On Creativity…

My recent times have been busy with home-educating my son, my yoga course, gardening,  enjoying quiet family time, educating myself on the Ayurvedic system (and being amazed at how much it makes sense), and spending quality time in the woods with my canine friend Tara.

I’m feeling the need to connect with my creativity so I’ve been writing regularly, enjoying looking around me with a sense of wonder, and I even started to draw again.

I think all human beings need to find ways to express their creativity… Music and Photography used to be my ways of expressing myself back in my 20’s, and when I became a mum I started to cook a lot instead and of course I have a well-documented child, as I took quite a lot of photos of him as a baby and toddler.

Although at some point I had no camera… that was a dark era!

Portrait photography used to be my specialty, I used to enjoy taking portraits of animals a lot, and also trees, flowers, stones… I did take a lot of portraits of people too. Some of them were famous in their scene, others were famous with their Mums… it didn’t matter to me who they were. With every single being I had the honour to photograph (note I’m deliberatly not using the expression “taking” a photo…) I got to have a glimpse of their soul, and I must say that with animals that experience is often a lot more powerful than with humans, because animals just “let you in” without any attempt to shield anything.

Since being a Mum I have been constantly amazed by the sense of creativity that is innate to children. They are naturally creative as they don’t have any blockages within their creative process or great expectations for the result. Making a mess certainly doesn’t stop them getting started. Most of us adults have been conditioned when we were kids to care about how the things we make/create look like. We were compared with one another by thoughtless teachers or parents, some of us were told we were not good at arts, or that we didn’t have any talent in a particular subject whereas others may have been told they were creative geniuses and had to live up to the expectations that come with such a statement… I have met quite a few very talented artists and some of them seemed to be carrying their gift like a heavy load on their shoulders… that’s possibly why :-)

But for kids, art is just easy:

Thom and I go for long walks in the woods regularly and it amazes me to see how he comes up with Land Art projects on his own, and really enjoys immersing himself in the zone of creativity, creating a world made out of stones, earth and sticks…

He started to write on his own last year, because he was attracted by letters. So he started copying them on his own and now he writes his own name on everything and inserts random letters in his drawings as a part of the picture, because he likes the look of them.

Nothing seems to intimidate him, a few months ago we went to march to protest against the badger cull in the UK. I asked him to make his own sign and he just drew a badger, from the top of his head, just like that:

Obviously I’m aware that it doesn’t look exactly like a real badger, but I really like the fact that he didnt have anything holding him back from just doing it, even if he has never done it before!

(Re)opening the creativity channel doesnt need to be a complicated process. Even if as adults we may have forgotten the simplicity of just drawing or painting whatever comes to us. It is in fact a very liberating activity.

I find that writing a few pages first thing every morning helps. Most of the time I just start to write with no particular goal and my ideas just articulate themselves, and as I allow the pen to connect with my soul I realise in amazement that I’m releasing a few things that were stuck somewhere, in the back of my mind.

Going somewhere we have never been before can help, and also revisiting old places every once in a while to re discover them with new eyes is definitely an interesting experience too.

The practice of Yoga is a great way to release old blockages, to connect with ourselves and discover new possibilities – extending and stretching our own limitations.

Carrying a note pad and pen with you when out and about is useful as you may feel like writing something down while being in an inspiring place, such as the woods or the sea front… or in a cafe in town. One of my favourite activities back when I was travelling a lot used to be sitting down in a cafe somewhere and just writing anything that would go through my mind. Sometimes it was bits of conversations I could pick up around me, or words from a song… I have filled lots and lots of books like this. With poetry it sometimes feels that there is no thread to follow at all… but every single entry is an instant of my life. I would just spend hours writing, filling up pages and pages… and I would also sketch a lot.

Music is a great way to release blockages too. Singing makes you feel great, drumming can be very liberating and dancing is a very powerful way to release emotional build up!

The possibilities are infinite, but if you feel stuck you need to feed and nurture your creative self. That can be done through spending some time on your own in an inspiring place, to reconnect with yourself, and recharge.  That can be in nature, in the woods, in a park, in the mountains, by the sea or in a museum, a cafe…

Sometimes yoga teachers advise their students to take on a creative activity to release certain blocks, so they might advise them to start playing a musical instrument, or to start singing. Creativity is a very healing process if we are open to let go of our fears/apprehensions and just go for it!

Releasing blockages through creativity is empowering and very useful when one is learning to communicate telepathically with animals or any other beings. It stretches our minds to towards infinite possibilities, giving us a sense of strength and joyfulness that elevates us to a higher state of consciousness because we are really connecting with ourselves and the world around us…

So don’t fear judgements or criticisms and enjoy every single step of your unique creative process, and remember: The journey is more important than the destination.

Namaste!

Noemie.