Creativity in Practice: Making Space On and Off the Mat

Written by Sarah James

Oky doky, this is great. A blog! First off, I love words, some of you know this (veering between the most unexpected and ridiculous of metaphors as I teach on one side, to the near constant repetition of ‘nice’ and ‘lovely’ on the other – both very underrated words I would argue). I do a lot of writing for my job(s), for my mind, and yep, I have a list of favourite words. I’m a magpie for letters and their sound.

 Anyways, I digress, what I’m trying to say is – it’s one way I create from the sinews of thought in my head. So, when I was asked to pen, or type, a blog post I said I would do so on the subject of creativity.

I suppose creativity is some sense of form, in whatever medium, and moulding it in your own way to recognise ideas, possibilities, feeling – all those wonderfully intangible things. Whether that be with words, marks, sound, or something else.

Somewhere on the EBS website, it says I’m a ‘creative sequencer’ when it comes to yoga. I guess that’s kinda true. Transitions are absolute joy to me, that shape-shifting stuff. Exploring form in body’s figure – and reconfiguration from there. Why simply go from warrior two to half-moon when there’s an eight-minute journey which could get you there including several detours and an unnecessary but totally pleasing switch-up to face the back of the room en-route.

A creative yoga class doesn’t have to mean stitching together all manner of shapes. For a part-perpetual motion machine like I am, my interpretation tends to lean in that direction. But equally I’ve taught and been to other classes where it’s been in the stillness, the slowness, the space where something else has shifted to create an experience.

Even in any one place or shape in between, even if you spent an entire class lain still on the mat, there remains creativity because it offers the start of something else. Space for potential.

Space, I think, is at the heart of creativity. Creativity gets squashed. It can get made to feel small, made to feel unimportant, and downgraded on a societal hierarchy where output is so often given greater value than input.

Something central to me, that’s never left even when I haven’t fed it, is drawing. Oh I am a visual body. If my eyes are resting on colour and form, my whole being is nourished.

Over the past couple of years, I’ve purposefully given it space again. I’m determined to do so, and still, it’s so damn hard. The world is not default-easy to dedicate time and space to something with no immediate application or function. Even worse, the outcome might not be ‘good’. What a waste hey.

I’m writing this sat on a bed with my boots on a highly white duvet (don’t tell Airbnb lady) waiting for the skies to turn in my favour to go out walking and drawing. Sometimes you’ve got to gift yourself a bit of space. That doesn’t have to mean a five-hour train trip to Cornwall, although I highly recommend.

It could be a moment, a place, a person that just opens up the possibility of potential.

There doesn’t need to be a canvas, a composition or anything really at all as a result, but hopefully wherever you end up offers space for creating the start of something else. Maybe even, something you.

How do you find space for creativity? Let me know in the comments below.