Podcast – Episode 12: Kickstart your Creative Flow

Written by Ségolène

October 22, 2020

Last week’s episode was, to me, all about honoring the Arts and reminding us of their importance, their role, their never ending love. 

See this week as an invitation to give a Creative Activity of YOUR CHOOSING a go. 

Even if you don’t see yourself as an artist, you have this creative potential lying within. It manifests itself in various parts of your life and in your every day without you necessarily kowing. 

It can be daunting or even stressful to get your creative flow going. We can easily be discouraged to even start or give it a go:
“I’ll never be this good” or “This person does this already”… etc. 

You could just try to simply be you in that moment. How about that?
Not pressing, forcing, imposing to be someone or something you’re not. 

Just let yourself be: It will shine through your creation. 

 

I feel stressed or pressured at 
the idea of drawing…

Unnnh… The anxiety, the chest that tightens up… It’s not as violent as what I
used to feel with writing, BUT… it’s still there. So, I decided to play with it and try
to find flow within this form too. It’s another means of expression, and you know
I love all expression forms.  

I set everything up, sit myself down, grab a pastel or pen, ready, steady… Nope.
Nothing. I have the image of what I want to draw but the voice kicks in telling me
“you’ll not be able to transcribe / transfer this onto paper.
You know why? Because you can’t draw.”

A friend once told me in High school that if you could doodle stickmen in the
corner of your coursework, then you could draw.
She’s not wrong. It may not be
some Da vinci-esque drawing, BUT, it’s still a drawing nonetheless. 

So, I started to look for a way to ease this pressure and reconcile body, mind and expression in the drawn/painted form too.

I decided to use pastels.

The first drawing I did, which is the one landscape in the world I can draw by heart (it’s at the end of this blog), I felt this pressure rising as soon as I picked up the pastel. 

I was about to put it all down and quit, when my phone rang. It was my friend who I’ve introduced to this video ame set in Ancient Greece. She had just finished playing and wanted to share the developments in her story.

We’re on video, and she can see I’ve got pastel in my hand. I tell her I’m stuck, and we keep talking about the game. Progressively, I notice my hand starting to go through a drawing motion… Ultimately, I released it and let it chose the colors, the moves… My head is talking to my friend!

No means for it to interrupt thecreating hand.

So, once again… It’s not that I couldn’t draw… It’s that my head got in the way of my own expression, my own creation. 

I know how to remove the mind from the equation: breath! Breath and Anchoring.

Grounding in the present, not thinking about the incapacity of creating the future, not reminding myself of all the times I’ve failed in the past. 

Just not thinking: this is how you start. This is how you dare. Once you’ve lovingly told your head that there is nothing to fear, once you’ve taken the time to set your space: your Creative Voice and Creative Flow can come in.

Think of it as you preparing your room for a guest that you love: this is what the breath exercise in this week’s episode is all about. Three steps, to invite creativity in, to the best room in your house. 

And sometimes, you’ll start something and it takes you somewhere else! This eye, I wanted to draw a path and some green bushes with flowers dotted around… This is what happened instead.
Give your guest the freedom to choose what it wants to express. And rejoice at the result: it came from you. 

I cannot resist but add here the Cyrano speech I talked about in the episode. It may be an old text, but it’s jut such an honest moment that has inspired me through the years, that I hope it can inspire you too. 

Cyrano:

To sing, to laugh, to dream,
To walk in my own way and be alone,
Free, with an eye to see things as they are,
A voice that means manhood- to cock my hat
Where I choose- At a word, a Yes, a No,
To fight- or write. To travel any road
Under the sun, under the stars, nor doubt
If fame or fortune lie beyond the bourne
ever to make a line I have not heard
In my own heart; yet, with all modesty
To say: “My soul, be satisfied with flowers,
With fruit, with weeds even; but gather them
In the one garden you may call your own.”

This is the one landscape I can draw by heart of the cliffs of Etretat and the Hollow Needle, in Normandy.

What about you? How do you Kickstart your flow? Let me know in the comments!

Much Love,

Ségolène xx