Surrender and Breathe

My inspiration comes from many places … a conversation, something that happens to me, nature, the list goes on.  However, it wasn’t always this way.  I used to fight, or more accurately, suppress my sources of inspiration.  I thought that I had to stick to the tried and true types of work that I had always done.  It had to be perfect and even more it had to conform to what I thought it should be.  Unaware, I had stifled the best of myself.

I have worked in clay off and on for years and have recently returned to it.  The first day I sat down to get back into throwing pieces on the wheel, the universe pushed back hard on me.  Of course, I didn’t know it at the time that the universe was rebelling against the picture I had created in my mind of what my art should be … I just thought that I was having an “off” throwing day.

I decided to take a break and hand-build some pieces for fun based on a concept that had been swirling in my head ever since a conversation with a friend.  You know, one of those “wouldn’t it be cool if …” discussions.  I figured I’d clear my head and get back to throwing the next time I was in the studio.  I lost myself in the creative process.

The next time in the studio, I found myself hand-building again.  No urge to start at the wheel to “get back in the saddle,” so to speak.  As the days in the studio continued and translation of my ideas stopped taking place on the potter’s wheel something wonderful started to happen.  My work has taken a turn into something infinitely more personal, more meaningful and more unique than previously.  I’ve become more aware of my inspiration sources and the ideas flow more freely than before.  I’ve always “said” that I am an experimenter, however it is now fact.

A few days ago I found myself telling a friend that I needed to re-do the online presence for my art.  As I struggled to explain what I just somehow knew was right, a lightning bolt went through me … I had changed.  I had found my true self and the expression of that self in my work.  The realization of how I had suppressed this true self all these years became evident.  Those pieces that I created and loved the most over time were those that had managed to sneak through my unconscious suppression.

My yoga teacher always says in class that we need to just surrender and breathe.  I feel like for the first time I have truly applied that concept outside of my yoga practice.  Words cannot express how amazed and grateful I am for the results.

Namaste