Beginning the Journey
Rilke’s Book of Hours, Love Poems to God, Translated by Anita Barrows and Joanna Macy
Session 1
“A revolution that is based on the people exercising their creativity in the midst of devastation is one of the great historical contributions of humankind.”
- Grace Lee Boggs
In our first gathering, we step into circle together. Co-creating the container that will hold our personal and collective voyage into the field of creativity. We will set intentions, call in resources and begin to explore what creativity means to us and how it moves through our lives.
Reflection Prompts
Defining Creativity
What does creativity mean to you?
If creativity were a feeling, texture, or movement, what would it be for you?
Accessing Creativity
When do you feel most creative?
Are there specific environments, times of day, or activities that tend to bring you into a creative state?
The Collective’s Seeds
Curious
Mindful
Trust
Open
Rooted
God
Links
Grounding to the Earth Practice
Guided by Erin McGuiness
Energy Basics
by Lynda Caesura
Session 1 Recording
Beginning the Journey Recording/Module 1 Session 1
Optional Home Practice
The invitation is to be curious and explore - stepping out of a right or wrong frame. To give yourself more permission to play and be curious.
If resistance comes up as you practice, note the resistance. Experiment with setting the resistance down for the moment and turning your attention to a place of resource in the body (warmth of a hand on leg, feeling where the chair supports you etc.) and then return your attention to the exploration of creativity or pause and come back to it later.
Option 1
Notice choice points in your life and see if you can access the raw energy of creativity in those moments. Try experimenting with pausing and feeling into those moments.
Option 2
Envision a creative moment and doodle what it feels like.
What colors, shapes, or marks express your creative energy?
Session 2
Reflection & Integration
““Can you tell me how to practice yoga?”
”The Great Yoga that is to drink, to eat, to touch, to see, to walk, to sleep, to urinate, to defecate, to listen, to remain silent, to speak, to dream, to love, to sit, to cross the street, to get on a bus, to travel through town and country, sights and sounds, beauty and ugliness without ever being separated from the divine, which is in the self. No type of yoga is better than that which isn’t afraid of immersion in reality. Outside of reality, there is not a single trace of the absolute.
”The Great Yoga is like the English grammar that I taught at school. It is very simple. There is a sentence, some words, a punctuation mark. The Great Yoga is very acute perception of the punctuation. We are used to paying attention to the words, but the door to the divine is found in the punctuation. The commas, the periods indicate the pose taken between two parts, between two propositions, between two sentences. The comma, the period that’s infinity. That’s the void.”
”How do you apply this grammar of yoga to the life of the tantrika?”
”Between two breaths, there is a comma. Between two feelings or two ideas, there is a comma. Between one gesture and another, there is a comma. The magic of the Great Yoga is that all life experiences are followed by a comma, and the yogi can continually operate in and drink from the infinite by being conscious of this punctuation. Our life is too often like a text without punctuation. We believe that the words run together to infinity. When we begin to meditate, we are frightened by the huge lava flow of words that pushes us continually forward or to the side of our lives.
We feel ourselves bombarded by our chaotic mental activity, which swallows up our punctuation and leaves us exhausted, no longer making sense.
”Bit by bit, the air penetrates our meditation. The magma of words becomes more like a strip of clay that you can stretch between your two hands. All of a sudden, there is a rupture, a silence, a void, a comma, and true life begins.
This break allows us to be present, to catch our breath, to enter into the next group of words fully conscious. These moments of emptiness are like rest stops on a long climb.
They allow us to realize what we’re in the process of doing and to taste it fully.”
The Collective’s Seeds
Meditative
Happy
Exquisite, Unbearable
Seed Vitality
The Collective’s Reflections
How do I create in the emotionally stable moments?
Creating the world I want to live in.
I don’t know if I can create?
Where is the ground of creativity?
Can I bring my creativity to how I structure my business?
Links
Session 2 Recording
Beginning the Journey Recording/Module 1 Session 2
Podcast
Arawana Hayashi: True Activity, Direct Knowing & Japanese Court Dance
Optional Home Practice
Air - Expansion Contraction & Pause Embodiment Practice
The invitation is to be curious and explore - stepping out of a right or wrong frame. To give yourself more permission to play and be curious.
Embodiment Practice
Relax, ground, notice your spine, your me/not me and your edge.
Create a semi-circle shape with your arms, biceps straight and horizontal, forearms in a semicircle.
Gently place your attention at the base of your throat. On the adam’s apple (male-bodied) and triangle (female bodied).
In-hale and expand your chest open your arms.
Pause.
Ex-hale and contract your chest and close your arms.
Pause
Repeat for a few cycles.
Release your arms, relax. Notice how your throat, heart, arms and hands feel. Is there any increased sense of energy, blood, life force moving through you?
“Often the creative life is slowed or stopped because something in the psyche has a very low opinion of us, and we are down there groveling at its feet instead of bopping it over the head and running free. In many cases what is required to aright the situation is that we take ourselves , our ideas, our art, far more seriously than we have done before...the business of valuing one’s creative life - that is, valuing the beauteous and artful ideas and works which issue from the wildish soul...”