Hello,
I'm Sydney and welcome to the Happy Artist Meditation.
Thank you for meeting me here in this space where we are going to stop suffering for our art.
Believe it or not,
You can be content or even happy and make something beautiful at the same time.
We're going to start off with a meditation to open ourselves up to receive some answers about making art and how we may have beliefs that are damaging to the artistic process.
We're going to get comfortable.
I invite you to lay down or sit down or even stand up,
Whatever works for you.
After all,
We are artists and we can't be contained by any one idea or position.
Just get yourself comfortable.
We're going to start off with three deep cleansing breaths to transition from the fully conscious into the conscious plus subconscious fertile soil of our minds and souls.
So let's begin with a deep belly breath in and out.
Again in and out.
This time in and out.
Now let's do a body scan.
As you place your attention on each part of your body,
You can just concentrate your attention there or you can move that body part a little bit.
I'm a big believer of movement and creativity supporting one another.
So let's start with our heads.
Just send your attention to your head or give your head a little shake.
Moving down to the shoulders,
Lift them,
Relax them.
How about our arms and elbows?
Move them in and out.
Give our fingers a little wiggle.
And now for our chest,
You may want to take a deep breath in and out.
Our bellies,
Poke it out a bit.
Now our hips and pelvis.
Shake from side to side.
Let's do our thighs and knees.
Depending on how you are seated or laying down,
You might lift them up.
Bend them.
For the lower legs and ankles,
Same thing.
Maybe give your legs an ankle roll.
And wiggle those toes.
Now it's time to imagine that you are the middle of a story.
All creation is a story.
All life is a story.
Everything has a beginning,
A middle,
And an end.
You're the middle right now.
The start is deep in the earth.
The hot molten glow.
And I want you to imagine you have tentacles on your feet or your back or the back of your legs that can stretch down and connect to the hot center of the earth.
And as you breathe,
You're pulling up that power into your belly,
Into your heart.
And now imagine you have tentacles or a cord that reach all the way up to the hot fiery sun.
And again with every breath,
You draw in that power from that sun.
The earth is the beginning of the story.
You are the middle and the sun is the end.
It's a perfect triad of storytelling and creation.
Now bring that power from the heat of the earth core and the heat of the sun,
That concentrated power that's sitting in your belly and your chest,
Into your hands and into your mouth.
Many of us create with our hands.
We write things down.
We draw.
We sculpt.
Many of us use our mouths to speak,
To sing.
Perhaps we use our bodies to dance.
And so our bodies should glow.
Wherever you physically output your creative endeavor,
Imagine that place glowing with power.
The power of the universe,
The power of creation.
Take your glowing self.
Take your glowing body part and imagine that you are using it.
You're using that power and that glow to make your beautiful contribution to this world through your art.
And as you're creating,
You're smiling because you're happy.
You're happy to be in that moment of creation.
You feel joy in your heart and you feel joy in your body.
You feel joy in your mind and you feel joy in your soul.
Now take a moment to finish your creation or to imagine it finished,
Completed.
And take a step back and look at it with joy and pride and happiness and accomplishment.
Give yourself a head nod and acknowledgement or a pat in the back,
Even if that pat is just in your mind.
Feel that heat and creativity and joy all at the same time,
Just swirling inside and outside of you.
And imagine sitting back from your art and sitting back from the process.
Seeing the earth,
Thinking the sun for infusing you with this moment of creativity.
Three deep breaths again.
Breathe in and out.
Second one in and out.
Third and final one in and out.
Now as you're laying there,
Sitting there or standing there,
Ask yourself a few questions about your beliefs around what state of being you need to be when you create.
Do you believe you need to be suffering?
Do you believe that it should be hard and painful?
Do you believe that you should lock yourself up away from the world,
Away from your loved ones,
Away from things that you like to do?
Or would it work better for you to create in a communal setting where you can bounce ideas off of other people?
Or do you need a change of scenery?
Can you go outside?
Can you go inside?
Think differently about the place and the spaces where you create.
Where would you be most happy right now doing your creative work?
How about your mind space?
Do you believe that you need to be secretive and not share what you're working on until it's perfect?
That might work for you.
Or maybe you work better when you can open up and share what you're working on and get support with other artists or you can share with them and test out your new ideas.
And the last question,
Do you believe you need to be in pain in order to tap into that good stuff?
Or can you trust that you can go internally where you need to go in order to be your best as an artist?
You can tap into the stories,
The colors,
The movement,
The notes while you're in that creative space and come out again and enjoy everything that life has to offer so that you can continue to feed your creativity.
Maybe the answer hasn't come to you yet,
But maybe this is the beginning of thinking about your creative process a little differently.
Just think about beliefs that aren't working for you.
Maybe you want to write them down at some point and keep visiting them until you find ways of being of creating that do work for you,
That leave you feeling good about your process.
And in the meantime,
Remember that you are beautiful,
Brilliant and creative.
Thank you.
