Meaning of Ritual

Maria Popova wrote in a post:

I think a great deal about the difference between routine and ritual as a special case of our more general and generally trying quest for balance — ripped asunder by the contrary longings for control and whimsy, we routinize daily life in order to make its inherent chaos more manageable, then ritualize it in order to imbue its mundanity with magic, which by definition violates the predictable laws of the universe.

I like this definition. We teach about the importance of ritual in our creativity class. Rituals can help lead to habits that support your creative practice. Even creativity needs practice and ritual can set your intention and determination toward fulfilling your goal.

Art Markman wrote in a post:

To really develop a habit for creative practice, you need a regular ritual. For example, Stephen King (a prolific and creative writer) sits down each morning to write for a few hours. He compares the process of getting ready to write to the ritual of getting ready to go to sleep.

Rituals don't have to be elaborate. They can be as simple as my ritual of cleaning my working space before I begin a creative project.

Setting a daily ritual to practice creative ideas will help you make the time you need to be creative.

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Motion Creates

Moving our bodies is a great way to feed our creative spirit.

There is a wonderful article on Brainpickings that discuss wanderlust:

With the hindsight of a decade and a half, Solnit’s book emerges as triply timely today, as we struggle to master that ever more precarious balancing act of living with presence in the age of productivity. She writes:

Thinking is generally thought of as doing nothing in a production-oriented culture, and doing nothing is hard to do. It’s best done by disguising it as doing something, and the something closest to doing nothing is walking. Walking itself is the intentional act closest to the unwilled rhythms of the body, to breathing and the beating of the heart. It strikes a delicate balance between working and idling, being and doing. It is a bodily labor that produces nothing but thoughts, experiences, arrivals.

Read the full article:

http://www.brainpickings.org/2015/06/03/wanderlust-rebecca-solnit-walking/?mc_cid=02fe5a4959&mc_eid=4313242c4a

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Unlocking Your Creativity

Some fun habits to unlock your creativity from Huffington Post. 

We teach many of these habits in our classes, especially to still the inner critic and just have fun. There are plenty of ways to jump start your creative juices. First, though, we must not be afraid, and we need to walk through the fire to the other side, and face our fears. One way is to create habits that sustain our inner creativity. I love the suggestions in this article.


http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/03/12/creative-block_n_4943997.html

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