RUNNING AND CREATIVITY
RUNNER AND AUTHOR ADHARANAND FINN EXPLORES HOW MOVEMENT CAN BE THE MUSE THAT INSPIRES THE CREATIVE PROCESS
A LMOST ALL RUNNERS HAVE HAD THOSE DAYS where you stand at the window, watching the rain coming down outside. You’ve decided to go for a run, but now you’re having second thoughts. It looks cold and the thought of the rain in your face makes you wince. You know you could easily go and put the kettle on, sink back into the sofa and relax instead. No one is making you go outside to run.
But you also know, deep down, that you’ll feel better if you do go for that run. And so you go. And you find yourself coming back home beaming, full of energy and joie de vivre. You remember, once again, that well-worn saying: the only runs you regret are the ones you don’t do.
This is partly why we run. Getting outside, splashing through the puddles, getting out of breath, feeling our hearts pumping – it may take effort, but it makes us feel alive, it connects us with our essence, with our human nature.
For me, as a writer, creativity comes from that same place, that feeling of ‘awakeness’, that ‘aliveness’. In contrast, if I sit on the sofa and doom-scroll on my phone for an hour, instead of awakening my inner powers of creativity, I find I’m numbing myself to life, to the spark inside.
That doesn’t mean it’s always all beauty and light after a run. That inner voice may be angry, it may be sad; just like running, it can be full of pain. But the important thing is that it’s alive. It’s something, rather than the nothingness we can feel much of the rest of the time. Running awakens our spirit and, for some of us, with that rising spirit comes the urge to create.
As celebrated novelist and runner Haruki Murakami once wrote, ‘Being active every day makes it easier to hear that inner voice.’
I may not be a writer in the same league as Murakami, but I, too, find that running and writing go hand in hand. After a run, the words come much more easily. It’s not always perfect and it may often require a lot of editing afterwards, but the words come. If ever I’m feeling stuck – edging towards writer’s block – I go for a run.
I’m not necessarily looking to find the killer next line for my book, searching my mind as I run, hoping for a moment of clarity. In fact, it’s almost the opposite. On the run, it’s like I throw everything up in the air. All the ideas, words, life decisions, problems, they all rumble and bounce around unchecked as I run, letting my focus soften, freeing my mind from the strain of more regimented, pressured, active thinking. I’m now just running. My thoughts are let loose.
Usually, somehow, along the way things sort themselves into some semblance of order. When I get back, everything seems less complicated, less conf
