When I first started practicing yoga, I found the care my instructors spent on shifting between one pose and the next to be intolerable. I would get frustrated with how long it would take. I wanted to jump straight into what was next. Why waste precious moments on what we did in between? Let’s get on with it! I now realize my impatience was a sign of my own inability to find beauty and joy in accepting the moment exactly as it is. I wanted to move on to the next pose because my mind obsessed between mulling over the past and dreaming of the future. I didn’t taste the present. 
As a human being, I’m beginning to understand that even during the uncomfortable transitions, I need to be there fully and mindfully. It’s important to let the transition unfold as it wants to. I need to be as mindful on how I get there as I am once I arrive. As a writer, I’ve come to realize that being fully in the moment is what distinguishes my better writing from my so-so writing. The difference between the great and the good is the ability to inhabit the moments between the action. That’s where we build tension and allow for recovery. Those moments matter, we need them as human beings and we need them as writers. Now, every time I find myself rushing–in writing and in life–I stop. I inhale slowly and exhale slowly. Then I breathe again (and again) until I’m no longer rushing into the next moment, and I’ve stopped obsessing over the last. Life is better that way, and, I think, so is writing.
