Archive for Creativity

Your Creativity Is Your Birthright

“We are all creative. Creativity is the hallmark human capacity that has allowed us to survive thus far. Our brains are wired to be creative, and the only thing stopping you from expressing the creativity that is your birthright is your belief that there are creative people and uncreative people and that you fall in that second category.”
—Shelley Carson, Your Creative Brain

We are born with voices and bodies that want to express, to be heard and seen, and delighted in. As babies, we play with the range of sounds our mouths are capable of. We invent new combinations of vowels and consonants, creating a language all our own. We move our bodies in every way we can—wobbly at first and then more intentional as feet are investigated by mouths and every new texture is something to be smeared into glorious new forms of mess.

As children, we sing big and bold. We put on dance shows. We paint for the joy of color and the sensual wonder of creation. Then, sadly, somewhere along the way many of us get the message that we didn’t do it right. That we can’t sing or dance or make art because it doesn’t fit someone else’s standard of what those things mean. Our creative birthright gets squashed under someone else’s wounded projections. We learn to put our creativity, our freedom of expression into a room deep inside of us where it can’t get out because we can’t bear the hurt of another rejection. But the thing is our creativity is intricately tied to our soul, to the very essence of who we are. When we lock it away, we lose touch with something vital to the fullness of who we are.

I want you to know YOUR creativity, your self-expression is a gift. That it is uniquely yours and as such is a miraculous gift no one can bring into the world but you. I want to tell you that you have every right in the world to share your creativity in exactly the way it comes out of you. All the imperfections of it are part of what makes it beautiful. You have a right to have your creativity witnessed and received with unconditional love because creativity is not about the product—it is about the very act of creation itself.

How does your creativity want to be expressed in your life? In this day? In this moment? How do you long to express yourself?

If the idea of creativity seems too big, then I invite you to start small. Write a haiku. Do a 30-second dance with your pinky finger or your toes. Whistle a tune. Sing in the shower or car. Add a new spice to your cooking. Make a simple sculpture of rocks and sticks next time you are in nature. Draw a picture on the fogged up windows of your car. Doodle.

Whenever I think of small moments of creative expression I remember this wonderful scene from the movie Garden State. May it inspire your freedom to be your original self.

And if you feel drawn to explore your authentic creativity and heal blocks to your self-expression at our upcoming Creative Acts of Power retreat, we still have a few spaces available! Also, see Classes and Groups for information about my Self-Compassion Mindfulness Group and my Radical Acceptance of Our Emotions series!

With warm blessings for your creative discoveries,

Asha

Consenting to Receive Ourselves Just as We Are

In her new book True Refuge, meditation teacher and psychotherapist Tara Brach talks about the practice of “consenting to receive” our experience just as it is. This consenting is really the true meaning of radical acceptance.

This morning as I sat in my morning meditation, I noticed a tension in myself of needing to push to market my upcoming talk on Radical Acceptance and the upcoming Creative Acts of Power workshop I am coleading.

In response to this contraction, I felt an inner prayer of offering myself and my gifts fully into the world and surrendering into however they want to be received. I also felt my willingness to consent to receive experiences that might feel like making mistakes or failing. Given how much I have historically worked hard to avoid such experiences, this felt like a revelation to me.

“I consent to receive making mistakes.” “I consent to receive feeling like a failure.” This consent felt like a great softening and the relief of that brought tears to my eyes.

There is so much talk about how to be happy, how to be awakened, how to “be love not fear.” I find for myself that so much of that creates an inner separation in which parts of my experience are good and desirable and others are bad and are to be avoided. That avoidance can then create self-judgment and the impulse to avoid my feelings. Instead, I am finding more and more freedom in the willingness to experience whatever is there. From this place I can bow to the contracted spaces inside myself. I can honor them and welcome them to be there because they are held within a beautiful spaciousness.

This is what my upcoming talk is about: Radical Acceptance Through Embracing Our Shadows. I would love to see you there and would also love if you could pass this email on to others in your life who might benefit from hearing about and experiencing these ideas. I only give these free talks a few times a year. I would like as may people as possible to be able to benefit from these ideas that have been so liberating for me!

This “consenting to receive” also shows up in our creative exploration. I believe every one of us has creative gifts that long to be expressed. It is a powerful thing to allow our creativity to move fully through us in its pure and raw form. My upcoming weekend retreat with artist Zoe Alowan (who also happens to be my beautiful mother) is a wonderful opportunity to feel the depth and power of our own self-expression. I hope you’ll check it out and also share it with others in your life who might benefit!

Lastly, I invite you to notice in the moments after reading this what aspects of your experience might be asking for acceptance. They are usually the feelings or sensations in our body that we are trying to avoid or escape from. When you notice them, I invite you to try this simple phrase “I consent to receive this …” I would love to hear how this simple practice impacts you!

Reclaiming the Wilderness of Song: How ReWilding Returns Us to Our Original Nature

The natural world was my second parent. I spent my first two years of life in a tiny mountain town outside of Boulder, Colorado. My young body was imprinted with fresh mountain air and the smell of the evergreens. In high school we lived half an hour from a northern California town down a two mile long dirt road. We had acres of land filled with manzanita, gray pines, ponderosas, and large granite boulders. There were fox and coyote and mountain lions. Our land faced west and we had stunning sunsets every night.

I never fit in at school. The combination of moving every couple years and coming from a very alternative family left me always feeling on the outside. But when I was on the land, I felt a deep sense of home. I spent many hours as a teenager sitting on a granite boulder overlooking the great valley below. There was a peace and a belonging that I only felt on the land. I felt I could be most fully myself at these times. Sometimes I prayed or did sun salutations, but what fed me the most was to sing. My voice rose out of me so naturally, pouring notes of song over the valley. I sang songs without words, songs of pure emotion and prayer. The wildness of my voice met the rawness of the land. There was no judgment. Just an invitation to bring myself fully forward into connection with my surroundings.

I believe that we all have this wildness inside of us. Sometimes it is buried deep and comes into awareness only in brief glimpses. Sometimes it expresses itself in ways that are surprising or even shocking. I have now facilitated many circles of people singing their “Spirit Songs.” In many ways it is such a simple process, but I am in awe over and over again at what happens when a person opens their voice in this way. There is something deeply archetypal and magical. Something shamanic, and that is not a word I use lightly.

Our voices are so close to our inner world, especially when we open them to song. Babies explore their voices from an early age with absolute freedom. Children sing exuberantly until they are conditioned by societal norms. One dictionary definition of “wild” is “uncontrolled or unrestrained, esp. in pursuit of pleasure.” Opening our voices to allow our authentic expression to move through us can be profoundly pleasurable. It can also open layers of grief about all the ways we learned to restrict ourselves, to control and restrain our original nature.

The full expression of your voice is your birthright. It is a powerful channel we each have to connect with our deep insides, to reveal ourselves naked and full to those we trust, and to return to our original belonging with all that is wild and untamed on this earth.