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PRACTICING MINDFULNESS:
THE CENTER FOR MINDFUL LIVING PRACTITIONERS' BLOG

February 27th, 2017

2/27/2017

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Top 10 Ways to Heal Through Creativity

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When working through issues or recovering from trauma, it's helpful to engage your heart and unconscious mind. Here are some creative pursuits for assisting the healing process.



1. Visual art. Painting, sculpting, drawing... all can give shape to the images in your unconscious.

2. Drama. Dialogue with inner characters to discover their motives. Role-play to gain insight into the stories of your life. Create new outcomes to empower your new, emerging self.

3. Collage. This is especially helpful for creating the vision of who and how you want to be.
4. Poetry. Poet Mary Oliver says that a poem is "like a coiled spring, waiting to release its energy in a few clear phrases." Poetry can crystallize feelings that lie under the surface.

5. Dance. The body has a wisdom all its own; moving it according to inner impulses helps access new information.

6. Music. Playing an instrument, no matter how well, can be meditative, relaxing and emotionally soothing.

7. Play. Try imaginative play with figurines, improv games, or laughter for no reason at all. Playing can release stuck energy and open up channels for healing.

8. Creative writing. Write stories about your life-or journal-to uncover how you really feel and imagine new possibilities.

9. Mask-making. What do your inner characters look like? Mask-making can bring them to life, allowing you to interact with them.

10. Singing. Singing can be a balm to soothe hurts or a loudspeaker for the soul. Open up your voice and see what comes out.

Author's content used under license © Claire Communications

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The Call To Create

2/27/2017

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The sound may be faint as the stirring of butterfly wings or as loud as a brass band on Fourth of July. Or you may not hear a sound at all, but feel an urging, an inner pull, a sense of excitement and longing that resonates from within. This is the call to create, and it is universal, bidding each of us to bring something new into being.

"Creativity is the Self searching for itself," said George Gamez, Ph.D., author of How to Catch Lightning in a Bottle. We create in order to express our unique visions and perceptions. We create to communicate and to form a bond with our fellow human beings. Creative expression helps us feel connected to the world and builds bridges of understanding. It nourishes us and helps us grow, provides insights and deeper understandings. Creativity is fun, exciting and playful. It relieves stress and releases tension. It provides a way of communication when normal channels may be blocked or are insufficient-when we must speak in colors and textures and shimmering visions and music.

Creativity is love expressing itself; it heals and renews. Our creations are mirrors in which others may see themselves and the signature of our lives that says, "This is how I saw it."
 
Everyone is Creative

No matter what you may have been told, every one of us is creative. It is as much a part of us as our voice and breath and fingerprints. Creativity isn't just about making "art." Cooking, gardening, handiwork and crafts, keeping a journal are all creative acts. Arranging flowers or rearranging furniture, painting a picture or painting a room, singing on stage or singing in the shower-these are responses to the call.

Creativity is a way of living. It is being spontaneous and playful, exercising the imagination, finding solutions, and embracing possibilities and doing it all with passion.

Yet for all the joy and fulfillment it brings, some resist the call to be creative. In our culture the ideas that "Time is money" and "Art is frivolous" hold certain sway, and old messages such as, "Stay inside the lines" or "You can do better than that" have remarkable staying power. It takes courage to look beneath the surface of what we've been told in order to find our heart's desire.

Creativity requires risk-taking. It asks us to surrender, to lose control and to trust. "Committing to our creativity is an act of faith," wrote Jan Phillips, in Marry Your Muse. "A promise to believe in ourselves."

Honoring the creative Self means finding time, making space, being patient and taking the chance of looking foolish. You cannot care too much what others think or say. You must be willing to start over and stay with it; creativity takes stamina. There are no magical secrets or absolute rules. Creativity can't be taught. You just do it. "Creativity belongs to the artist in each of us," said Corita Kent.

Like the body's natural urge for motion and the human need for connection and community, the spirit longs to express itself. So when you hear the call to create, answer, "Yes." It is your self searching for your Self, a movement toward being whole.

Reprinted from the January 2010 issue of Balancing Acts

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  • Home
  • Practitioners
  • Services
    • Individual Therapy & Creative Arts
    • Meditation Schedule (No Charge)
    • Workshops, Classes & Events >
      • Beginning Meditation & Mindfulness
      • Self-Compassion and the Path of Sorrows
      • Conversations with Wisdom
      • Provider Play Date
      • Mindful Self-Compassion
      • Yoga Offerings
      • Other Offerings
  • Resources
    • Blog
    • Notes from Louisa
    • How to Meditate
    • Meditation at Home
    • Omaha Meditation Listing
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  • COVID-19 Updates