Creativity through the Years
Returning to Creativeness
Hello and Welcome to my Substack.
The creative process suggests some linear journey that we move through when we lend our energy to our creative ideas and projects. If you have read Lucy H Pearces, Creatrix, she likens the creative process to giving birth, a journey of expansion and contraction, pause, acceleration and exhaustion. There are the moments to create moments to pause, time to dig deep. We may fall into an impasse to gather more information, or enter a void to explore some more. There is nothing linear about the creative process, but a deeply personal journey of exploration, discovery, healing deeply embedded beliefs and alchemising all we feel into the becoming of something else.
The Anxious Years
As a small child, I was creative, musical and loved to write, but somehow, over two decades, it became lost, buried and suffocated. I became all that I felt I should be doing, and not what my heart and soul wanted me to do. I didn’t actually leave the education system until I was 35 and numbed myself with activities that didn’t give me joy, purpose. As I reflect on that time I remember that I felt hemmed in and constricted. A house purchase that came with a renovation, placated me for a little while, but I never truly settled. With a job that I didn’t truly love and my confidence at an all time low left me in a state of anxiety and panic attacks. I was yearning for more and I intuitively felt there was so much more. I left my house and job and travelled for nine months. This was the beginning every connection to my true self, although I had to say not a straightforward journey.
Reconnecting
The travelling reconnected me to nature, keeping a journal reconnected me to my writing. I began to feel less numb as I watched the sunsets and sunrises in the most beautiful of places. The exhilaration as I saw the lions, elephants, and white rhinos in the national parks. For quite some time I started to feel alive again.
I do feel some shame in telling you that as I returned from travelling, my old patterns and ways returned, and it wasn’t long before the anxiety returned. It took me awhile to realise that once again I was limiting myself and constricted myself in academia. Eventually I left a course, a decision that today I am still a little unsure of, but at that time it was the right decision.
Exploring
With the spare time that I had, instead of sitting at the table, writing, essays and reading research papers, I explores me in a creative space. I qualified in massage and I practised, and healed with reiki. I learnt how to make jewellery, moments of flow began to occur, and I started to feel a sense of freedom. A blank canvas that was my garden began to grow, and as it grew I did too, fully observing movements through the seasons. I loved making jewellery that took time, was intricate and nature focused. It was though these moments I became a person that loved to work with nature and colour. Through yoga I became the writer again, right in a blog called love yourself better, and I recognise that when creativity is missing from my world, my whole self, my holistic self (the physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual) begins to deteriorate.
Creativity has to be a part of my world, the consequences of not living with my creative self holds a too high consequence. With creativity I have no anxiety, just a sense of freedom, calmness and joy. As I reflect back to my younger years, the music lover, a mini composer on my Yamaha, the storyteller, where would I be if I had nurtured these parts of myself for all these years, and it was encouraged, instead of buried by a system that wants us to be something other than ourselves. We become the rigidity and the tick box just so we fit in with with what is acceptable, our human possibility and potential stifled.
Something New and Exciting: The Human Reset Series
You all know I love podcasting, its been an absolute joy the past 18 months and I have been thinking about how I can do more.. Well I have a new private podcast coming up. Just one series with 10 immersive episodes to start with
The Human Reset Series: a guided audio series exploring safety, connection, nourishment and what it means to be human in a high pressured world.
The Human Reset Series is built on values that help us return home to ourselves, listening deeply, nurturing community, cultivating resilience and living with calm, balance, equanimity, peacefulness and integrity.
This Podcast will be available soon and includes, deeper episodes, reflection prompts, grounding practices with a life time access at £9.99
To be notified when the podcast is available
Are you interested in become a Somatic Yoga Teacher?
Many of you will know I have have being studying somatic yoga with yoga teacher, nutritionist and author Charlotte Watts since Summer 2024, her knowledge and professionalism is outstanding which is why I have become an affiliate for her Somatic Therapeutic Yoga 200 Hour Certification for 2027.
There’s also an 18-month payment plan available until the end of May, making it an accessible way to join.
If this sounds like something you would be interested click the button for more information
Wishing you all a wonderful week
Andrea
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