Is there a more creative time of year than spring? Take a walk outside to see what I mean. There’s new life, vibrant colours, optomistic bird song and evidence of divine creativity everywhere you look. The longer days and milder weather, help us too, shake off the jaded heaviness of spring, encouraging us to leap forwards into the season with renewed vitality and creative energy.
There are many yoga practices that help us to connect with our inner creativity, and remember being creative isn’t limited to just drawing and painting, or making music, or writing poetry. There are many outlets for creativity. I can highly recommend “The Artists Way” by Julia Cameron if you feel you need to rediscover your creative talents (or indeed unearth them in the first place!).
Expressing ourselves creatively is something that many holistic practices encourage. Seen as a way of releasing pent up energy which if not expressed and released can turn inwards causing frustration, irritation and anger. Interestingly, a lack of creative freedom is often holistically linked to many health challenges, particularly thyroid problems. From my own experience, I find that if I channel my energy into creative pursuits, I am far less likely to have angry meltdowns (yes, shocking I know, but I have been known to have Mount Vesuvius scale outbursts!), which I found were nothing more than frustrated energy.
There are plenty of yoga practices you can do to help you tap into your creative well. Start off with plenty of lively activations, to lift your mood. Choose one of Dru’s energy block release sequences to start the release of trapped energy, then take your pick from the wide range of postures and sequences. Sun sequence is always a good choice for lifting energy and tapping into the creative energy of our manipura chakra. Use the earth sequence, if you are wanting to take your creativity outdoors, particularly good for gardeners. All the triangle poses boost creativity, especially Bhima, whilst tiger (vyaghrasana) will give you a bit of oomph! Inversions help us to look at the world from a different perspective. Use chair of the heart pose (utkatasana) to open the heart centre, to ensure that the creative energy you are releasing gets channelled properly and doesn’t turn into frustration. Lie in crocodile (makrasana) afterwards to settle all this released energy.
I would also encourage you to be creative with your postures (once you are sure of the fundamentals – safety, alignments etc). Tree (vrksasana) is a great place to start. Try pausing with your arms at different positions to see how it feels, do some arm positions relate better to certain seasons? Play around, enjoy your yoga practice.
Why not try doing something creative every day? It need only take a couple of minutes and nobody has to see what you’ve done! I keep a day book, in it I list all the things I want to do that day, along with information I pick up during the day. I jot down ideas I have. I illustrate it, stick in images I like, add in inspiring quotations, I have a go at writing poetry…whatever takes my fancy. It’s not a great piece of art, but it’s my personal expression and I love it.
Start a creative practice and I guarantee things will happen. For example, you might start to see life differently, find that problems and challenges are easier to solve, and I bet you will feel more relaxed – as always, try it and prove me wrong!
Lying in peaceful crocodile
There’s a great quote from Einstein : “There are only 2 ways to live your life. One as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle.” And what better time to believe in creating miracles than Spring. Have fun being creative. Ix