3 Genius Ways to Increase Your Writing Output

Have you ever spent all day staring at your computer trying to eke out just a few hundred words? Feels like pulling teeth, doesn’t it? I’ve been there too and it sucks.

When your writing lacks energy and flow and momentum, what do you do?

Well, you can either wait around for the muses to return, or you can get up from the chair and do body tapping, breath scaling, or visualization.

What exactly do body tapping, breath scaling and visualization have to do with how many words you can write?

As it turns out, EVERYTHING.

This past week I attended a self-development conference in San Diego. We’re talking a full-scale event with around 3,000 people, all looking for the inspiration and the tools to improve themselves and their lives.

The event was Brendon Burchard’s HPX LIVE. HPX stands for “High Performance Experience” or the idea that there is another level for all of us to have a greater experience of life.

Burchard is all about high performance. He literally wrote THE book on the subject, High Performance Habits.

But the truth is, I don’t consider myself a high performer, even though I consistently strive for my own personal best. So why was I there and what was I looking for?

As a writer and a coach, I’m always on a kind of quest. I seek out insider knowledge to learn what makes some people succeed while others struggle. I’m always curious about what specific habits, practices, or life skills seem to lead one toward success and, yes, even an extraordinary life. Because who doesn’t want to have an extraordinary life? I’d argue no one, and that ordinary is okay for a while, but everyone at least at some point in their lives wants something beyond that. I search not just for myself, but also for my clients and to help them write books better, faster, and find more joy in their writing.

So you can bet that my ears perked up when Brendon — an author with six successful books and multiple bestsellers including a #1 New York Times bestseller — talked about what he does daily to generate energy, momentum, and flow when he’s sitting at his desk writing.

These are the three habits that Brendon Burchard does to stay sharp, generate energy, and write amazing books, courses and content for his followers.

A disclaimer before we get started. I’m not a doctor or medical professional. If you have any medical conditions or concerns, talk to your doctor or health care professional before engaging in any of these activities. Pay attention to your body. If something doesn’t feel good — don’t do it!

Number 1: Body Tapping

Brendon talked about body tapping as part of Qigong, but I couldn’t find much that showed his exact method online, so I will explain it according to my own research and also give you a reference video that shows you how to do it.

Body tapping is a technique designed to stimulate blood flow and circulation and wake up the body. It’s ideal if you’ve been sitting in one place for a long period of time — (ahem, writers!) — and useful for realigning the body’s energy. It’s a way of generating energy, too.

Here’s how it works. You stand up, bend your knees a little and begin bouncing in place for about 30–60 seconds. You might look a little silly doing it, but the bouncing is strategic. It helps realign your hips and therefore your entire spine as sitting sometimes can wiggle things out of alignment and leave you feeling tight and wound up, which is never good when you’re trying to create flow in your work!

Next, remove any large jewelry on your hands. Then make cups with your hands so they look like scoops. You’re going to begin tapping your core, as it’s the center of the body. Gently tap your core including your stomach muscles and your lower and upper abdomen.

Next begin with your left leg, raise it up and start tapping from your foot and ankle up your calf, to your thigh, all the way up to your glutes. Yes, tap those glutes, too! Repeat on the right side.

Next up, use your hands to tap your lower back from your bottom all the way up to your kidneys. Tapping here apparently helps you detoxify some of the vital organs like the kidneys and stimulate blood flow to major muscles of the body in your back and hips

After tapping your back, start with your left arm. Turn your palm facing up to the sky. This is the “ying” side of the body. Tap this side first before turning your palm down to the ground and tapping the “yang” side of your body. Repeat with your left arm tapping your right arm. Make sure with both arms you spend time tapping your shoulder area where we tend to hold a lot of tension.

Tap rhythmically and with intention, as if you’re aiming to hit every cell, every muscle.

When you’re done, take a few deep breaths and feel the energy circulating! Cool, isn’t it?!

Number Two: Breath Scaling

Breath scaling is a breathing technique that steadily increases the length and intensity of your inhales and exhales and then steadily decreases them back down again. Just like playing a scale on a piano, you go up and then you go down. Breath scaling gives a big boost of oxygen to the brain in order to wake you up, help create energy, and enhance your mental state. If you’re feeling tired, particularly blah, or just have some creative blocks, this is a good way to get things moving and give a shot of oxygen to the body.

Here’s how you start. Take a “fighter’s stance” with your hips apart and one leg slightly in front of the other. Next beginning rocking forward and back with each inhale and exhale. Inhale through your nose and exhale through your mouth with a “haaa” sound. Your inhales and exhales should gradually get longer and more intense as you go. I do five reps of inhales and exhales at one intensity and then move up to the next level of intensity.

After a couple of rounds with your exhale making a “haaa” sound, you want to transition on the exhale to a “shhh” sound and force the air out of your mouth like you are shushing someone. Keep going with reps of five, rocking forward and back, and creating longer and more intense breaths as you go. As you continue, your breaths should also get faster so that your breathing becomes more rapid. When you reach your max intensity, it’s time to scale back down again from “shhh” to “haaa” five reps each until you reach the bottom.

When I first started doing this, it felt a little winding, like I didn’t have enough air to get through it. With practice, though, it got easier. Remember to take air in and fill your lungs from the bottom up, keeping your shoulders relaxed. Your tummy should expand outwards when you inhale and then retract inwards when you exhale.

That’s breath scaling! Every time I’ve done this since the event, I always feel more refreshed, reenergized, and awake. It’s like drinking an espresso without the caffeine withdrawal. I can honestly say this works!

Number 3: Visualization

Many of you are probably familiar with the power of visualization. Visualization is when you use your imagination to picture something in your mind’s eye. You see the thing, imagine it, feel it, allow yourself to create a memory of something that either doesn’t exist or hasn’t happened yet. The memory you create through visualization is powerful because as we’re now just starting to understand, the brain doesn’t know the difference between reality and imagination.

Want proof?

A Harvard Medical School study by Neuroscientist Alvaro Pascual-Leone took two different sets of piano players. One set actually played the piano, while the other simply imagined playing the piano and moving their fingers in the configuration that they would if they were actually playing.

Do you know what they discovered? The brain couldn’t tell the difference! Both sets of players experienced the same effect: their motor cortexes expanded regardless of whether they were imagining playing the piano or whether they were actually playing it.

Amazing, right? As Time pointed out, the study happened upon “a revolutionary idea about the brain: the ability of mere thought to alter the physical structure and function of our gray matter.”

Yes it’s true. Our brains are not fixed and they are not hardwired. They are, in fact, plastic and we can influence the structure of our brains, the physical matter, purely with the power of our thoughts.

This is important because it means if we think the right thoughts we can actively grow our brains in positive ways.

This is what visualization is all about. It’s about imagining something in specific, exquisite detail so that your brain has a chance to develop as if you were actually doing the thing you are trying to do successfully.

So if you are stuck writing, lacking flow and momentum, the last thing you want to do is sit at your computer repeating to yourself “I’m stuck, I’ve got nothing, I’m failing…” etc.

Instead, try this.

Sit somewhere comfortable. Close your eyes. Take a few deep breaths. Plant your feet on the floor. Allow yourself to forget whatever it is you were struggling with.

Now picture yourself doing the activity, but this time in your mind’s eye, see yourself writing. See the words pouring out of you. See the pages filling up as you write. Feel your fingers on the keyboard. Imagine yourself writing well and fast. See yourself doing your best work. Imagine how it feels to get your words down on paper, to reach “The End” maybe for the very first time.

This is big stuff! While you’re imagining, you brain is creating memories of what hasn’t happened yet. Your gray matter is expanding and therefore your brain is changing. This is known as neuroplasticity, or the brain’s ability to reorganize itself by forming new neural connections.

I don’t know about you but when it comes to writing, I know that a healthy, ever-growing brain is really important to me. That’s why I think visualization is so cool! It’s literally the mind-body connection at work as your mind is physically rewiring your brain for the better.

Next time you’re at your desk writing and finding yourself lacking flow, lacking energy, or just hitting the proverbial brick wall, stand up and try these techniques for yourself. Do some body tapping, or some breath scaling, or visualization. Not only will you be able to get your blood flowing, move oxygen into your body and brain, but you will be reshaping your brain to produce the right neural pathways for you to create and write better than you ever have before.

Originally published at https://www.ashleymansour.com on February 25, 2020.