Inviting Awareness Through Haiku

Creativity of all kinds focuses your mind, engages your imagination, and feeds your soul. Being creative can also facilitate understanding and encourage healing. Creativity is mindfulness in motion—intuitive, artistic motion. Creative moments and activities give you a boost and help you feel energized and good about yourself.

One creative endeavor I simply love is writing haiku poems. Haiku is a type of poetry from the Japanese culture. It is simple, compact, and can include themes of nature, feelings, and experiences. A haiku has only three lines and rarely rhymes. The first line has five syllables, the second line seven syllables, and the third line five syllables. The fun and challenge of haiku is painting a mental picture in only three lines using a scant seventeen syllables.

Excerpted from The Woman's Book of Mindfulness by Sue Patton Thoele. Available on Amazon.