Reflection on creative flow and procrastination

I have just completed a 5 day drawing challenge, it was fun it helped me learn some of the concepts of drawing that I hadn’t been able to grasp.

In the process of drawing through shapes and seeing with the tones, something else happened some shift that I am not fully able to put into words.

But the feeling, that’s something I can try to explain. Something unlocked within me something I have no words for, whatever it was I felt a shift into not only seeing things in a better perspective as I was drawing but an understanding.

Normally for me, I am one of those people that loves to go off on a research tangent and disappear down a rabbit hole, finding myself somewhere utterly different and not even remotely connected to what my original tangent was.

Not this time today I am happy just to feel the sensation of calm and connection within my body. That has me reflecting on how often we spend all of our time in our heads and forget that we even have a body. We ignore our bodies and believe on some level that our mind holds all the answers and can solve everything, that it is the be-all and end-all, that it is who we are. We can live like this, blissfully unaware of the disconnection between our mind and body. Until the day we get sick then we think, what's wrong! so we go to our local Dr this can go on for years each time we get a little sicker or have more pain and we still ignore our body for our mind. Then one day we decide we want to do a challenge or a course to begin to experience enlightenment we then discover we have a body to explore. At this point being in our mind is such a habit that sitting in our body takes a lot of practice.

I have discovered this in myself as it certainly has been a journey of mine, as I slowly began to reconnect I began to discover that my body has a lot of wisdom, that it speaks in a very different way and if I don’t get out of my head I miss the subtleness of all that wisdom and all the feelings.

This brings me back to the unlocking in this drawing challenge. As I drew every day I let myself get lost in the pure joy of drawing and the subtle nuances of shading, looking at an object or animal as shapes. Completing each day's challenge and extra homework I began to feel the difference in my body as it began unlocking stiffness and tightness in some areas.

Reflecting on this as I drew this morning I knew that my body was sharing that as I draw and let myself create more, let my walls and doors go, dissolving the barriers. These walls and doors have been part of my niggling underlying health issues, stopping my flow back into art and writing, and that somehow, I am creatively drawing and writing myself into health. I am allowing myself to let go of the rigidness and gain a solid feeling of myself. Feeling all of this I knew that I had unlocked some part of procrastination and some self-rejection breaking open some childhood stories of not being good enough to draw or write and not having that elusive gene that says you are an artist. The old feeling attached to the stories you hear of being a starving artist or it not being a real job, similar stories around being a writer.

I felt a shift!

I felt a difference in my mindset, by allowing my morning routine to change and starting my day with a drawing. I feel a difference and the biggest feeling was I felt no procrastination by day 3. I procrastinated so much on day 2 I didn’t attend the live zoom I watched the replay but not until late that night.

I began to feel my inner child happily playing.

Today the morning after the final challenge I got up and began to draw because I wanted to, not because I had to, I felt a deep sense of not being good enough to draw or paint and yet I love to do both. I love to paint words into a poem or story to weave in a pattern of tones of greys and colours of life and you know now, as I share this I feel a deep sense that this is my healing pathway and my reason for writing. I am here to share insights into the healing journey of others. To help others awaken in whatever way their body wisely wants them to open and dissolve barriers walls and doors and procrastination and ignoring we have a body is a big part of that journey.

Next time you find yourself procrastinating over doing something you love quietly ask yourself

Is this because I want to keep my walls intact and my doors locked so I don’t let go and begin to feel my body?

Is this because it feels so strange to feel my body and be in my body?

Is procrastination my way of resisting my calling in this life or my way of improving my health?

All of these are mine and have been mine for a very long time.

These are my musings and reflections and I hope in some way you understand what I’m rambling about.