What Inspires You?

Just like the ebb and flow of the tide, my levels of inspiration are always in flux. Just prior to my summer eight-week hiatus I knew my energy was spent. And once on the break, I found I couldn’t bring myself to think about my yoga business for about six weeks…I was lacking inspiration. I thought that following a familiar pattern, I would step away from working for a bit and a rush of ideas would come flooding but they didn’t. A part of me wondered if I was entering a drought, the barren landscape of no fresh ideas. Yet, I also placed my trust in a process that has revealed itself to me time and time again…patience and faith. I have been fortunate to experience countless moments of inspiration and what I realized over the summer was that I had emptied my tank so completely that the first order of reigniting inspiration needed to begin by refilling my energetic well.

 

What this looked like was a complete release from having to be creative or make decisions, to truly step out of a business that can be all-consuming. Next, I needed to do things that connected me to the earth’s energy. The ocean, sand, the moon cycles, and many sunsets, as well as walking through redwood groves and along ocean cliffs, was the medicine my heart and soul had been craving. I found I was called to undertake subjects I’d been curious about studying so I enrolled in online courses on meditation, anatomical dissection, and back stabilization. I looked after my weary body and aching back by consulting with specialists and created a movement routine and adapted it to my daily practice. And, I allowed myself to enjoy a glass of wine at the end of the day…something I typically avoid when I’m working.

 

The result of this six-week reset was I began to see the percolation of ideas…they began to rise up and I had more clarity than I did six weeks prior. The spark returned and continued to grow as I created a new online workshop that has exceeded my expectations and sparked what was beginning to feel like an unfamiliar joy. At the beginning of one of the workshop classes, I posed the question “What inspires you? Where do you find inspiration?” and this week’s theme has been inspired by posing that simple question. As people shared their answers, common threads began to appear: nature, friends, music, art, and certain people.

 

My thought this week is more than what inspires us, but it’s the knowing of how to set up your environment to foster and cultivate the spark of creativity on a regular basis. Just as we do in Restorative Yoga, we set up the conditions to foster deep relaxation and can follow a similar model for fueling inspiration and generating new ideas.

 

When you know how to set up conditions, you begin to optimize more and more moments of inspiration. As you can see from above- rest, nature, and silence are what work for me. I’ve now written over 550 blogs and have been doing so since 2009. If I think about it, it’s quite astonishing that I can come up with something new or reinvented every week that I’m teaching. I never would have thought in 2009 that I would be more inspired now than I was back then, or that I would have been able to continue the process. But that’s exactly what it’s become…a method of creativity due to establishing a pattern of discipline about how to tap into the open and infinite space of possibility.

 

Eckhart Tolle says that creativity and inspiration arise during silence and I trust that to be true, so having a dedicated daily practice is one way in which conditions are set up to encourage revelations. I so believe that inspiration needs a channel of expression.  Otherwise, what’s the use of having great ideas but locking them away within ourselves? Creativity is a personal expression of who you are and a vehicle by which we share our purpose. It’s the voice we use to manifest the soul’s calling and share who we are in the world. And I know that each of us has something unique to express and offer to the rest of the world.

 

I have been inspired countless times by the conversations I have with people, particularly students to whom I have the honor to teach and interact with. For that I am thankful and I am excited to see what pops up next!