Let Your Body Lead: Revitalizing Your Life and Art with Embodied Creativity
On cultivating flow states, silencing the inner critic, accessing inspiration, and rekindling wonder in your art and daily activities
“Your creativity is directly linked to the instinctual intelligence that lives inside of your flesh.…According to the latest findings in neuroscience, deep embodiment is probably the most potent of all flow triggers, which can lead to deep flow states, which border on ecstasy.”
—Alex Greene, Red Beard Somatic Therapy
We experience the world through our bodies. We experience art through the body. So, wouldn’t we want to be deeply embodied while making our art? Wouldn’t that be likely to lead to some of our most potent creations as well as our most positive experiences of creativity?
When we’re in a flow state, whether in art-making, athletics, or any challenging but pleasurable endeavor, we are at our best. We feel profoundly alive, energized, even elated. We lose self-consciousness and access our highest potentials.
But, how do we get there? One of the most powerful ways is through the body. Embodiment helps people get creatively unblocked, quiets inner judgment, and enhances the brain’s ability to make novel connections.
Yet, all too often, we leave the body out of our creative practice. Or fail to draw deeply on this incredible well of wisdom, delight, and invention.
For more than three decades, I have studied and practiced—and for ten of those years, taught—the dance-art-sport known as Contact Improvisation. This form is improvisational and involves following a moving point of contact between two or more bodies. In practice, it ranges from extremely slow and meditative to wildly athletic and acrobatic.
From the moment I tried it in my early twenties, Contact Improvisation was utterly compelling to me. It was one of the first times this last-kid-picked-in-gym-class experienced her body as capable and imaginative. This experience opened the doors to the incredible wisdom, healing capacity, and creativity stored in our bodies, which research in the field of Embodied Creativity is now confirming: The body itself can generate your art or ideas.
This week, I invite you to follow your physical sensations as you make art, and also as you go about your daily life. I invite you to let these sensations lead the way. Because I don’t want this to be theoretical but, rather, embodied, the bulk of today’s post will be our weekly Wonder Sparks, specific practices you can try to bring the magic of embodiment into your art and life.
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