Finding flow in writing

In this weeks class we had an exercise in narrative writing. It wasn't the first one we've done, and it won't be the last, but in this one, the proverbial lightbulb went on.  The assignment, as I took it,  was to go for  a walk in your head and write about the experience.  The difficulty for me was that my brain, for some reason, wanted to stay in the classroom.   In retrospect I find this quite startling, as I often catch myself daydreaming in classrooms, especially ones with big windows. But at this moment, when I am 'supposed' to, I can't.   Instead, I am distracted by someone chewing something crunchy.   I hear people standing up and walking.  I am aware of the person beside me writing with apparent ease.   I try to put words to paper but it's too difficult.  I am too conscious of the period.  The coma.  Oops... that should be capitalized. Correcting the grammar.  Paying attention to all these details I lose track of  what I am trying to say.  The space between my thought and the paper is too big.  I sit back, take a deep breath,  and  try to silence myself into feeling the words, rather than thinking about them.  I try to let go of caring about the grammatical correctness of what I want to say.  I just write.  Slowly the room disappears behind me and my brain starts to relax, releasing my words.

In this exercise I had a lot of difficulty at first, but with a little 'less effort', I was able to write something.   I have taken this exercise and applied it to  writing my term paper.  I don't worry too much about what I am saying, or how I am saying it.  I just write and worry about editing it later.  This  has allowed me a certain level of freedom, to not worry about the flow of the paper.  I am reminded of Mihaly Csikszentmihalj's  concept of flow, and the chart showing flow adjacent to anxiety and worry.  It is this  anxiety and worry that keep me from relaxing and letting the words come.  I am learning, though, to let those feelings go when I write.

I have to ask myself, where did this stress around writing come from?  Is this a hangover of my education?  Too many papers back riddled with red ink?  Why is writing stressful for me?
Although I don't know the answers to these questions, I do know that the narrative exercises have been a positive step in the direction of breaking that stress.