How to awaken your creative voice

How alive are we willing to be?

The act of being creative is inscribed in our nature. Our reality is made possible through the work of the universal creator, which we are microcosms of.

As expressions of the universal creator, our primordial mission is to continue creating. Whether it be unearthing our desires or liberating our sufferings, creative work enables us to dissolve the coping facades we may summon to survive our day-to-day rhythms.

Often, a creative block can emerge when we struggle to give ourselves the time and permission to be free from our psychological masks. We’ve either forgotten how or are too scared to pull back the veil.

From navigating my ebbs and flows, I’ve learnt how to gently awaken the creative voice.

I offer you my learnings:

Move your body

Creative inspiration is intangible. It’s not something we can acquire through careful planning or strategic thinking.

Being too entrenched in the barriers of our rational mind can hinder our connection to creativity. Physical activity can help unshackle the hold our rational mind has over us.

When we’re physically active, we’re taken out of our head and into the presence of our physical body. Being more present in our body can help increase our receptivity to creative impulses.

Stream of consciousness: Let yourself speak

Too often, the blocked creative is tongue tied. They don’t know what to say or how to say it. Get the dialogue flowing with stream of consciousness writing. This involves writing every thought as it passes through without any second-guessing. Don’t worry about syntax, grammar, causality, or lyricism. Just write!

When we write down every thought as it passes through us, we can readily discover our limiting beliefs and our persistent yearnings. Stream of consciousness writing is the one place where we can be brutally honest.

Don’t question or think too hard about why you might be thinking (or writing) certain thoughts. Let them pass through without judgement. A form of mindfulness, this exercise is about freeing us up.

Stream of consciousness writing is thus a great exercise to do before embarking on any kind of artistic project. Sometimes, going headfirst into a project can feel terribly intimidating. We feel jolted in our tracks, unable to move.

We shouldn’t berate ourselves for feeling intimidated by a project. We just need to take time to warm up. Like athletes before competing on the field. Releasing our unfiltered thoughts helps us declutter our minds, making us more focused.

Art therapy: Reveal yourself through colour

Colour is inherently intertwined with our mood and energy. That’s why visually expressing oneself can feel so cathartic. We’re giving ourselves an outlet to release what we’ve taken in, while emulating the energy of our inner world on the page before us.

Art therapy (or intuitive drawing) can help us express intangible emotion that words alone can’t fully encapsulate. Too often we try too hard to tame our creative expression. We try to be technically perfect or to produce what we assume other people expect from us.

Art therapy helps us break out of that people-pleasing, perfectionist trap. When we pull out our journal and allow our pencil to travel across the page in whatever way it chooses, we invite the repressed aspects of the self to speak.

Instead of painfully controlling the appearance of our drawing, art therapy opens our eyes to visual representations we didn’t know were possible. In releasing what’s brewing inside us, we can readily lose ourselves in the art making process, one of the most sublime feelings.

The act of freely expressing ourselves casts us on a wavelength where we’re more inspired to continue making choices that resonate with our inner truth. Freeing ourselves creatively acts as a microcosm for the freedom we inevitably manifest in our broader reality.

Tune into your dreams

Dreaming is one of the many beautiful capabilities of being alive. Just like the need to eat, exercise and excrete, we also need to dream.

Dreams facilitate our connection with the broader universal consciousness. They allow us to access other realms and to interact with others on a soul level.

When we dream, we can readily connect in with our higher selves, our shadow self, our guides, the collective unconscious, our loved ones, the ghosts of our past and the greater life spirit in all living things.

Dreams help us obtain a sense of reconciliation of our past, present and future. They also enact a space where can metabolise trauma – both personal and generational.

As we strive to better understand our dreams, we learn more about ourselves, our relationships, and our psychic patterns. This can act as an impetus to artistic projects.

We can convert dreams into fuel for creative work by processing them through stream of consciousness writing, art therapy, and drama play. Dreams are another medium for un-censoring oneself. In connecting us with our higher guidance, dreams help us harness our innate creative gifts.

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Unblocking our creative voice ultimately brings us back into balance. Creativity is our natural state of being, as inscribed in us by the universal creator. Creativity is the essence that makes us feel alive.

Will we harness our gifts to create the more beautiful world we know is possible?