Creativity with Spirit: Art & Yoga Wokshop

Janet sharing about her art after doing yoga

You know what's cool? Art combined with yoga. Yum! I had a great time with Janet @Radiant Yoga in Mountaindale, NY last week doing a simple but sweet workshop on nurturing your spirit through yoga and art. I still have to iron out the flow of the presentation, but in general found it to be a great first take.

There are so many commonalities between art and yoga in my experience:

• I consider both "a practice"... I don't anticipate ever being done learning about either, and yet simultaneously, I accept that being an artist and a yogi is our birthright and we are brought into this world Knowing everything we need to about both. I use a capital K in knowing because I am referring to the greater wisdom carried by our spirit, in our very DNA, that might not be immediately available to our conscious, cognitive minds, but that we have our lifetimes to unearth in our beings. 
• I find that both art and yoga place me in direct contact with my inner critic. It's that little voice in my head that compares me as well as my physical and artistic expression to those around me. Whether it be reaching my toes, or reaching some new creative heights, all of my experience is connected to expectations formed through my past. Practicing yoga and expressing myself creatively give me a chance to witness the comparisons, face them, accept them, and move through them. 
• Both practices encourage me to move past my perceived limits. I'll never forget the first time I learned about breathing through an asana and letting that breath take me farther than I ever expected. Art does the same thing for me - the more I sit and practice, the more I find my mind (and my hands) pushing past where I expected I could reach. I might not see it at first, but it becomes quickly evident when I flip through my art journal, looking back at my creative "spills" with an added sense of objectivity offered by the passage of time.
• Finally, both yoga and art bring me into a space of meditative healing. A favorite art therapist friend of mine once shared with me that when we do art, we allow the thinking mind to rest, giving it time to naturally heal from stress and trauma... which are exactly the same effects offered by meditation.

The reason I found this combination to work so well in the workshop is that the connection to our physical bodies was a perfect setup to unearth what flows within ourselves. Definitely need to do this again. I'll keep you posted when, but in the meantime, feel free to join our ongoing Art Jounaling Workshops to get that creativity flowing.