The Muse is IN Blog

Fresh Water Pearls and the Wild Abandon

  Jill Badonsky Writing Rules ARE HERE

 

Dear Creative Seeker,

I wanted to share with you the story of how the Wild Abandon painting and writing I teach in my workshops and retreats came about.

I used to accompany my mom on her painting outings when I was little.

 

Sometimes we’d go to Coconut Grove, a bay in Miami as exotic and tropical as it sounds, one that challenges painters to capture the shimmering reflections of multicolored sailboats on a turquoise bay.

 

Mom had her oil paints. I had my crayons, which regularly melted in the Miami sun giving me the opportunity to color in goldenrod, aquamarine, and midnight blue all at the same time if they are melted together just right.

 

Mom was flawless in almost every way – hair, clothes,  tennis, home décor, birthday celebrations, sewing, dancing, church attendance, bargain shopping, and completing my school art assignments without me even wanting her to do so.

 

My mom provided the grit in the oyster’s shell which produced who I became – a ruggedly independent, successful, fresh-water pearl, considered a tad odd but likable by 4 out of 5 friends.  

 

 Making my depressed mother laugh was one of my favorite pastimes. I didn’t know she was depressed until much later; I just knew making her giggle was the only way I could get her attention other than putting a thermometer on a lightbulb to feign high fever. She had a crush on Sidney Poitier and would take my brother and me to his movies when my racist dad was on business trips.  So, I had a crush on him too. I also won the depression genes in the birth lottery.

  

 

  Mom painted like a professional. She was a draftsman for the airplane engineering industry and you could see this skill in her paintings of sailboats with the shimmering reflections rendered just right, Jamaican women with wicker baskets on their heads, and true-to-life white foam waves so realistic they splashed over rocks and almost out of the painting.  Her art was gallery quality, but she would deny it. She wanted to sell her paintings in a garage sale along with dusty old cookbooks, rejected Christmas presents, and used high heels. She never thought she was good enough.

 

My earliest notion of what art was supposed to be came from this beautiful, unhappy perfectionist, who turned out immaculate paintings, never happy with the results, and immune to praise from others. “Oh, they’re just gushing,” she would say when people complimented her, which I never understood. I looked it up and one of the synonyms of “gushing” is “admiring.” I eat up “gushing” no matter the synonym.

 

 As for me?  I am clumsy, lacking in patience, moody, resistant to instruction, short on frustration tolerance, and have no interest in doing the work that needs to be done to make sailboats, waves, and Jamaican women with wicker baskets on their head look precise.

 

Mom would take a crayon and go over my sailboat drawings to make them look more accurate, (inner scream). The message, “your drawings aren’t good enough.”

 

 But I was a willful child, still in love with art not only as a world

where I could bring funny doodles into existence for the amusement of my friends, but because it was a place to stave off anxiety, isolation, and despair. I could focus on art and feel validated. 

 

Discovering new dimensions of existence, the process became more important than the final product, although, I am attached to works that feel like souvenirs of  surviving childhood. Eventually, my version of painting with passionate imprecision became a style that turned into a career of illustrating books I write and teaching others to experience this same validation, fun, and freedom in both art and writing.  I suspect it's become popular because many people grew up not feeling they were enough either.  

 

 

 

 

Wild Abandon is an approach that purposely makes it impossible to be perfect by letting go of control. We draw blind, turning reference material upside down, using the non-dominant hand, going fast.  I have been teaching a version of writing for 25 years, that makes it easy to get words on the page  without thinking as well. This leads to developing an effortless creative voice as it is intuitively and instinctually driven. Find my writing rules here. 

 

When creating is fun, the inner critic is bypassed and the result is the discovery of a natural and authentic style. In Wild Abandon, the inner critic is terribly confused and often leaves on his/her/their own. Fun offbeat art and writing prompts make us feel like kids again and take us into that all important place of being uninhibited. Accidental masterpieces are common and my favorite part of teaching it is seeing the look on people’s face when they let go of the rigid, careful approach and create something that is pure, filled with energy, mystery, and … themselves.

 

Experience Wild Abandon:

 

• July 10-15, 2022
  Wild Abandon Creativity Omega Institute 
• October 22-29, 2022
  Creativity Retreat  on a Greek Island 
• Wild Abandon will be back at the Athenaeum in the fall. 
• Take Wild Abandon Online: Watch for dates and recordings
• August 2022
  Understand creative blocks and how mindfulness, intuition, and science frees your creativity by taking KMCC

My workshops, trainings, and retreats  

Love,

Jill, A Fresh Water Pearl

 

Begin Again

“Let yourself be silently drawn by the
strange pull of what you really love. 
It will not lead you astray.” ~ Rumi

 

If you're human, when you try to meditate, your mind wanders.

After years of instruction, daily practice, silent retreats, and the best meditation apps available .... the mind still wanders. 

Maybe after dedicated practice it wanders a little less, you may feel more tuned in to joy, and when the person next door is using a leaf blower on a Sunday morning, an intercepting daydream may want you to dismantle said blower and reassemble the parts in a piece you eventually call "Birds in Flight" to place in the front yard of the offender, but because you meditate, you might just  say to yourself, "Let it be, this too shall pass" or sometimes more effectively, "Well, bless their heart." Breathe.

The mind also promenades with distractions during the creative process to the expense of an idea that would like to shed its many layers, take you deep into its rich possibility, inspire your genius, then reward you with an aha-moment that guides you to a glorious fruition-that requires faithful concentration.   I confess, I have high velocity distractibility exacerbated by irresistible pets soliciting constant attention.

What I know for sure is I'm not alone but I am in charge, so I'd like to share some simple tricks that keep my clients and me coming back for more, both in the meditation and creative spheres; all made possible by the intersection of mindfulness and creativity:

1.The Welcome Back

Rather than berate myself, I welcome myself back to focusing on breathing or my creative pursuit. The discovery of a distracted mind can be reframed as a triumph not a reason to berate myself.

When I notice the habitual trance intercepting my preferred concentration, I choose relief rather than torment to return me to breathing, well-being, and the resting void of a smiling existence. Catching myself fall off-track then becomes a pleasant experience and helps me look forward to starting again with warmth and welcoming. Since perseverance is vital to success in just about everything, making it a more desirable experience to show-up is just smart. Why would I show up to someone who's constantly disappointed in me? I'm done with that. 

2. Applied Rumi

I remind myself what I love about both meditation and creativity: The freedom, transcendence, otherworldly experience, depth of living, calm, timelessness, and undescribable wonder of creation.  

I am silently drawn by the strange pull of what I really love. It will not lead me astray. Like Rumi said. This makes showing up effortless versus a struggle.

3. The Sanity Choice

Both meditation and creativity keep me sane and content in an insane world... and sanity often comes in handy. It helps me begin again. 

Distracted? Begin again. 

The 12-week Nine Modern Day Muse Facilitator training begins again Wednesday, September 1 on Zoom. Come traverse the creative journey with ten creative principles in the guise of nine Mindfulness Muses and a Bodyguard, and learn how to run your own creativity workshops, step-by-step, for joy and another stream of income. Three spots open. More info here

Jill

Podcast News

 I carried out a vow to stay focused for a year on my A Muse's Daydream podcast. No small feat with the fickle nature of my attention span. The podcast is celebrating  its first year anniversary.  The Anniversary episode, The Underwhelm Reloaded, has a drawing you might be interested in to celebrate; New, out of print Awe-manacs, $35 gift certificate to Bookshop.org, original artwork. Listen to the episode for details.

Join the A Muse's Daydream subscriber club at your favorite Podcast platform: Apple Stitcher, Spotify, etc. Here are all of the episodes at The Muse is In website. Write a review, share with a friend, write me a note. xoxo

All podcast episodes are based on principles, tools, and liberating thoughts from the the Kaizen-Muse Creativity Coaching Certification training. In its seventeenth year. Next training is January 2022.  More about KMCC here.

Mindfulness and Creativity

 

Creative expression and mindfulness are cousins, maybe even siblings that get along really well.

• Both cultivate an inner world that welcomes all aspects of who we are without expecting perfection.
• Both take us on an adventure fueled on an elixir of curiosity, courage, and rebelliousness.
• Both awaken us to a different way of thinking that moves us beyond fear to a more liberating way of life.

How we talk to ourselves results either in despair or joy, creative paralysis or unfettered creative expression. Creativity is a relationship with ourselves. That relationship will either result in resistance, pressure, and judgment in the creative process, or curiosity, willingness, and the kind of perseverance that leads to confidence, freedom, and delivery.

Here's a book I recommend if you really want to pursue the kind of self-talk that benefits your creativity. Chatter: The Voice in Our Head, Why it Matters by Ethan Kross 

Creativity serves the mindfulness because being in that process is like having an affair with the present moment.

This is what I teach in the Kaizen-Muse Creativity Coaching Certification training. It combines mindfulness, psychology, intuition and imagination. It's both for people who want to liberate the creativity of other and/or themselves. It starts in two weeks (Aug 2)

 

 

Compassion and Creativity

I’ve been listening to and reading Kristin Neff, the leading expert currently on compassion. My little creative association-maker installed in my intuition found a relationship to how important both gentle and  “fierce” compassion is to our creativity.

The only way creativity thrives is with practice and persistence. Practice and persistence takes quite a bit of strength when we are dealing with the distractions currently buzzing around in our world.  Compassion might mean understanding, without harsh scolding, it's easy to give into those distractions, but more importantly we are compassionate with ourselves when we prioritize those things that make bring us more happiest than distractions.  

When we have compassion and understanding for our desire to be creative and then use fierce compassion to create boundaries and defeat our urges to be distracted, there’s a respect that emerges and activates our devotion to our creative passions as evidence we are operating in our own best interest.

I don’t know about you, but I’m better in every area of my life when I’m immersed in creative pursuits that feed my soul.

In the same way we stand up to others when we feel boundaries have been crossed or something is out of line, we can stand up to the detractors to the creative process – mostly the ones we habitually give into.

In Kaizen-Muse Creativity Coaching this means to:

• Start by simply asking the question:

What would it feel to direct fierce compassion toward prioritizing time for my creativity?

                        The simple asking of the question is enough to begin to make KNOWING how it would feel a reality.

• Spend just five minutes on your creative passion when you might feel like giving into a distraction.

                                See where it takes you. 

 

 

Check-out Kristin Neff’s books on compassion to empower your creativity.

 

Thinking Differently

I challenged myself to create a different version of an ice cream cone as part of a 20-day creative workout. So far I have 16 cones and a relentless craving for ice cream. Next time I think I'll do celery. What would you chose?

You can find my ice cream cone work so far here on Facebook and here on Instagram.

 

Thinking differently is the realm of the Modern Day Muse, Albert. Practice in this area hones our ability to generate ideas, be resourceful, and impress friends and relatives at dinner parties.

 

20 days was enough of a workout for me. I'm in awe of people who go for 100 days and in the next issue will share with you a few KMCC coaches who went the whole course and more. 

  Download Ice cream cone coloring

 

Creative prompt: Think differently about scribbling and see how many different versions you can come up with in 3 minutes. Set a timer. 

Hanging with Our Creativity

  I noticed that when I hang out with my creativity, it wants to hang out with me. Just thinking about it can be enough for me to break through resistance to a tiny step which then leads to a momentum.  Writing and reading about creativity does the same thing, so I thought I'd share these ideas, in case reading them helps you.

Five Ways to Hang with Our Creativity

1. First: Wash out distractions 
   They may be lodged deep in the fabric of our habits so we shouldn't fret if they don't come out immediately. Rather than trying to move away from distractions, it works better if we entice ourselves by co-oping the pleasure centers of our brain. Let's make it fun and remember why we are doing it.
   
   
2. Hang in Originality
   Let's hang our creativeness outside our rut, our tired-out routines. Best way to do this is simply by asking the question: How can I make this different? Immediate answers may arrive, but more often simply asking will begin a series of connections and percolations, and the answer will come gradually.
   
   
3. Hang with Your Breath and with Mindfulness
   Let's allow the breeze to wash over the tapestry of who we are. Judgments, fears, and other unhelpful thoughts don't go away completely, so just allow them to be there, but give more attention to small helpful thoughts like "I can do this."
   
   
4. And then Listen.
   OVER HERE... our wondering minds need to settle on the voice inside that's been trying to get through. If we take most the distractions off the line every now and then, originality has a chance to light our mind. Be patient.  Set a timer for 15 minutes and stay focused during that time. If we are aware of the steps we have taken and acknowledge each step we do take, we are more likely to show up over and over.
   

For Optional Genius-inducing Sheen:
Ask questions and don't expect an immediate answer. Questions start the creative spin cycle both consciously and sub-consciously. Here are some examples:

• What small fresh twist can I add to this idea?
• What if my idea could talk to me?
• What would I say if I was telling the world about my idea?
• How can I make showing up for my creativity easier?

What if I approached my idea:

• With really big gestures of action?
• With unfettered courage?
• From a really narrow point of view?
• With reckless abandon?
• With sympathy and tenderness?
• Pretending I'm the foremost world expert?
• As if I didn't care so much about it?
• As if my mission was to save the world with each tiny step I took?
• As if I was extremely confident?
• With as much love as possible
• As if I were a  gypsy, boat captain, a goof-ball, superhero or 5 year old child?

 Hang with the possibilities. Entertain the absurd because absurd often associates to  genius. Keep your creative passion in your mind in between activities, while driving, walking, downloading, showering, and/or staring at your lampshade. The more you hang with your creativity, the deeper the colors.

 Or just maybe your mind is on overwhelm, in static oblivion, on the multitasking freeway of focuslessness, beating yourself up, or expecting waaaay too much. I know what you mean. Relax, lower the pressure, start with five minutes.

I'm Just Not Creative... Ugh

 

“I’m just not creative.”

“I can’t draw like that.”

“I wish I could write, but I can’t.

“This isn’t good enough.”

“I’m not good at art.. writing… etc.”

I want everyone to experience the province of creative delight the way I do… yet, I wasn’t always in this place of liberation myself, so… there’s that. Maybe you hear those things too, if so, consider passing this on. The world is a better place when we’re creative.

Most of these insecurities and untruths come from unmet expectations; expectations that are unrealistic, dare I say, to a delusional degree. These are expectations to immediately know how to do something and be good at it. Also included in this array of delusions is expecting that if you’ll get good at something, it will always be easy.

When we compare ourselves to others, we are also under the influence of delusional thinking. We compare ourselves to the work of people who HAVE put the work in. But comparison is a typical human punishment conspired by our fear-based consciousness. Let’s ascend the consciousness ladder a bit, into the realm of creative practicality where real progress can be made. Here's an article about Comparison that might help.

 

Mary Oliver is a Gateway Drug

Poet, Caryn Mirriam-Goldberg wrote, “[Mary] Oliver’s writing is a gateway drug to poetry, gently and fiercely cajoling would-be readers into the wilds of the shining earth and living poem… Oliver’s poems landed on thousands of refrigerator doors and in multitudes of journals, scribbled by people at wit’s end finding solace in the questions she asked, such as ‘Tell me, what is it you plan to do/ with your one wild and precious life?’”
 
My poet friend, david brydges, shared that, “Much of Oliver’s inspiration was going for walks in the woods with her dog and observing. She even hid pencils in trees so she would not forget to write down anything.”
 
 
I’d like to complete the equation from two paragraphs above and surmise that one way this wild and precious life will come alive is to pay attention (and hide pencils in trees).
 

In other words, write things down!
They do not have to be the fantastic; the "normal" is filled with poetry too.

 
I don't know about you, but my attention is often captive to a habitual loop of required daily activities, chaos in the news, curious meanderings of social media, as well as teaching, marketing, healthy fats, hair balls, rock and roll, and the perplexing but delicate nature of relationships – and within that merry-go-round I can forget to pay attention to the creative possibilities inherent in everything. Including mundane trivial happenings.

When I amuse myself with creative inner commentary about my merry-go-round world, using humor to survive the chaos in the news, making social media a playground of prompts, stirring my passion with new approaches to teaching, and observing those nutty cats! -- I am at a low pressured vantage point of practicing paying attention to easy creative prospects. Thinking something different about the usual things in our lives is a gateway drug to poetry and art.  People put so much pressure on themselves to produce astounding works when "simple" is the place to start.
 

What’s right in front of our noses is art and poetry waiting to alchemize a rut into an original. We can simply start with the question:

How can I think differently about the simple things in my world?

 

Write Now:

Take 30 seconds and write down three things you see right now. They can be simple, mundane things but add two specific details to each of those three things; perhaps add a feeling or commentary about them.

If you’re into sketching, sketch something right in front of you, but embellish it with an attitude or a random addition.

 
Take away any need to be brilliant, precise, or articulate because those are expectations that keep people from trying at all. Simply be curious, like an anthropologist studying the emanations of poetry and art waiting for you to notice them. Find a tree of pencils, pull one out, and record them without care that what transpires, wins a prize, or impresses your followers:
 

• A silk poinsettia leftover from Christmas is watching me from underneath my dresser, laughing at my laziness for leaving it there but pleased that it wasn’t stuffed in the box with the snowman ornaments.
• My chaotic bookshelf is my rebellion against becoming so ordered that my life is no longer an art installation of a messy human.
• My kitten fetches pipe cleaners obsessively like a huntress bringing the booty home, 100 times only to have it thrown out to retrieve again.

 
This exercise takes seconds, can turn the small things around us into poetry or art, (even if they are really rough first drafts that go nowhere), and is an act of healing creative transcendence. We are refusing to get lost in the blind hypnosis of routine and the fear-mongering media which erodes our creative capacity. We are choosing to exalt our existence by wrapping it in the attention of a Muse.
 

“Instructions for living a life. 
Pay attention. 
Be astonished. 
Tell about it.”

~Mary Oliver

Escaping the Incarceration

I was in prison for eight years.

Okay, I taught yoga in a military prison for eight years. The men in my classes weren’t hardened criminals like the big institutional reformatories. Just ones caught in drug and … sexual offenses. Okay, some of them were a little scary.

On the other hand, many of the women did really bad stuff because this particular facility was one of the only women’s brigs in the country. I wasn’t allowed to ask them what they did to receive a prison sentence but when one of the guards said, “She’s a lifer,” I had a pretty good guess. No judgment, I only had compassion for these women. My only concern was that they learn some yoga because I know what yoga can do.

Before the prison gig, I taught yoga for Jack-in-the-Box corporate headquarters and a smattering of women’s spas and wellness centers for many years, but the reward in those establishments was not even within a downward facing dog of teaching yoga to prisoners.

I taught two classes in a row every Monday night, one for “females” and one for “males,” as they were called to reduce their identity from the more personal “men and women”

In the prison yoga class, I instructed the prisoners to find the freedom inside of themselves. In a place where you first are stripped of your identity and then stripped of your freedom because of a crime you commit, finding freedom inside yourself can be a means of survival and reform.

The paradox was not lost on me nor the guards watching my class, when I instructed the prisoners to “reconnect with yourself by going inside to that inner sanctuary where you are undisturbed by anyone or anything on the outside. There you will find a freedom no one can take away from you.” The prisoners liked hearing this, I liked reminding myself of it, the guards … not so much on liking but they did get some eye-rolling in which can be considered a form of yoga if it's paired with a breath.

The stress of life itself can feel like wearing shackles, but with stretch, breathing, the invitation to let go, the physical feeling of relief, you can experience a freedom that defies words and walls… and depression.

Having no real incident preceding being depressed makes you look like a sadness imposter. Most people don’t realize that you can snap out of a depression in much the same way you can snap out of diabetes. You can’t. People also don’t understand why you are stuck in this place especially when your life looks so shiny from the outside.

Allie Brosh nails depression in her book Hyperbole and a Half. Here’s just one example from the two chapters those of us who experience depression are grateful she wrote:

“I tried to force myself not to be depressed. But trying to use willpower to overcome the apathetic sort of sadness that accompanies depression is like a person with no arms trying to punch themselves until their hands grow back. A fundamental component of the plan is missing and it isn’t going to work. … I followed myself around like a bully narrating my thoughts and actions with a constant stream of abuse.”    

If you’re doing it “right,” you cannot help but be kind to yourself when you are doing yoga.

Yoga is one of the only ways I can move from feeling rigidly stuck in a place of anguish and inertia to one where I fold, twist, stretch and move my body out of the immobilization I feel with the debilitation. Depression makes breathing shallow; yoga focuses on deepening the breath as a life force and meets you where you are with compassion.

The shackles melted and I was able to reconnect with that place where depression is an observation, not an incarceration. Even in the midst of despair, joy can be accessed without compromise, but it takes willingness, practice, and intention. It may not happen the first 10 times. Putting the body in a nurturing motion such as yoga strengthens the spirit. The spirit is resilient. Instead of holding onto the pain and discomfort of life, we can release it just as we release the tension of a yoga stretch and feel a surge of energy.

We can be freed whether it’s in a place or a state in which we have found ourselves stuck. It doesn’t need to be a formal hour and a half yoga class, it can be 10 minutes on our living room floor. I break my resistance to starting by giving myself permission just to do one dogward-facing dog. That’s the extrinsic motivation; once started, the desire to do more becomes intrinsic –- which is the more important and lasting motivation.

There’s a freedom to be found in yoga, whether it’s five minutes or eight years. It’s a breath and a stretch away. I wish that on you.

 

Etch-a-Sketch Mind

It is in those moments when our intuition can get through all the chatter in the monkey mind that we hear our soul entice us with possible stories alchemized from our hardships into prose, give us ideas on how we can breathe new energy into that landscape by painting the sky pink, and reinforce our place in the world of creativity.
 
To me, the feeling of words are powerful in shifting me from a stressed state of mind to one that is receptive to my inner world of creative wisdom. Here are some words I use, maybe they'll work for you:
 
1. Breathe in ... and as you breathe out imagine all your tension falling to the earth and melting like a snowflake. (Repeat as often as needed).

 
2. Imagine the chatter that is not serving you in your mind as scribbles on an Etch-a-Sketch

 
3. If you're practicing mindfulness, you can just be curious about this phenomenon of chatter-scribble, observing it from a compassionate witness consciousness. Our minds chatter, trying to get rid of it completely isn't realistic.  Just observe and return your attention to the melting of the breath into the body.
 
4. Imagine shaking your etch-a-sketch mind gently and allowing those chatter lines to form a beautiful scene that reminds you of the masterpiece that you are:

 

 
5. Or allow your Etch-a-sketch to go blank then, close your eyes and imagine a benevolent soul writing a message on it that is kind and inspiring. What did you get?  I got: "Make it easier."

6. Then ask a small question without needing an answer. Here are some I ask:

 

• How can I make this easier?
• What's one small way I can do this project differently in line with my originality?
• How can I make this fun?
• What do I love about my creative time?

 
Pay attention. You may effortlessly gravitate toward answers.