My go to creative outlet is art and reflective writing. But I believe creativity is expressed in all sorts of everyday ways from gardening to having a meaningful conversation with a friend. I think we know when creativity has been sparked by the way in which our sense of time and personal energy shifts, sometimes called ‘being in flow’.
In my training as an integrative arts psychotherapist I was challenged to try many creative expressions as a way of re-imagining ideas and feelings. So, I experimented using music, movement, drama, art, writing and metaphor to find creative expression. It’s really just a question of whether you can let go of the expectation to produce something others will admire and allow creativity to be your companion in the journey of self-discovery.
I have two creative projects on the go at the moment. The first is to produce a body of art work that I can share in next year’s local art trail. You might notice I’ve set a project directly against my own good advice - trying to produce art that will be seen and maybe judged. It’s proving challenging and I find myself avoiding the aim of daily self-expression because of the fear of not being good enough. But that’s actually the aim of this project- can I ‘dare bravely’ and experience the vulnerability of my self-expression being seen?
Another project is to use the format of Haiku poetry (a succinct 3 line poem) to capture a moment from each day. I highly recommend this as an alternative or companion to journal/diary writing. I find it facilitates finding ‘the essence’ of experience.
Creative work, like these two projects, enables me to become absorbed in reflecting outward my inner world. Left unexpressed by creative outlets, the inner world mutters to itself, often going round in circles, or reacting in ways that seem frustrated and misunderstood. Finding a little time to engage with making and expressing gives me a sense of being and a pool of images or words to reflect with.
I’m very fortunate now that creativity is an intrinsic part of my professional work life. I run workshops in reflective writing and art practice for wellbeing (as opposed to teaching how to be a writer/artist). I also work one to one with people struggling with life issues and mental health using psychotherapeutic conversation and creative expression to enable insight and recovery. My work as an arts psychotherapist combines beautifully the power of creative expression with the holding of a therapeutic, trauma informed, professional relationship.
I find support in my own creative work from sharing with my peer network and also looking out for interesting creative workshops I can attend. To remain motivated I find I need that shared creative environment to keep my creative batteries charged.
I also find inspiration in following other creatives, or looking back at some of the better- known artists. Right now, I’m inspired after seeing a documentary on musician Jacob Collier - I see how hard he worked to train as a classical musician but what I admire is his incredible playful spirit that responds and creates music intuitively. In art I’ve been looking again at the work of Chagall - his imaginative images seem to capture feelings in a dream like way, not seeming to worry about literal representation.
What of the relationship between pain (mental or physical) and creativity? As I consider those suffering from the struggles of chronic pain, I draw on my lived experience of migraines and chronic back pain. It can seem at times like chronic pain can come to define the sufferer - enduring, missing out, adapting life around episodes. I have found reflective writing (journaling, free association, poetry etc) and art making (even just experiencing the way materials can hold feelings of pain or frustration) very supportive. Here is a picture of how I felt in a migraine - like riding a nightmare horse, enduring the wild journey of pain.
An additional part of my personal practice includes using guided meditations. I’m a big fan of the app: Insight Timer - so many meditation topics and voices to choose from; these voices have been a go to when I find myself locked in pain. Someone I follow regularly is Darius Bashar @artistmorning - he runs a weekly free meditation session every Friday for creatives called The Artist morning (2pm UK time), also available for catchup on Facebook/YouTube.
I guess my final words would be summarised by Kurt Voonegut “Practice any art, music, singing, dancing, acting, drawing, painting, sculpting, poetry, fiction, essays, reportage, no matter how well or badly, not to get money and fame, but to experience becoming, to find out what’s inside you, to make your soul grow. …(then)Tear it up into teeny-weeny pieces, and discard them into widely separated trash recepticals. You will find that you have already been gloriously rewarded for your poem. You have experienced becoming, learned a lot more about what’s inside you, and you have made your soul grow.”