Roots and Branches

Over the years, I’ve worked with hundreds of creative practitioners from a whole range of crafts and backgrounds. And one of the most common things I see across all that variety is that people deeply love their creative work, and become deeply frustrated because they keep avoiding it. 

Why would we avoid something we enjoy? Why would we keep pushing the things we’re passionate about to the side? 

Avoidant behavior asks us to consider what we’re avoiding, and why we’re avoiding it: In the case of creative work, you probably aren’t avoiding it because you suddenly decided you hate being creative, or fell out of love with your project.

Instead, it’s often a case of overwhelm: Your lizard brain sees something new and novel (like the Big Feelings connected to being in your creative flow) and immediately wants to run and hide under a rock. Really. 

When we’re living an expanded, creative life, we’re asked to work in tandem with our body and energy to move out of our comfort zone, and that means lovingly working with the parts of ourselves, whatever they’re rooted in (evolution, our own past experiences, etc.) to cultivate a sense of safety and excitement around our creative work.

This is part of why I envision the creative ecosystem as a container, by the way, because it gives us a safe place to land and create.

Here are some ways to support yourself when making your art feels like Too Much:

Notice when you start to feel like you’re shutting down or avoiding your work. At first, you might not notice exactly when this shift happens, so your first step might simply to be to begin tuning in to finding the moment(s) when you start to shut down and pull away.

What are you feeling in those moments? In particular, notice any emotions or physical sensations, especially if they feel really big and overwhelming.

Over time, start to define what those emotions and sensations are: And if they’re the same every time. For example, do you shut down when you feel a strong wave of imposter syndrome, or of hopelessness? Do you step away when things are going really well but also feel intense? All of the above? Something else?

Then, begin to shift your internal narrative. This is a slow, gentle process: Essentially, you’re teaching your emotional self and your physical body that it’s safe to hold the big sensations associated with the thing you want. And remembering that emotions, like hopelessness, can roll over you like waves. You’re safe to sit with them and let them roll on, and to tenderly hold yourself as they do. 

But this isn’t just for ‘negative’ emotions, this is for big, good feelings too: When we’ve had experiences of loss, uncertainty, or rejection connected to things we desire, then having desires and the emotions and sensations connected to them doesn’t always feel safe in our bodies.  

Seeking safety and familiarity is hard-wired into your brain and is meant to keep you from harm, but our protective mechanisms can sometimes be overactive, keeping us from the desires we feel. 

That means sometimes we shut down even when we’re receiving or creating the very things we desire, simply because the unfamiliarity feels unsafe.

So what do you do then? The simple answer is, to honor where you’re at, and to gently teach your body that it’s safe to hold what you want to hold. I do this through energy work (which I offer for others, too) and through somatic practices (which are also energetic, but are rooted in the body).

I weave somatic work into my daily creative practice in a variety of ways, including:

-Noticing when my attention is drifting, then spending a moment asking why, and reminding myself that I’m capable and safe to receive whatever it is I’m creating. A lot of this is about tenderness and giving yourself permission to create, e.g. I am the version of me who is ready and able to hold the new identity I’m stepping into, or to be the person who created this next book or piece of art. Or that it’s safe and OK for me to spend this time dedicated to my craft.

-Practicing grounding exercises (like tree breathing) and visualizations to center myself.

-Treating the sensations of creativity in my body as friends who can help guide me on my journey, and treating moments where sensations are saying ‘yes’ or ‘no’ (or are just feeling BIG) as an opportunity to come into deeper relationship with myself. Over time, the language of your body becomes clearer, and you can read those messages much more easily.

-Trusting my body’s wisdom, and continually practicing gratitude to my body for sharing that wisdom with me.

-Practicing expansion exercises to teach my nervous system/energetic self that it’s safe to hold what I want, and to begin to associate the Big Feelings of my biggest desires with safety and excitement. 
I help folks with this in private sessions (and in Radical Creators, see below), and you may have your own practice for this, but essentially you’re tuning into a desire, feeling the sensations associated with that desire, and allowing the expansive, pleasurable sensations connected to that desire to expand and anchor into the body.
I first learned about this kind of meditation and expansion technique from Ana Kinkela’s nervous system + money work, which was actually where I was inspired to come up with my own (different, but still expansion-based) system focused on creativity.

If you want to try this expansion practice in action, join me for Radical Creators, which starts September 21, and which uses meditations I use in my practice to gently expand my nervous system capacity and to tap into my inner creative wisdom and really listen to and follow it (whether or not it makes ‘logical’ sense to do so). 

It’s a simple, affordable, effective way to tap into and expand your creative capacity.

Folks in Bloom, the Mycelia Writers’ Coven, Symbiosis, and members of the Body of Work group energy work sessions for creatives, all get Radical Creators for free: 
So if you’re in one of those programs, keep an eye out for an email with access details closer to the start date!

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