath to the utmost (until he is covered with perspiration or until his body shakes) he should then exhale slowly, as exhaling forcefully would diminish the energy of the body.

“These exercises should be performed four times a day—in the early morning, at midday, evening, and midnight—slowly increasing the number from three, each time, to eighty. Their effects are described as ‘to render the mind and body slender and bright.’ Although in the direct translation from the Sanskrit, the ida is named as being he left nostril and the pingala as the right one, these words more properly designate the two supposed conduits which connect with the nostrils, and thence conduct throughout the entire body the vital air (the prana) that enters with atmospheric air.”

Liebers, Arthur. Relax with Yoga. New York: Bell Publishing, 1960.