Feeling Your Creative Center

This is a meditation for accessing and increasing your personal creative energy. Creativity is the capacity you have to CREATE your life in all ways - this doesn't just mean artwork; it means anything and everything you do. The creative center of our bodies is where inspiration, ideas, and thoughts meet the ability to manifest and materialize. In this meditation we focus on feeling grounded in the earth element, inspired in the sky/ether elements, and empowered in the fire/air elements.

Transcript

Hello and welcome.

The following is a guided meditation by Renee Seals,

A somatic movement educator,

Energy worker,

And astrologer.

This meditation is intended to help support your embodied meditation practice.

If in the recording you are prompted to do something that doesn't feel good for your body,

Please adapt and modify to make it work for you.

Please also note that the content of this meditation sometimes explores deep and subtle states and memories,

And sometimes guided visualizations.

You are encouraged to work with discernment as you practice with them.

If any of the guidance Renee offers feels too activating or uncomfortable,

Please listen to your body's knowing and pause the recording until a later time if you wish to return to it.

These guided meditations range anywhere from 20 to 40 minutes and do not require any supplementary equipment to participate.

We hope you enjoy.

Hi there,

This is Renee and I'm here today to offer a meditation on accessing creativity through our bodies.

Creativity is something that is birthright.

It is part of the human experience.

It is really what makes us human,

The ability to manifest in the world things that come from our thoughts,

Things that come from our feelings,

To create with our hands,

With our words,

With our ideas.

A lot of people think creativity is something that they either have or don't have and think of it more like a talent,

But really it is more akin to a skill,

Something that you develop over time.

And the seed of creativity is available for anyone.

So I want to talk about the ways that we can access creativity through our bodies,

And this is a preparation for a creative act of some sort.

And that creative act could be anything from making art in whatever form you want to make art to making a gesture of relationship.

You know,

Relationship is very creative and it's the downfall of many relationships that we stop being creative in them,

That we become habitual.

Making love.

Sex is a totally creative act.

It's fun and it's playful,

Hopefully.

Being in nature is creative,

The way that we can interact with our environment and surroundings and get inspired.

So this meditation is a preparation for creativity through your life,

And my intention with putting this out is that we are living in a time that calls for creativity.

Above everything else right now,

We need to feel connected to the source of our creative power and to feel ourselves as agents of creativity in the world,

To feel our inspiration and access to it and to support that in one another.

So for today's meditation I'm actually going to suggest that you don't do it in a movement.

A lot of times I say,

You know,

This is a great moving meditation,

But for today I'm actually going to suggest that this is a stillness meditation.

We'll be focusing a lot on the movement within and as I said already,

Take this into a movement later.

So either begin seated in more of a classic sitting meditation position or lying down.

If you're sitting,

Take the time to arrange your posture and you want to make sure that if you're sitting cross legs that your knees are a little bit lower than your hips.

So when your knees come higher than your hips,

It causes your pelvis to shift backwards and then it becomes more difficult for you to hold your spine upright.

So you might need to place a cushion or something underneath your seat.

You can definitely sit on a chair.

If you're sitting in a chair though,

Sit with your legs uncrossed and sit with your back away from the chair rest if possible.

So that you feel the alignment of your spine and you're not slouching.

Also lying on your back is a great way to do this meditation.

So if sitting isn't something that you want to do right now,

Go ahead and lie down.

You might want to lie with your knees supported or your knees bent and feet on the floor as well just to help the comfort of your low back.

Alright,

So when you've positioned yourself and feel free to pause this recording and do whatever you need to do.

But when you've positioned yourself,

If you're sitting then go ahead and just let your hands rest on your thighs and draw your elbows in a little bit so that your shoulders can relax.

If you're lying down,

Place your hands over your belly or your abdomen and then you're going to rest down and out to the sides and feel that your chest is broad.

Then we'll close our eyes and just begin with four or five centering breaths.

In these breaths,

You'll inhale through your nose and feel the passage of breath traveling into your sinuses,

Your nostrils,

Into your lungs,

Down into your belly.

Then as you exhale open your eyes and then you'll inhale through your nose.

Then as you exhale open your mouth and sigh out your exhale.

Continue to take a number more breaths like this.

So as you're inhaling through the nose,

The breath is slowed down if you're usually inhaling through your mouth.

I'd like you to feel the way that the breath moves three dimensionally in your body and how your lungs can expand into the back and into the sides and into the fronts and from the top of your chest to all the way into your belly.

Then as you exhale relax any tension in your jaw or your tongue.

Relax your eyes and the bones of your forehead.

If you hear the sound of your breath,

Then allow that sound to permeate and notice the quality of sound.

Some people will say that we exist in a plane of sound,

That reality as we know it is only sound.

Sound has an amazing ability to really shift our consciousness,

Especially when we intentionally invite it to.

So breathing in this way is an act of listening.

That as you hear the sound of your breath and feel the sensation of your breath,

You become one with your breath.

Now please bring your hands and take them to the base of your skull.

I'd like you to find your occipital and that's the kind of curved base back of the skull.

You might start below your earlobes and feel how the curve of your skull wraps back slightly upwards.

There at the central point there's a little soft notch and in that soft notch you can feel the top of your spine coming up.

Whether or not you're sitting or rolling down you can let your head nod or turn on this axis point and feel this space of meeting where your head rotates around,

Your skull rotates around the top of your spine.

And then you can keep one hand there,

So in this occipital notch,

And then bring the other hand just above the bridge of your nose between your two eyebrows and let your touch be light but penetrating.

So imagine that your hands could both move kind of through your skin and bone and find the place where they would touch in the center.

And then if you're sitting as you bring your attention to this place you might even start to feel that you grow a little taller.

And then allow your hands to release down but keep your awareness there kind of at the center of your skull and the top,

Very top of your throat cavity.

And in this place we'll imagine the top of the spine and the way that the top of the spine holds and becomes a channel for the brain stem.

And the liquid movement of fluid that surrounds the brain is now cascading through this opening,

Through this entryway,

And pouring all the way down through your neck,

Through the part of your spine that's near your collarbones,

Through the part of your spine that's just behind your heart,

Through the part of your spine that's close to the base of your ribs,

Through the part of your spine that's just behind your belly button,

Through the base of your spine and sacrum.

And then let's bring the hands again and find the sacrum.

And so the sacrum is the somewhat diamond-shaped bone at the base of your spine.

It's curved and if you let your hands move to the base of the sacrum and then down in between your butt cheeks you'll find your tailbone.

So if you're sitting you might need to just,

You know,

Adjust yourself a little bit,

Lying down as well.

You can go from the front too if you'd like.

But you find your tailbone,

It's in different places for different people,

Have different lengths of tailbones,

But this is the base of your spine.

And if you lightly contract your anus you can feel that it pulls the base of your spine forwards and up and that that might cause a curvature in your spine that would bring your belly button back like a c-shape.

And then if you relax the pelvis pelvic floor and imagine kind of wagging your tail you feel how the movement,

This movement,

Ripples up through your spine and creates more of an extension,

So a little bit more of a back bend shape.

And this is really subtle so this isn't a big movement but it's very subtle.

There is a movement but it's also energetic and you might want to do that one or two more times so that you contract the anus and the muscles of the pelvic floor and feel how that pulls the spine forwards and up or the base of the spine forwards and up your tailbone and it causes a rounding in the back of the spine.

And then if you kind of spread the muscles of your pelvic floor and feel the tailbone start to release back that that will ripple up into more of an opening in the front of the spine.

So then keep one hand at the tailbone,

Take your other hand again back to the base of your skull and reconnect to the top of the spine and then do this movement a couple of times.

So you begin by contracting through the base of the spine and pelvic floor and allow that movement to ripple up a little bit and if you're lying down it might be easier to lie on your side to feel this but you could also feel it if your knees are bent.

And then open the pelvic floor and reach the tailbone back and feel the subtle movement of the spine opening in the front and let that movement ripple up and reflect in the top of the spine.

So we're just looking for a connection here between the base of the spine and the top of the spine.

And this movement that is again it's very subtle and it's very energetic as well so it creates kind of this condensing protective feeling in the front body when you contract the pelvic floor and the front body curls in.

And then it creates the opening and the expansion feeling in the front body and drawing together in the back body so it's more stimulating in the nervous system when the tailbone reaches back.

Okay and then we'll return the palms to the lap or just return them to your belly and in your mind's eye see the length of your spine and place it in your felt sense.

So you see the length of your spine from base to top and then place it in your felt sense and so this means kinesthetically in your body feel the length of your spine from base to top and then place it in your the length of your spine from base to top from top to base.

And now as you breathe notice the way that your breath touches your spine.

And notice the subtle patterns of breath,

How the inhale pattern has a little bit more of that pranic force.

So prana is a word that you might have heard before it refers to the life force and it's energy that moves out and up and so as we inhale we'll feel the pranic force and this kind of expanding through in the front body.

And then in the exhale pattern feel the upanic force and upana is the opposite of prana and it's the downward rooting condensing force.

So we draw in and we expand out and feel how your breath can travel through your body,

How your breath can travel along the length of your spine.

Notice that naturally at the end of the exhale there is a slight contraction through the abdominal wall,

Through the pelvic floor layers if you finish your exhale breath.

That on the inhalation there's a softening and releasing of the abdominal wall.

Hopefully a relaxation in the pelvic floor.

Broadening through the skull feeling at the very top of the inhale might even feel like you could breathe all the way up into your crown.

So this might change a little bit depending on what posture you're in.

So I'm going to suggest two different things.

So if you're lying down on your back then I want you to feel the back body in the back back of your spine,

The back portion of your body as it's relating to the earth,

The earth energy,

And feel that whole surface of your body being supported with the exhale feeling.

Notice how at the end of the exhale there's a broadening through the back body and really yield to the force of gravity and let that,

You know,

The weight of your own body really be pulled by the gravity of the earth.

And if you're sitting then feel the lower surface of your butt and your thighs wherever your body is in contact with the ground,

Your lower limbs,

And really from your belly button down into your lower body feel that portion of your body strongly connecting into to earth.

And it's as if the weight of the earth,

The weight of the soil,

And the water is deep within all of your cells and your tissues and your bones.

You can imagine that you're all you're like in a mud bath and the weight thick,

And this is a delicious mud bath,

Of warm mud is just pulling your your lower body towards the earth,

Very grounding.

And as we focus on those feelings,

That sensation of groundedness,

Just notice what happens with the breath,

With the mind,

And with the nervous system.

Okay.

And then if you're lying down on your back,

Shift your attention to the front surface of your body.

So the front of your face,

Your chest,

Your belly,

Whatever surface of your arms are facing the sky,

Tops of your legs,

Etc.

,

Down to your feet.

And I just want you to feel the openness of the space above you.

And it's as if,

You know,

It's like when you look at light filtering through a window,

And you see those little spots of dust,

Those little motes of dust floating upwards and dispersing.

I want you to feel that in all of your body,

The surface of the front of your body,

This floating up spaciousness expansion towards the sky.

And if you're in a seated posture,

Then we're going to focus on that feeling from the tops of the shoulders and the neck and the head all the way up.

And you can feel your crown in the dome of your skull,

The top of your inhale breath.

And again,

Like that,

You know,

Stream of light that's coming in through a window,

And we see the movement of the air within the light.

We'll let that air and light permeate through the back of the skull,

Through the tops of the ears,

The skin on your face,

And through all the space around your brain.

So we are children of the earth and the sky.

Our bodies are made from earth.

All the material that makes them is formed from the foods that we eat,

The plants and the animals,

The waters of the seas.

When we die,

Our bodies become earth again.

They should.

The decomposition of the living forms that gives birth to living forms.

This is part of how it is,

How it has always been,

How it always will be.

So feeling that earth element in your body through the base of the body,

Through the back of the body,

That deep gravity,

That deep energy,

That energy that is in the body,

Remembering that no matter what kind of chaos is circulating through the world,

We are made of earth and that will not change.

The earth is old.

She's older than any of us can even imagine.

And then feeling that we are children of the sky and the breath,

This inspiration and the living form that all living creatures respirate.

And that includes plants,

That includes animals,

Even the minerals of the soil and the rock.

There's an exchange of gases to become.

And in this constant becoming,

The inhaling and the exhaling,

The transformation that happens through fire and air,

The warmth of the sun,

Movement of light,

The oxygen that we need.

And then we'll bring our hands to come to the solar plexus and heart.

So you can have one hand kind of between the space of your belly button and your heart and one hand just over your heart,

Just over your chest.

And it may be comfortable for you to also,

You know,

To have one hand kind of centered here and take the other hand to your back body at the corresponding place.

If that creates discomfort,

Then just your attention is enough.

And let's feel this central space and in the central space,

The alchemy,

The coming together of the earth and the sky.

And we have the place in our body that life exists.

And so we have our vital organs,

The heart and the lungs,

The turning of air and oxygen into energy,

Into our movement.

We have the place where food is transformed,

Where the materials that we eat are broken down and assimilated and turned into the materials of our bodies and turned into the sugar that we burn in order to move.

And you might feel the kind of the heat and the amazing magic that happens at this part of your body where what comes from the earth and sky is transformed.

And what it is transformed into is your personal creative energy.

And in this way we create ourselves.

We create ourselves.

What we eat becomes our bodies.

How we breathe becomes our attitudes.

So soften in this place and many of us hold a lot of tension in this place.

We feel restrained and constricted and fearful.

I'm not saying that's you,

I'm saying some people.

So if you notice tension in the diaphragm or abdomen,

Feeling of tightness in the lower back,

I just want you to relax your belly and you might even need to make a sound.

Oftentimes this tension can be released with your hands.

And you might even need to relax your belly.

And you might even need to make a sound.

Oftentimes this tension can be released with sound.

You want to open your mouth as wide as you can get,

Stick out your tongue and yell.

Just go for it.

You might want to sing,

You might want to laugh,

Maybe there's tears.

So whatever the feeling is there,

Whatever the sensation,

Allow it to be expressed.

And now we'll imagine that the inhale fills this part of the body.

So as you inhale,

I want you to imagine like a radiant sun expanding in growth.

So you're inhaling and there is a big expansion,

Three-dimensional expansion throughout this part of your body.

And then as you exhale,

I want you to feel like a condensing,

But it's a galvanizing.

It's a grounding and it's turning whatever that expansion is into form,

Into concreteness,

Into clarity.

So as you inhale,

You inhale into this space and imagine the sun.

Imagine its radiance moving outwards in all directions.

And then as you exhale,

Feel the power of the sun.

It's our star.

And the way that it pulls matter towards it keeps things in orbit.

So feel all of your matter,

Your materials,

Your skin,

Your bones,

All your ideas kind of centering around this space.

Inhaling,

Just imagining the sun.

Feel how it permeates into everything,

This bright light warmth moving from this core center of your body into all of your tissues,

Into all the space around you,

Into everything that you see.

And then as you exhale,

Feel all of your materials,

Your body forms,

All of your ideas,

All of the acts that you do,

Your gestures,

Your intentions coming into being.

They're clarifying,

They're materializing around you.

We'll take one more breath like that,

Inhaling,

Feeling the sun's radiance,

Feeling this absolutely everything-ness that completely blinds everything else out.

All there is is light.

And then on the exhale,

Feel the accumulating light that is now becoming more solid,

That is clarifying into a form for this moment.

And then allow your hands,

If they haven't yet,

To come back and rest.

And I want you to again imagine your spine,

The length of your spine.

And down at the base of your spine,

I want you to imagine Earth,

The planet Earth.

Feel Earth held in your pelvis,

In your sacrum,

In your lower belly,

In your genitals,

This Earth force.

Imagine the planet,

The mud,

All the rocks.

And then in your head,

I want you just to imagine space,

Like the infinite unknown of space,

All the stars,

All the galaxies,

All the other solar systems.

And then right at that central point of the body,

In front of your spine,

Between your belly and your heart,

But encompassing both your belly and your heart,

I want you to see the sun.

So our ability to be creative is to take the mystery,

The unknown,

The inspiration,

Whatever comes from who knows what it's called,

The dream space,

The inspiration,

The energy,

The energy that comes from the sun,

The sun,

The sun,

The sun,

The sun,

The dream space,

The inspiration,

And to materialize it and to bring it into form,

To bring it into being.

That is creation,

The act of creation.

And creation makes material forms and it doesn't matter what it is.

Material forms include words,

They include gestures,

They include everything that we create with our hands.

So you don't need to make art to be an artist.

Anything that you're creating in your life,

That could be your art.

But let's feel that this creative center is a relational center.

It's the meeting of these two,

The material and the ineffable.

And it's from this place that we also connect on the earth realm,

On the human realm or the relational realm to others.

So what we create has impact not just for ourselves but for everyone else and for everything else.

And so we're going to be the same thing for everything else.

So when we create,

We create with responsibility,

With loyalty,

With devotion to what we believe in.

We create with enthusiasm,

We create simply with a desire to express what the experience is.

And it's not our job to worry about what the creation is.

It's not our job to try and make things happen.

Simply to respond,

Simply to feel and to express in the moment.

No one creation is going to be responsible for anything at all.

We put a lot of stress on our creativity and we're like,

This has to be this,

This has to be that,

And what if people think blah blah blah blah blah.

And in doing that we completely lose the point.

So the point of creation is to feel our birthright,

To feel this power that we all have to create,

And to feel most importantly what feels good to create,

What feels generative,

What feels life-giving,

What feels authentic,

And to recognize that our creations,

What we create,

That that is part of a larger whole of creation.

No one's job to create the everything.

Everyone's job to respond and be response-able.

So then bring your hands back to the solar plexus and just palm side onto your front body.

I just want you to kind of like make a little circular pattern like you're rubbing chi,

Life force,

Into this part of your body,

Into your belly and over your chest and just rub the skin into your body.

And then you're going to take your hands back to the solar plexus and just bring heat and movement and blood into this part of your body.

Breathe deep and again exhale just out your mouth.

Feel free to make sounds,

Blow out your lips.

And then do the same thing around your pelvis and your pubic bones and your sacrum.

So just again like rubbing the skin into your body,

And then just kind of rubbing down your thighs.

You might even want to like brush your skin off like you're kind of just dusting something.

Just brush the skin off,

Move any stagnant energy out of your skin.

And then I want you to bring your hands up to your scalp and just give yourself a scalp massage.

It feels really good.

Squeeze your hair and pull it a little bit if you have it.

Scratch your scalp and pull on your ears and rub them and rub all the skin on your face.

Open your eyes really really wide and then squeeze them shut.

Okay and then we'll finish by bringing the hands into a gesture of prayer.

So this is called Anjali Mudra.

It's an offering and it's a meeting of polarity.

It's the coming together of the right and the left to form the center.

And so there's always a tension in the center of the body.

So you can feel the tension in the center of the body.

You can feel the tension in the center of the body.

There's always a tension.

There's always tension in attention that we have to bring ourselves into alignment.

Creativity and creation is not lazy.

We have to burn.

It's so tense to try and express sometimes and it's also so joyful.

And so here we have the meeting of heat,

Fire.

This meeting of polarity.

The right and the left coming together.

So then bring the meeting of your hands,

Kind of points of your thumbs,

To the space of your forehead.

And we can just ask together to have right thought.

And right thought is clear thought.

That is undisturbed by the illusions that we have of our own stories,

Our own habitual bullshit that's there all the time.

But we ask for thought that can penetrate through the layers of habit so that we can perceive clearly.

And then we could bring our hands to the mouth.

Let your thumbs touch your lips and we'll ask for right speech.

And the power of speech,

The voice,

As referenced through the cosmology in the Bible,

In the Vedas,

Is the beginning of all things.

And then there was voice.

So this giving voice too is the creative ability.

It is the ability to speak and to create.

So we ask for right speech,

Which is that we create what we want to experience.

And we're clear about what that is.

And then we bring the hands to the heart and we ask for right intention.

And just know that,

You know,

Many times we're confused about what we're creating and we don't know what it is.

And that's the whole point of a creative process is to be in the I don't know.

To be in the mystery.

You don't know what it is.

If you're making something and it's already an end product before you've even begun,

That's not creative.

That's fabrication.

So creativity is to open yourself up to whatever wants to be expressed.

And this can be really scary a lot of the time.

And then we just ask for right intention.

And this comes from the heart.

And this comes from knowing what our intention is.

And when the intention is to serve with love,

Then we can be certain that we can be certain of our surrender to our creative power,

Whatever that is.

And then you can honor yourself for arriving.

So knowing that one of the hardest parts about practicing meditation or practicing self-growth is simply showing up for the practice.

And when you're ready,

You can open your eyes.

And then from here,

Please go out and have a very creative experience in whatever it is that you're doing.

And I wish you well and much love.