Reasons to Blog

Number One: Coming Home to Yourself and the Beauty All Around

My head is full of lumpy clatter. What on earth will I blog about? I don’t know.

What if I give myself permission

to not know,

to down-slow?

 

mindfulness home

I notice the garlic clothed in spectacularly stripey purple and off-white skin. I notice the dented, browning bits.

What if I pause? What if any of us pause, slow down and allow the spaces; even brief ones. Is it possible to allow a minute or two to let up with the voice that badgers us to get something done?

How is it that capital P Productivity became King, while the Duchess of Doing-Very-Little lurks in the shadows? She is guilt-stricken and spurned.

Can it please be OK to relish a moment of Simply Being?

mindful photograpy Swain

If you can’t manage real flowers in your micro-garden, fabric flowers are the go, even if they become soil-stained

We seem to know that mindful self-care is essential nourishment, but hey. Intellectually knowing something and embodying it are two different things.

Might I allow a pocket of presence?

And might I bring self-compassion to that presence in an act of kindfulness?

Can I rest in the empty space – the minuscule bracket of blankness between one thought-train and the next?

mindful photography garden

Cracked rabbit, neon centipede. All the garden friends.

What will I blog about?

This. Exactly what’s happening (or not happening) in my creative process. Even someone who has pretty much dedicated her life to her own creativity and to nurturing creativity in others, struggles to justify the carving out of fertile space. Even someone who deeply knows the value of letting the field lie fallow, is obliged to wrestle with inner critic creatures.

mindful art Swain

a city flamingo meets its leaf

So

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How to Access Your (Already Abundant) Creativity 2

A Flower Power Point Presentation

to be viewed one blossom at a time

Lightflower

Lightflower

Flower Power Point Two…

Curiosity Feeds Creativity

I’m in the supermarket, back from holiday, feeling flat.

Same old same old. No more birdy twitters and compelling vistas. Just dumb old plastic, fluoro, beeps and trolleys. Ah trolleys.
 I remember to

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Top Two Tried-and-true Creativity Guidelines

Gentle

Yes – I believe there are two Creativity Guidelines at the heart and core of the matter. 

I’ve been suggesting them in Art and Soul groups for about twenty years. Every now and then I look to the sky thoughtfully, pondering their validity. Do they still resonate? Do they help? I find they stand the test of (such thorough, scientific) scrutiny.

And here they are….drumroll….

  1. Breathe

  2. Be kind to yourself

That’s it. The good news is that breathing and being kind to yourself are simple. The not-so-good news is that they are difficult. Believe me. Like a lot of Art and Soul suggestions, these pointers arise from my own bitter, breathless, breathstopping, breathfull, self-savage, self-snippety, self-compassionate experience.

Try them. While writing, arting, gardening, mosaic-ing, singing, creatively relating, see if you can become conscious of your breath. For one split second. Continue reading