By Charlotte
Syncreate’s second creativity workshop, “Finding Your Voice” offered participants and co-founders Melinda Rothouse and Charlotte Gullick a rich opportunity to explore how slowing down and paying attention to the visceral, auditory, and communal aspects of our life might enhance our creativity and teach us how to listen in order to find our voices. The physical activities, the sonic meditation, and the writing exercises created an opportunity for an important “tuning in,” allowing for a rare connection to the quietest impulses we carry. Being a creative person requires a commitment to not knowing, to being able to encounter what we cannot control, and to being open to what might only be whispering under the normal chatter and stimulus that seems to multiple at an alarming pace.
Usually, right before Melinda leads the group through an experience that provides exactly what I crave but often don’t know how to create, I feel uncomfortable, restless in my own skin, ready for the activity to be over and the “processing” to happen. Perhaps part of my discomfort comes from growing up in a religion that believes meditation creates an opportunity for the devil to enter our minds, but the larger portion probably stems from the fact that I cannot control what will come. What quiet desire or insight for my own writing or teaching or parenting or living might arise as a result of being still? On some level, it doesn’t make sense – I know that an insight might come and yet I resist it? What I think happens for me is a focus on the product of the activity rather than a surrender to the experience. Yes, insights will come, but that’s not even the point most days.
When I allow myself to open to the incredible richness of the sonic meditation, I encounter myself beyond language, beyond thought, beyond meaning-making – I become an integral part of a group that is tuning in, listening and responding, an organism of sound, breath, music. Creativity offers us so much: solace, connection, vision, discernment, and Syncreate teaches me that finding resonance with my creative self requires regular encounters with surrender, intuition, and appreciation for the marvels of our imaginations.
We will be offering a further adventure with such surrender in April of 2014 for our Deepening Your Creative Life Retreat in a spectacular location in Marble Falls during the weekend of the April 4-6. If the idea of intimate creative retreat appeals, please send us an email (info@syncreate.org) telling us why you’d like to participate and how this retreat will further your creativity goals. Cost is $350 ($295 Early Bird registration by March 20th), which includes food, shared lodging, instruction, coaching, and activities. It’s going to be a profound experience, subtle, electric, connective. Perhaps you’ll join us and find your creative resonance as well.
Syncreate’s second creativity workshop, “Finding Your Voice” offered participants and co-founders Melinda Rothouse and Charlotte Gullick a rich opportunity to explore how slowing down and paying attention to the visceral, auditory, and communal aspects of our life might enhance our creativity and teach us how to listen in order to find our voices. The physical activities, the sonic meditation, and the writing exercises created an opportunity for an important “tuning in,” allowing for a rare connection to the quietest impulses we carry. Being a creative person requires a commitment to not knowing, to being able to encounter what we cannot control, and to being open to what might only be whispering under the normal chatter and stimulus that seems to multiple at an alarming pace.
Usually, right before Melinda leads the group through an experience that provides exactly what I crave but often don’t know how to create, I feel uncomfortable, restless in my own skin, ready for the activity to be over and the “processing” to happen. Perhaps part of my discomfort comes from growing up in a religion that believes meditation creates an opportunity for the devil to enter our minds, but the larger portion probably stems from the fact that I cannot control what will come. What quiet desire or insight for my own writing or teaching or parenting or living might arise as a result of being still? On some level, it doesn’t make sense – I know that an insight might come and yet I resist it? What I think happens for me is a focus on the product of the activity rather than a surrender to the experience. Yes, insights will come, but that’s not even the point most days.
When I allow myself to open to the incredible richness of the sonic meditation, I encounter myself beyond language, beyond thought, beyond meaning-making – I become an integral part of a group that is tuning in, listening and responding, an organism of sound, breath, music. Creativity offers us so much: solace, connection, vision, discernment, and Syncreate teaches me that finding resonance with my creative self requires regular encounters with surrender, intuition, and appreciation for the marvels of our imaginations.
We will be offering a further adventure with such surrender in April of 2014 for our Deepening Your Creative Life Retreat in a spectacular location in Marble Falls during the weekend of the April 4-6. If the idea of intimate creative retreat appeals, please send us an email (info@syncreate.org) telling us why you’d like to participate and how this retreat will further your creativity goals. Cost is $350 ($295 Early Bird registration by March 20th), which includes food, shared lodging, instruction, coaching, and activities. It’s going to be a profound experience, subtle, electric, connective. Perhaps you’ll join us and find your creative resonance as well.
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