Embody your creative flow
A movement and journaling practice to get unstuck and embody the qualities of the goddess Saraswati
Have you ever felt stuck? Unsure of what to do next, where to go, what direction to turn, what step to take? If you have, you’ve lost your connection to creative inspiration and intuitive wisdom. Not forever, just for the moment—except often those moments seem to stretch on forever.
For me, I’ve noticed that stuckness comes in cycles. Just as the moon waxes and wanes, the uterus lining grows and sheds, hormones peak and decline, and the seasons come and go, inspiration strikes and retreats. To harness the full power of intuition, it’s important to stick with the valleys and mine them for wisdom. Too often women do everything they can to get out of the stuckness as quickly as possible, which is a natural response because no one wants to feel down, low, or bad. Moving with and through those feelings of stuckness rather than trying to cover them up or pretending they don’t exist can help you uncover great pearls of intuitive inspiration.
Feeling stuck is like temporarily losing connection to the Internet. Most often rebooting the router will do the trick. Sometimes, there’s a wider community issue that precludes you from accessing the world wide knowledge web. Moments like these call for a more holistic reset.
Get your creative flow back by invoking the qualities of Saraswati
In the Tantric tradition, the goddess Saraswati embodies creative intuition, insight, speech, learning, music, and spiritual discrimination. She’s represented by the flowing and graceful qualities of water and is invoked for help with clear communication, writing, and speaking. According to Sally Kempton in her book Awakening Shakti, “To be blessed by Saraswati is to be able to transform the world through words.”
If you’re working on a writing (or any creative) project and feel stuck, reconnecting to flowing, watery qualities through movement and sound can be a great way to clear the cobwebs and access your inner wisdom. At the very least, I guarantee you'll feel better.
Self-doubt often shows up around creative work in the form of negative self-talk, negative comments or feedback about your work, or a lack of engagement with it. Because our brains are wired to hold onto negativity, it’s easy to get stuck in destructive thinking patterns that hold you back from creating freely. Negativity lingers in the heart and can affect how you view yourself and the world for a lifetime. According to Kempton, embodying the qualities of Saraswati can help you overcome negativity bias. Kempton suggests, “You can’t control her, you can only flow with her, using a mantra or your own awareness as a boat you can steer along those channels that lead to expansion and joy rather than suffering and constriction.” Creativity, wisdom, freedom, and flow can’t thrive in environments rife with suffering and constriction. Steer yourself out of those situations toward expansion and joy instead.
A yoga practice for rediscovering creative flow
The realities of modern living often take us away from free-flowing movement (think of all the time you spend sitting in front of a computer screen); open, uninterrupted space for thinking (think of all the distractions from social media); and safe, supportive community where you can share, discuss, and process your own experiences (there are so few normalized examples of this in modern society I can’t even give you something to think about!). The season of motherhood in particular, especially to young children, can feel lonely, constricting, and sap creative energy like the Titanic taking on water.
When you feel like your creative energy is starving and you’re seeking soul-food, look for practices that help you flow freely and express creatively without inhibition. As Kempton says, “…inspiration is always there, always available—what we need is the motivation to seek it and the container to hold onto it.” That’s where yoga practice comes in. Remember, yoga practice doesn’t have to mean 60-minute classes at a studio. If you think you don’t have time to do yoga, you’re not selecting the appropriate practices for your life at this moment. Yoga can happen at any moment, any day, anywhere.
This week’s practice is a heavy lifter for helping you tap back into your creative flow. Not only will you move your body, but you’ll also move your mind, your voice, and your energy. At the end of the practice, I guide you through a powerful journaling exercise to help you tap into your intuitive wisdom with a little help from Saraswati.
The movement practice is about 36 minutes before you transition to the journaling practice. I highly recommend doing the movement practice first as preparation for the journaling—it will get your creative juices flowing.
At the end, come back and let me know what bubbled up for you.