Get Going with a Creative Practice

When you begin a creative practice without a concept or structure in mind do you start by listening to your body?

I often do. It’s sort of home for me. Want to try it?

Just start by noticing what sense or senses you’re most compelled to “be in”.

Is there kinesthetic impulse? Is visual design of interest? Is song emerging?

Maybe there’s more than one sensorial mode finding focus. For example, moving while singing.

By following the strongest sense source/s you can begin to practice. Just start moving. Just start singing. Just start photographing. And so on.

Follow the flow of what is happening. Begin to notice shifts in Attention and how new kinds of impulses or desires emerge.

Notice the pleasure and affinity for what’s happening. Notice your need for it to happen- because it feels right. In doing so, you come into harmony with the process.

From time to time shift from doing to being.

Notice how you’ve changed before choosing to practice. Your presence is in a new state of Attention.

You might include your environment by interacting with it. This is most obvious in photography and less obvious in dancing or singing.

You can oscillate between listening to inner and outer influences. Your creative direction becomes influenced by your relationship to your surroundings or to yourself.

Try exploring one without the other. For example, focus intently on your breath and then shift focus to the ground and make breathing about your connection to the ground. Now, bring the two together. See how your breath informs your movement or touch of the floor affects your breathing.

Go back and forth between what’s coming more directly from your body and what stimuli in the environment is a natural source of collaboration.

Overtime you’ll experience focus turning into fuller territories (taking shape) which can lead to clear compositional structure and eventually, a body of work.