I've thought a lot about living a creative life. As a dancer/choreographer I was lucky enough to experience the need to push my boundaries and explore new ways to express myself. As a teacher, especially in choreography classes, I was always challenged to help my students learn to be creative. How do you teach creativity? What exactly is it? Webster says to create is to "make something new...through imaginative skill". But how in the world are we able to make anything new in a world where so many possibilities already exist?
Free Play- Improvisation in Life and in Art by Stephen Nachmanovich, one of my favorite books on the subject of creativity, says that the imagination lives in the subconscious; that unique part of each of us that lies beyond our everyday understanding. And one way of tapping into this storehouse of new stuff is through improvisation. We all know about jazz where musicians basically play off of each other and make it up in the moment without any real planning ahead of time. Dancers and actors do the same thing when seeking new creative experiences. And it is thrilling when you experience being completely in the moment, engaging in playful exploration, enough so that what emerges is a complete surprise. Something truly magical can happen.
But that's the stuff of art- leave that to the artists. The rest of us need to plan ahead, to be organized and strategic in order to be productive. But what we don't realize is that all of us improvise (play) all the time. Every conversation we have is a kind of improv. Think about it. We use the "building blocks of vocabulary and rules for combining them given to us by our culture and then we make it up as we go along". Some conversations are more targeted than others like in a job where we are trying to sell a concept or a product. But basically, we are always finding new and ever more creative ways to be persuasive using our intuition and imagination. And we can notice that those who are really good at it are the ones who are most relaxed, present and flexible- playful.
Children and animals play constantly. Ever in the moment with endless attention to exploring, to a state of exhaustion sometimes. At least that's the way I felt with my kids when they begged me to do something just one more time. And now and then even I was inspired to play right along with them- to really let go and be in the moment without thinking of the dozens of other things I should be doing. But not often enough. What happened to that inner child in us? Schools can nurture creativity in children, but they can also destroy it and too often do, producing "uniform grown-ups to feed the marketplace with workers, managers and consumers". Parents can also have a hand in discouraging playful experimentation in favor of more productive use of their time. The reality is though, that experimentation and even accidents/mistakes often give rise to "ingenious solutions and sometimes to off-the-cuff creativity of the highest order". Free invention takes over in which we have "nothing to gain and nothing to lose- a continuous rapid flow of choice, choice, choice".
And it is all about choice. Consciously deciding how we do what we're doing. Why let other people/circumstances decide that for us? It's our life after all. Nachmanovich refers to our "original nature... the patterns and habits of our culture, family, physical environment and the daily business of life that make us unique". And just as Michelangelo believed he was chipping away at the marble to reveal the stature that was in there all along- to liberate what was buried beneath- so too finding our original nature requires us to peel away layers of the Self to reveal who we essentially are. Sound familiar? Just like the Alexander Technique's premise of re-connecting with the natural functioning of the body by getting out of it's way and allowing it to to it's job as intended. So too with our original nature; the place of spontaneous creation and childlike exploration- the place of play. All we have to do is to trust in ourselves and the power of our original nature enough to unblock the obstacles (Before I Begin, I Clean Up).
Easier said than done. For me, perfectionism is the enemy of our original natures. Somewhere along the line I got the notion that I had to be more, to meet expectations and comply with the rules that came before and were created by god-knows-who. The opposite of living a creative life. And what would happen if we freed ourselves from arbitrary restrictions and expanded the possibilities to new and fresh ways of relating to people and the world around us? Perhaps a whole lotta magic. What have we got to lose? We can peel the onion and get to the heart of who we are, who we were all along before we got covered over with layers and layers obscuring the light of our inner child. We can begin by taking a look at some of the beliefs that are holding us back. Then we can breathe (Umbrella Breathing) to connect with our bodymind and open a space of possibilities. Let's play and trust our original natures to create a better world than the one that came before.
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