In the summer of 2024 I hit the reset button on my creative goals. I attended a program at Hollyhock Retreat Centre that introduced me to a whole new, yet also probably very old, approach to being creative. In a nutshell – creativity as a practice of rest. Instead of focusing on producing a final product (and all the pressures that go with that), the output of the practice is to regulate your nervous system by exploring what feels good to create.
Anything somatic is about the body. The body as an experience of being – in all that being entails. At Hollyhock, we worked with many kinds of materials – from leaves to yarn to scrunched up newspaper. We dipped, wrapped, twisted, soaked, smeared, scrunched, ripped, painted, dyed, rubbed and sewed all the while taking note of what made us feel satisfied, delighted, relaxed, calm, reflective, at ease, bored, antsy, happy, and so on.
My creative rest practice at home is on my iPad. It’s so easy to pick it up and use the Procreate app. Sometimes I draw pictures inspired by what happened during my day… Or I make something scribbly. I’ve also discovered very special pleasures using certain colours.
The pieces displayed with this post are explorations of specific colours I am attracted to. The dark dark green of the mountains in Orange You Blue and lighter greens in Glow Bugs are what I see when trees are reflected in water. Especially in rivers. And I love rivers and trees.
And it’s not just about a colour, but how it feels in my body to see specific colours interact. The conversation between the black and dark purple in Crumbs gives me a wispy misty longing. Looking at the orange hanging out with the robin’s egg blues in Orange You Blue makes me salivate a little!
Making Blue to Black was all about swooshing around those frothy blue colours (sometimes I use my fingers) and then asking what happens if I put black in the corner. That black I put there, and the way it makes my eye bounce back into the blues gives me a sly hopefulness that nothing and no one else in the universe can give me. Creating a missive from my soul to my heart like that promotes breathing. It generates ease.
Our Hollyhock facilitator said she thought one of the best ways to resist fascism is to have a regulated nervous system. When we are regulated we are less reactionary and more responsive; more thoughtful and harder to manipulate. Resistance is somatic!
