We loved this post so much from The Well Daily when it first appeared, so we wanted to share it again today. We encourage you to read more about creative expression on our website.

Hi friends,

Whether you consider yourself an artistic person or not, it’s incredibly freeing and often rewarding to explore your own imaginative side. I know my own yoga practice has encouraged me to think more creatively. Try it out for yourself—you just might astound yourself.

xoxo,

Sukey

Could your daily yoga flow inspire creativity to flow freely in other areas of your life as well? If you’ve got mental clutter to clear (and most of us do), then it definitely could.

You may not think you’re gifted with a pen, paintbrush or musical instrument, but that doesn’t mean you lack the spark of creativity. A common struggle in the creative process is simply getting out of your own way. As you dive into yoga, you’ll start to break free from judgment, self-doubt and criticism. Letting go of these obstacles on the mat is the first step to exploring your creative impulses elsewhere.

A regular practice of yoga and meditation invites balance and flexibility into the body, and physical flexibility leads to openness of the mind. This overall expansion creates space for new ideas and possibilities to surface. And when you find your creative flow, the mindfulness and discipline you’ve gained from your yoga practice will help you focus.

Start with these steps to embrace your creative side:

1. Choose an activity you’ve never fully explored. Maybe you want to learn to cook or finally make use of that guitar you’ve had for years.
2. Make an action plan. Join a choir, sign up for a jewelry making workshop or start a blog to polish those writing skills.
3. Schedule it in. Half the battle when tapping into your creativity is finding the time. Just as you make space in your life for yoga, reserve a half hour a few days a week to let your creative self play.
4. Keep it flowing with yoga. Return to the mat each day to still your left brain tendencies, even if it’s only for a few minutes. Finish with meditation and watch your out-of-the-box ideas flourish.

The Well Wisdom: The time is now to express yourself. If you can’t wait to sign up for that painting or woodworking class, just gather a few supplies to get started and let yourself go wild. Then head to your local yoga studio for a fun class to let your creative energy root deep into your being.

For more tips on living well, visit The Well Daily, your ultimate guide for creating health and happiness. Get the best wellness techniques, products, recipes and general goodness by signing up. Make sure to follow The Well Daily on Twitter and like it on Facebook too!

Today we have a guest post from Purvi Shah, a writer and poet who recently facilitated a wellness session entitled “Imagining Our Wondrous Selves” at a Joyful Heart Heal the Healers event in New York City. Today, Purvi shares her reflections on why writing can be a practice of self-care, self-revelation and self-liberation.

In 1628, with his “Still Life with a Skull and a Writing Quill,” Dutch artist Pieter Claesz offered a grim vision of our human destiny. As the description in The Metropolitan Museum Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History informs, “Here a skull, an overturned glass roemer with its fleeting reflections, an expired lamp, and the attributes of a writer suggest that worldly efforts are ultimately in vain.”

Claesz’s painting presumes our disappearance and the disappearance of our labors. In this view, even the writer’s fate is to be forgotten.

When we come to writing, we often imagine we must pen (or type!) something that stands the test of time. But this view elides what writing can enable in one’s present life, how writing can serve as an act of healing or moving towards self-recognition and wholeness regardless of how long the writing—or even such feeling—lasts. Claesz’s dour painting may strangely liberate us to focus on the present, free from the shackles of future benefits or the illusions that we need everything to last.

As an anti-violence advocate and writer, I seek to support us in “Imagining our Wondrous Selves.” Through the dynamic Heal the Healers program hosted by the Joyful Heart Foundation, I had the privilege of leading amazing advocates in envisioning how writing can be an active practice of self-care, self-revelation and even self-liberation.

Some of the journals also had images of superheroes. While we often think of other heroes, such as people we admire—including the survivors we work with—we don’t often think of ourselves as the heroines or heroes of our own lives. Image courtesy of Purvi Shah.

We began with an activity where everyone shared one aspect of what they considered to be an element of love. With the disappointments of this world and especially everything we see in our work fighting violence against women, we are often attuned away from envisioning and naming love. And when we do not name, we unsuspectingly erase what exists, as well as what is possible. As advocates spoke about trust, support, validation, openness, mutual respect, being silly and so much more, we were able to create an affirmative heart of love—what it means to us and what we hope to take forward and create. This word cloud served as one anchor for our writing and wonders to come.

Another anchor included small journals I had brought for advocates to use during the session and to take home to continue the practice of writing and self-visioning. Images of flowers, birds and other delights graced the journals. Some of the journals also had images of superheroes. While we often think of other heroes, such as people we admire—including the survivors we work with—we don’t often think of ourselves as the heroines or heroes of our own lives. Indeed, women are so rarely even seen as heroes. The journals served as a reminder we ourselves must do so and take note of it.

One of the core exercises I led involved each healer describing a moment in which she or he felt perfect. At first, attendees struggled to conceive this feeling, as if the feeling were impossible. I offered ideas of what could be felt as perfection: moments of bliss, of feeling complete, pure delight. Slowly, everyone was able to delve more deeply and write of some experience they viewed for themselves as perfect. Advocates were then paired and each person asked their partner questions about the experiences the other had written about. From these inquiries, everyone was directed to expand on their original writings. After refining their work, attendees shared these pieces or segments of them.

Though my exercise sequences were very brief, a world of ideas and revelations opened. The workshop allowed one advocate, “to remember how much I used to love and benefit from creative writing.” Advocates new to the idea of writing as an active practice spoke of integrating journaling into their self-care methods, seeing that there are “simple exercises to use in my own practice and for myself.”

On a more fundamental level, the writing workshop demonstrated how we are creative beings and blessed to be so. One attendee revealed, “I learned that I have some creativity and I should be using it more often.” Another shared, “I thought I was not creative enough to write but now I know I am/it does not matter.” For these participants, writing tapped a creative place in themselves and fostered a new power of self.

While some advocates discovered their creative sides, others re-discovered voices they had missed. “I was reminded of my first love of writing,” remarked one attendee. Another remembered that writing doesn’t have to be ‘perfect.’ Because we are afraid of falling short, we so often prevent ourselves from acting, even before we have started. The beautiful aspect of writing as a self-care practice is that we cannot fall short if we carry the spirit of an attendee who marked that “writing can help in the healing process.”

Indeed, writing may not only help heal but also work to recover and discover our selves. Writing as an active practice—even with simple exercises—can give us permission not only to be ourselves but also to know our selves more intimately. “It helped me to ask myself questions,” one participant admitted. Another advocate affirmed, “It helped me to remember not to be so hard on myself and I need to create an outlet to let some of my deeper feelings out.”

The act of self-reflection through writing and asking questions—which we can always do even by ourselves!—enables insight. One attendee noted, “I benefited from a new awareness about creating a dialogue with myself.” Another attested, “It was a reminder for how important it is to use self-reflection and to think about issues in different lights through different mediums.”

This dialogue through the use of writing, sharing, and questions enabled one attendee to “get my body & mind as one,” showing us that an inquisitive writing practice can help us to be in tune with our emotions and deepest selves – and to suture ourselves to wholeness. Writing can work with us to show more of our selves to ourselves and to others. As one attendee observed, “It reminded me how closed off I am and I need to work on that.” Another mentioned, “I don’t usually put myself out there. It was helpful for me to be able to share with the group and to feel truly engaged.”

As these advocates powerfully share, writing, when seen through the lens of healing, can offer a tuning of our selves to our own emotions as well as a greater openness to the world around us. For anti-violence advocates, this is a fragile but vital space to open. It is in this space of expansive possibility and asking radical questions that healing, new knowledge, and solutions can surface. Or as one attendee beautifully revealed, “I realized [there] is a thing/moment/activity I do/have in my life where I feel fully perfect. I never knew I had this before.”

Even as we aim for the world we want to live in (as we do each day and must continue to do so!), as a practice of self-care, self-revelation and self-liberation, writing can enable us to see more fully what we have within us already and how to be perfect where we are. In this space, we can meet ourselves and others with love and wonder.

About Purvi

Purvi Shah’s Terrain Tracks (New Rivers Press, 2006), which explores migration as potential and loss, won the Many Voices Project prize and was nominated for the Asian American Writers’ Workshop Members’ Choice Award in 2007. She is the winner of the inaugural SONY South Asian Social Services Award in 2008 for her work fighting violence against women. In 2011, she served as Artistic Director for Together We Are New York, a community-based poetry project to highlight the voices of Asian Americans during the 10th anniversary of 9/11. She believes in the miracle of poetry and the beauty of change. You can find more of her work at http://purvipoets.net or @PurviPoets.

“When I started my first business, my partner and I started what we called our Wall of Shame. We’d look back on that wall of not-so-great decisions and have a good laugh and then think, ‘Wow, look at how far we’ve come.’”

xoxo,

Sukey

Thomas Edison failed a thousand times before he invented the lightbulb. “How did it feel to fail 1,000 times?” a reporter asked. “I didn’t fail 1,000 times,” Edison responded. “The light bulb was an invention with 1,000 steps.”

Living in a world full of risk and failure, it’s inevitable that we’ll come face-to-face with it; it’s what we learn from confronting failure that matters most, which is why we love Tina Seelig‘s introduction of the idea on the failure resume.

• What is it? A failure resume is like any other resume, only this one lists your failures—both personal and professional—and the lessons you’ve learned from each experience.
• Why do it? By seeing our failures written down, we can view it from a different perspective and can begin to extract the important lessons learned from them.
• How to do it? Start with the five biggest setbacks in your life and see what came out of them. Be creative! It doesn’t matter how you write it, just as long as you do it!

For more tips on living well, visit The Well Daily, a website and free daily email for all things yoga, meditation, nutrition and wellness. The Well Daily’s simple mission: be well, do well, live well—for yourself and others. Join thousands of others seeking more health and more joy by following The Well Daily on Twitter and Facebook and by subscribing for your daily dose of wellness.

One trick that works for me is waking up before everyone else in the house. This is often the time I meditate, but if I wake up late or am pressed for time because of a change of schedule, I turn my morning smoothie routine into my daily meditation. I count each breath as I walk into the kitchen and as I choose my fruit and vegetables. I focus on my breath between and during sips even as I start helping my kids with their morning routines. Any activity from washing the dishes or picking kids up from school can become a meditation and miraculously slow down time even with chaos all around. Focusing on your breath is the ultimate pause button.

xoxo,

Sukey

This time of year, things can’t help but move at lightning speed. If your to-do list is getting longer by the second and you can’t remember the last time you took a vacation, now is the time to slow down. Not only is it good for the spirit, but your immune system will benefit from it too.

Increasing downtime is one of many keys to a happy and healthy life. If you can’t reduce your to-do list, take a few moments out of the day to quiet your mind. Not sure where to start? Try some of our favorites:

• Unwind your mind; take the long way home. And if you can—We know, it’s gonna be hard—turn off your cell phone.
• Schedule one evening a week to do something that’s just for fun.
• Think thoughts of gratitude before jumping out of bed in the morning. Take it a step further and express those thoughts!
• Close your eyes and take a few deep breaths while waiting for your coffee to brew.
• Loosen up those legs and go for a stroll after lunch or dinner.
• Bring a treat to a friend or neighbor who might be in need of a little boost.

For a daily reminder to slow down, visit Tiny Buddha, a site about “reflecting on simple wisdom and learning new ways to apply it to our complex lives.”

For more tips on living well, visit The Well Daily, your ultimate guide for creating health and happiness. Get the best wellness techniques, products, recipes and general goodness by signing up. Make sure to follow The Well Daily on Twitter and like it on Facebook too!

One of the benefits of meditation is that it forces me to slow down. Sometimes I’m running so fast trying to keep up with my kids that I miss many opportunities to feel and learn. But this past weekend I stopped in my tracks and felt a shift in perspective. It was 8am on a Saturday in a community center gym in New Jersey. I was holding my son’s smelly sneakers when he shot me a smile as he finished tying his wrestling shoes. My husband was a wrestler, and I’ve got all these stories about wrestling in my head: ‘Why do men feel this primal need to fight? This isn’t very yogic. I don’t like seeing people in pain.’ But, suddenly, in that gym, I could see (even if he couldn’t) what my son was learning: humility, strength and discipline. It’s these meditative moments that can unlock habitual mind patterns that help us all broaden our perspective and rewrite that old story.

xoxo,

Sukey

We hear it all the time: “change your story, change your life.” Sounds so simple, but it can be an overwhelmingly tall order if you’re stuck in a rut. What if instead we were to focus on the minor narratives—the small-but-significant stories we’ve been telling ourselves for so long that we don’t even think of them as stories, but as second nature? Stories that we picked up somewhere along the way and ran with: I’m not athletic enough to work out or I’m not creative enough for a project like that.

But here’s the thing: once you start to change the little stories, suddenly the big picture begins to shift too. Here are three ways to start from scratch and rewrite your whole story.

• Get on the cushion. Nothing shifts the focus like meditation. Oh, but you’re not a meditating kind of person… or is that just your story? If you’re not ready to change it just yet, simply take a minute to breathe.
• Write it down. Get a journal, start a blog, send a letter to someone you love—one of the best ways to make a positive change is to literally write down your goals—spell it out, and mean it.
• Take a risk. If you’ve always labeled yourself the shy one, step out of your box: take a class, talk to a stranger or ask a coworker to coffee. Aim to surprise yourself.

Tap the Well: Infuse your thought patterns with positivity with the Gratitude Stream app. Record your positive thoughts and watch a stream of others from all over the world in real time.

For more tips on living well, visit The Well Daily, your ultimate guide for creating health and happiness. Get the best wellness techniques, products, recipes and general goodness by signing up. Make sure to follow The Well Daily on Twitter and like it on Facebook too!

My daughter is applying to colleges right now, and the process got me thinking about my own college advisor. I never really felt like I gave him the right thank you, so I decided to send him chocolates and a letter. Just sending out love, not expecting anything in return, or even that he’d remember me. Not only did he remember me, but he was beyond touched to hear from me and sent me a long letter in return. Never underestimate the power of a late thank you.

xoxo,

Sukey

We’re all over the upsides of social media and using apps to organize our lives, but sometimes you’ve just got to unplug to connect. Forgot how to send a message that’s more than 140 characters? Get meaningful with these 4 ways to connect for real.

Got 5 minutes? Meditate. Before you reach out to someone else, take five to connect with yourself. Do this first to start every interaction with someone else from a place of balance.

Got 10 minutes? Phone a friend. The ubiquity of text messaging has made a simple phone call, with an actual person’s voice on the other end, quite a special thing. If just thinking of a certain someone puts a smile on your face, take it as a sign and make a quick call—preferably from a landline, if you still have one of those.

Got 20 minutes? Write a letter. A personally handwritten note can build much stronger bridges than email. We’ve all got difficult relationships in our lives, but sometimes those people are our best teachers. Think of someone with whom your relationship has not been easy, then dig out the stationery and write that person a real letter.

Got 1 hour? Snag some face time. (No, not on your iPhone.) If you’ve fallen out of touch, there’s no better time than now to reconnect. Contact an old friend to schedule a coffee date or meet up for a walk and play catch up.

Tap the Well: Next time you’re out to eat, introduce your dinner companions to our new favorite game. Upon sitting, place all cell phones face down on the table. The first person to impulsively phone-check buys the whole meal.

For more tips on living well, visit The Well Daily, your ultimate guide for creating health and happiness. Get the best wellness techniques, products, recipes and general goodness by signing up. Make sure to follow The Well Daily on Twitter and like it on Facebook too!

Hi friends,

Whether you consider yourself an artistic person or not, it’s incredibly freeing and often rewarding to explore your own imaginative side. I know my own yoga practice has encouraged me to think more creatively. Try it out for yourself—you just might astound yourself.

xoxo,

Sukey

Could your daily yoga flow inspire creativity to flow freely in other areas of your life as well? If you’ve got mental clutter to clear (and most of us do), then it definitely could.

You may not think you’re gifted with a pen, paintbrush or musical instrument, but that doesn’t mean you lack the spark of creativity. A common struggle in the creative process is simply getting out of your own way. As you dive into yoga, you’ll start to break free from judgment, self-doubt and criticism. Letting go of these obstacles on the mat is the first step to exploring your creative impulses elsewhere.

A regular practice of yoga and meditation invites balance and flexibility into the body, and physical flexibility leads to openness of the mind. This overall expansion creates space for new ideas and possibilities to surface. And when you find your creative flow, the mindfulness and discipline you’ve gained from your yoga practice will help you focus.

Start with these steps to embrace your creative side:

1. Choose an activity you’ve never fully explored. Maybe you want to learn to cook or finally make use of that guitar you’ve had for years.
2. Make an action plan. Join a choir, sign up for a jewelry making workshop or start a blog to polish those writing skills.
3. Schedule it in. Half the battle when tapping into your creativity is finding the time. Just as you make space in your life for yoga, reserve a half hour a few days a week to let your creative self play.
4. Keep it flowing with yoga. Return to the mat each day to still your left brain tendencies, even if it’s only for a few minutes. Finish with meditation and watch your out-of-the-box ideas flourish.

The Well Wisdom: The time is now to express yourself. If you can’t wait to sign up for that painting or woodworking class, just gather a few supplies to get started and let yourself go wild. Then head to your local yoga studio for a fun class to let your creative energy root deep into your being.

For more tips on living well, visit The Well Daily, a website and free daily email for all things yoga, meditation, nutrition and wellness. The Well Daily’s simple mission: be well, do well, live well—for yourself and others. The site’s creators, Sukey Novogratz and Jackie MacLeod, know they are not alone in their quest to breathe more deeply, operate more energetically, live more mindfully and age more gracefully. They pass along the ideas that they love, whether they’re the latest or the most ancient—ideas that open the heart, nurture the body and expand the mind. You can join their circle of friends, yogis, gurus, beginners, experts, sages, vegans, vegetarians, conscious carnivores and everyday people seeking more health and more joy by following them on Twitter and Facebook and by subscribing to The Well Daily.