Enter the Flow How Yoga and Meditation Make Us “Juicy”
••• Whether your blank canvas is a hunk of clay, an empty page, camera crosshairs, a dance floor or otherwise, there’s nothing like the present for getting your creative juices flowing. ••• The time for creativity is now. Literally. In fact, I dare you: just try tapping that abundant source of passion, playfulness and possibility when you’re stuck worrying in the past or projecting into the future. It’s impossible. As an avid scribbler, who’s worked to deadline for many years, I’ve learned that fear and expectation are the Hoover Dam of writer’s block. There’s nothing scarier - or infinitely more magical - than a new, whiter-than-white word-processing document open on my MacBook screen. To avoid being sucked into a moonless vortex of perpetual wordless chaos, I give myself carte blanche (pronounced kärt bläNSH) or “Complete freedom to act as one wishes or thinks best.”
I put my feet on the ground, my hands on the keyboard. I clear my mind; breathe, and begin. Actually, the process is quite similar to my yoga and meditation practices - minus the tappity-tap of keys and low-frequency radiation from my monitor, of course. I focus on my breath; use my senses and “feeling” to get grounded and present in my body; then I ferret out space between the eight lanes of highway that are my thoughts; there, beyond mind, just like clouds parting in blue sky - I am; pure awareness. Every yoga practice is unique. The magic comes when the expectations go, and it’s just me and the mat, in the moment. As with anything, the journey often begins as a face-off between will and world. {continued on page 31}
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