I just taught in-person for the first time in 2 years (yay!) and I made calming the body a centerpiece of each writing day.
Mid-week, one writer said, “I had been stuck for months on my book, going in circles, and I had no idea I was in fight and flight. I always knew when I was in other areas of my life but I never connected this state to my writing.”
That’s the life-changing idea I brought to you in this podcast episode:
Calm the body before you create.
Calm the body when you are considering creating.
Calm the body when you are procrastinating.
Calm the body when the itty-bitty-shitty committee is screaming its head off.
Calm the body when you keep putting everyone else before your writing or creating time.
Calm the body anytime you want to write or paint or cook or sing or whatever and you aren’t.
If you’ve learned to put pressure on yourself to perform when you create, you’ve unwittingly trained your brain – without ever knowing it – to fear creating.
Your brain and nervous system have gotten in the habit of flooding your body with stress hormones and your limbic system has learned to stop forwarding messages to your cortex, which is where your creative thinking happens.
But you don’t know any of that. You think you have no motivation or no fresh ideas or that the itty-bitty-shitty committee is right – you can’t do it.
Bull!!!
You simply need to practice making it safe to create.
This is not a mental practice. It is a simple physical calming practice.
Please enjoy learning more in this 12-minute episode.
After you listen, just for you, my lovely readers, here are a few journal prompts to deepen your practice:
- My favorite way to calm my body so I physically feel safe is…
- I sometimes think I should be able to create more quickly or easily without any self-care or preparation because…
- When _______ happens, I will remember to calm my body and feel safe by _________. (Fill in the first blank with whatever might make you feel unsafe like criticism, being gone from your work for weeks, not knowing where to start, and then fill in the second blank with a simple reminder for your calming practice, more ideas for those in the podcast episode.)
- I will remember I deserve to feel safe to create by telling myself… (This is not a substitute for your simple physical practice, but to help you remember to do it.)
When I teach, I often say, “The body is the fastest way in.” Try this simple practice out for a few weeks. You may just be amazed.
