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5 Yoga Poses to Sling Shot Your Creativity

Happiness | Lifestyle

Welcome to your Yoga & Creativity Series. This is the first article of a four-part series that explores, mines and inquires into the nature of creative energy.

What is creativity? Are we all inherently creative? How can you tap into your own creative energy?

I’m no expert on the psychological realm of creativity. I’m not up on the theories, the neurobiology or the scholarly inquiries that assess and even quantify creative energy.

My knowledge comes from self-inquiry, experience and observation. Let’s call it the yogi’s approach to understanding! It’s about looking, listening and gaining clarity through experience. It’s also about watching and asking questions.

What Is Creativity?

Creativity is a phenomenon whereby the imagination is used to craft original ideas and solve problems. It’s about inventiveness, vision, inspiration — it’s finding a new way to see, process and understand the world.

Tapping into creativity is an act of transcendence. Traditional rules or ideas are challenged. New approaches to old problems and new problems alike, are unearthed.

Is Everyone Creative?

Most definitely! Every human has the capacity for creativity. Whether it’s creative thinking to problem-solve a task at home or creative inspiration to birth a painting or novel — creative energy is present in each and every one of us.

That said, we’re all different. Some humans thrive when it comes to navigating creative solutions while others do well when it comes to more logical-based thinking and decision making.

Either way, you can choose to amplify your creative connection through self-inquiry and personal practices. Creativity is a muscle that loves to be flexed. With that though, it’s important to note that generally, creativity spills forth more readily when the mind is relaxed and open.

Tapping Into Your Creative Potential

Throughout this four-part series, we’ll explore different ways to turn-up-the-volume on your creative dial. Creativity loves inspiration from external forces but true authentic creative expression can come from nowhere else but within.

Let’s jump in by looking at yoga poses that can help simmer the mind and create the perfect conditions for creativity to flow-free.

1. Passive Butterfly / Ground and Let Go

Credit: Lacey Haynes Credit: Lacey Haynes

Get quiet in this passive seated pose. Sit in a wide diamond-shaped butterfly, support your knees or head if you like. Let your spine curl as your head drops down. Breathe bright colours and light into your hips and the length of your spine. Let thoughts drip from your third-eye space. Let your worries, your thoughts, the past and the future, fall away.


2. Mountain / Anchor & Connect

Credit: Lacey Haynes Credit: Lacey Haynes

Stand tall, feet hip-width apart. Open your arms. Shoulders can move down and back while palms open wide, fingers alive. Expand your chest and ribs with every breath. Feel that you’re grounded and strong — feet energised, legs alive, tail-bone dropping. Give and receive equally in this pose. Draw strength from above and below as you become anchored and connected.


3. Goddess / Strong & Open

Lacey haynes - goddessBuilding on the grounding force of your Mountain pose, open it now for a bit more challenge. Toes turned out with knees drifting open and out, toward your pinky toe. Let your arms mirror your legs. Collect the energy in your pelvic floor by subtly zipping-a-zipper up from your pubic bone to your navel. Soften your jaw. Experience your body and visualise your energetic field expanding all around you. Breathe big and glorious.


4. Dancer / Balanced & Expansive

Credit: Lacey Haynes Credit: Lacey Haynes

Use this dynamic pose to play. You’ll need to call on balance and strength and as you become fully-dimensional, expanding back, forward, down and up. Take your foot on the inside. Stay steady and tall before you begin to hinge. Again, zip up your low belly. Use all of the tools from your Mountain and Goddess poses and the softness from your Butterfly, too. Find focus with your eyes. You can later bring this same focus to your creative pursuits.


5. Pentacle / Ready to Receive

Credit: Lacey Haynes Credit: Lacey Haynes

Allow yourself to be held by the ground. Creativity is about opening up to an energy that is vast, boundless and always flowing. Stretch open wide and let the ground take your effort away. There is nowhere to be, nothing to worry about.

Open up to possibility. Breathe sighs of relief and release. Everything you need, it is available to you right here and now.

Stay tuned for the next installment where we’ll look at 5 Sacral Chakra Practices To Amplify Your Creativity.

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