How Creatives Use Yoga to Keep Work Inspo Flowing.

Experiencing creative block at work? Let this guest post give you ideas to get creative juices flowing!

Creatives make the world go ‘round: from marketing to program design, aesthetics to performing arts. But, flourishing as a Creative in this fast-paced world of output, deadlines, and burnout is hard. Sometimes the creative flow just dries up.

While sometimes a few cups of coffee and a long walk in the sunshine can boost your creativity, nothing is more effective than a good yoga session. It’s well known that yoga promotes health and wellbeing: But a great side-benefit is dramatically supporting and broadening creative expression. The right poses in the right combination clears the cobwebs in the mind- making way for new ideas and motivates you to start your next project.

Stretching Creative Expression

Yoga practice refines the inner emotions, while simultaneously bringing balance to the body, mind, and soul. This leads to a vivid vibrancy of artistic expression in a person. Certainly, when you’re used to standing on your head or twisting your body into interesting shapes, it has an effect on your brain and your sense of yourself. 

Yoga helps us to sit with our thoughts and ideas, focusing upon them as they come and go. We learn resilience, we learn persistence, and we learn how to recognize thoughts for the truth and potential they contain. This leads to belief in our own potential, Our capacity to carry out tasks and fulfill ideas allows them to come to fruition, helped along with a steady yoga practice. Through a strong physical and mental core built up through our yoga practice, we have a stable foundation upon which to build these abilities.

• Try Pigeon Pose. It’s common knowledge among yoga students that we store emotions in our hips. Hip-openers like Pigeon Pose can help people release a lot of negative emotions, and are a center for creativity. 

De-stressing and Alleviating Tension Blocks 

The practice of yoga helps release stress and emotions held at a cellular level. Most emotions are held in the hips, heart area and shoulders- yoga is unique in supporting deep release in all these areas. Many recent studies show the profound ability of yoga to release trauma from the body and the positive effects it has on people suffering from PTSD. Some who purposely approach yoga as a means of processing trauma integrate CBD oil into their practice: to mitigate the anxiety, tension, and inflammation that may occur. The more we heal our nervous system, coming to a place of inner calm and reflection, the greater our creative expression.

• Try Seated Garudasana (Eagle Pose). This is another hip-opener that many love to do whenever they feel creatively blocked. As an added bonus, it’s also a shoulder stretch. Since many hold a lot of tension in the neck and shoulders, it’s a good way to soften both the tension and apprehension that might be holding back self-expression.

Opening the Portal for Inspiration 

Sitting on the mat in meditation after practicing intentional movement connects us to something greater than ourselves. It connects us to the cosmic force of the universe, the source of all creative power. By plugging into universal consciousness  – experiencing ourselves as more than our bodies and our individuality, we expand into a higher reality where inspiration resides. 

To those burnt out creatively, yoga has the greatest benefit. Working too long or hard at one project can leave a person even more stressed that when they started! Through yoga, we can re-attune ourselves to the emotions that inspired us in the first place. We can unwind from the physical stresses work can put on us. This is especially true if the creative practice involves repetitive motions or physical activity: But, even if it’s a stationary job, moving your body even a bit can release some tension built up.

• Try Headstand. There’s something amazingly grounding about Headstand. It offers a fresh perspective, which is crucial to creating. And it can’t hurt that this pose brings a little extra oxygen to the brain.

Mindfulness 

Mindfulness is a powerful meditation technique practiced in yoga. Being mindful means having an awareness of our present thoughts and feelings, without judging or reacting to them.

In other words, it teaches us to observe our emotions without labeling them as “right” or “wrong”. The practice of accepting our experiences rather than struggling with them is an effective tool for dealing with the highs and lows that are a part of the creative flow. 

Mindfulness has been shown to reduce stress, increase happiness, and promote divergent thinking- or the thought process used to generate and explore creative ideas. A 2014 study conducted at Leiden University found that mindful-meditation led to an increase in innovative thinking and the generation of new ideas. Clearing the mind from the fog of emotion allows our creative energy to be visible and more accessible.

• Try Seated Meditation. Spending a few minutes in seated meditation reminds you that you’re a part of something so much bigger than yourself. Connecting with this idea can put you in the frame of mind to hone your craft and put your creation out into the world.

Yoga is not only a wonderful way to get your body moving, it’s also a fantastic approach to activating our internal energies, shifting our thought patterns, and opening ourselves up to creative inspiration and positive energy.

As breath, body, and mind come into balance through your yoga practice, so do your ideas and thinking. The ability to clear the mind of unwanted chatter and focusing on just you and your practice can make the flow of energy and thought a lot easier. Remember your last yoga practice and the feeling of absolute calmness and potential running through your veins? It is one of the most incredible feelings to come from Savasana after a delicious practice and feel alive, energetic, and inspired, a feeling that lasts throughout the day.

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A Family That Meditates Together, Stays Together.