Engaging with the creative impulse can enrich both your personal and professional lives. It’s more than thinking outside the box. It’s moving forward as if there never was a box at all.
Instinctive Meditation® is one of the ways to attune to your creative instincts. Engaging with the senses, sharpening your internal and external perceptions, and dropping more readily into a state of relaxed awareness all come into play.
In what ways might you explore creativity in the coming days?
As so often happens, I was looking for something completely different when I came across an old notebook. I think it was from an expressive arts conference I’d attended years ago.
I turned the page and this phrase was glowing off the page : Breath as an art material. Everything stopped as those words carried me away on a mind journey.
The way breath gives voice to poetry and stories.
The collective inhale of a concert band before playing the first note.
Blowing on a dandelion and sending off little white skirts as gifts to sky faeries.
Shaping molten glass, or inflating two slabs of clay into a pillow.
A deep grounding inhale and exhale before stepping onto stage and dancing.
The play of rhythm between lovers.
How breath informs our senses. The sense of smell in cooking. More subtly reaching our instincts, sniffing out adventure, or danger, or a potential mate. Communicating emotions when words don’t suffice.
I began to wonder about using breath in other ways in art, such as using a straw to blow watered down paint on a surface.
What would it be like to receive a breath, and use the energy of releasing it through a paintbrush, in movement, or in whatever other way one might imagine? How does how you vary your breath affect the quality of lines, colours, textures, or gestures? What would the flow of creative practice be like while intentionally incorporating breath as one of the art materials?
I invite you to set some time for your favourite creative practice, and intentionally incorporate breath into your process. I’d love to hear what your experience is!
I woke up this morning thinking about the vibration of sound. Literally. Eyes opened. Vibration of sound.
I went spontaneously into meditation around the vibration of sound, specifically music.
The memories of laying on the living room floor during our Sunday family listening sessions, the vibrations from the speakers flowing into my ears, and my body through the floor.
I can’t remember the first time our family went to an orchestral concert (I was so lucky we did this!), but suddenly I was transported to the dusty balcony of Northrop Auditorium, sitting on a scritchy burgundy velvet seat, sensing the pre-concert excitement. I don’t remember it then, but this morning I had the distinct memory of feeling the vibrations of the music on my body. I lay there in my bed this morning for a few minutes, reliving that kidhood memory from so long ago.
And later, as an oboe player, from 6th grade to early adulthood. Sitting in a band or orchestra. The vibration of the reed, the pulsation of the sounds around me, becoming one with the flow of music.
Once watching a beloved person share their music on stage, I could see the pulsing vibrations of the music expand over the audience.
How many times music was my solace, my companion, my healer. I hadn’t really thought of it until today how much a component the vibration has been in all this.
In Sanskrit, the word spanda has definitions of vibration, movement, puslation, the Universal Pulsation (and more. I’m learning Sanskrit is interesting in this way). Everything around us is in vibration, appearing as objects, light, sound, subtle energy sensations. A continual dance of expansion and contraction.
The Sanskrit word tantra, contains definitions of “the wire or string of a lute”, and also “strings of the heart” (thank you Lorin Roche, PhD for introducing me to Sanskrit!).
Maybe this is why I enjoy so much incorporating the Reverie harp and monochord in my current musical explorations and offerings. Sometimes I like to lay on the floor, with the Reverie harp on my belly, languidly plucking the strings, and being carried away on the vibrations, much like that little girl, laying on the floor, enraptured by the vibration of sound.
(Image shows full moon peering through pine branches)
Luna!
Bella Luna!
Ripe and dripping
With the sweet nectar
of stars.
Who can resist your invitation?
Oceans.
Coyotes howling.
My own inner tides
Rise up and dance
Under the radiance of your face
Reflecting the Light of your Lover,
The Sun.
~©Adele M. Satori 7 March 2023
This video combines three of my creative practices: music, art, and meditation. I used the often accepted premise of colour and sound associations with the seven main chakras of the human body.
I got to thinking- what is the origin of these associations? I mean- the notes are from a modern Western scale. Even thinking about the chakras themselves. They line up with major endocrine glands, and that makes some sense. Sometimes I think every cell might be a chakra- little galaxies dancing around in the dense formation we call our body. It’s useful to have guides of some sort for visualization. When I’ve worked with people’s energies, I have felt different buzzes of energy rather than colours, and not necessarily where the chakras have been traditionally assigned. After all, the body’s nervous system is bioelectrical, and I’ve often thought just as possible to “leak” as a light switch that’s not wired correctly.
Humans are interesting in to what they give value and meaning. I found information that the association of colours with chakras either began with the Tantric association with the elements, in 1927 from Charles W. Leadbeater’s 1927 book “The Chakras”or in the 1970s with Christopher Hill’s book called “Nuclear Evolution: Discovery of the Rainbow Body”. So colours have become associated by mostly universal agreement.
Sound is another matter. There’s been a bit more study from my short stint of looking, around the effect of sound as a healing tool. Also a lot of claims, and again agreed upon parameters.
There’s no doubt that sound can create the opportunity, a doorway, if you will, for the brain and body’s relaxation response to kick in. And I’ve seen videos of people with Parkinson’s have their tremors decrease dramatically when music, especially favourites of the subject is played.
Music- groups of sounds linked together in a deliberate (even in improvisational music) has been a proven tool for people to access their unconscious mind, express feelings they might not be able to with words (emotionally or physiologically), and connecting with the breath through movement, vocalizations, and breath.
I’m less certain of claims, for example, of a tuning fork or singing bowl of a certain frequency being placed on the body will invoke healing. The vibrations feel good, but I’m not certain of the healing properties. Or laying on a vibroacoustic table (I’d like to try that out! For science!) Other than the mind is a very powerful tool on its own. Plus. Singing bowls have a fundamental tone and multiple overtones, so which is the supposedly healing tone?
I do what I call sound experiences, but I wouldn’t call it sound healing. I create a safe and supportive atmosphere with sound allowing the listener the opportunity to relax and allow the body’s natural instinct to rest and repair to activate. I will sometimes invite participants to sense if they feel a sound in their body, and if and thoughts or associations come up that they’d like to explore.
Sound/music has the potential to invoke a relaxation response- which can include a decrease in blood pressure and theta and delta waves of the brain, but it’s not guaranteed. Sounds one person finds soothing, another may find jarring or creates tension. I personally have trouble feeling relaxed around high pitched notes, ocean drums or white noise.
I’m excited for the research to dive into this intriguing field.
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