Building a ritual aspect into your creative practice can do wonders to help rouse that often elusive “creative flow,” by priming our subconscious and imaginative minds to turn on and show up. Like Pavlov ringing the bell, we train our creativity to have the expectation to wake up and show up when we’re ready for it.
I like to think of this less as a command or demand, however, and more of a consensual and reciprocal request—we’re building a relationship here, with our creative self and imagination. And what the creative flow asks in return, your reciprocity, is to show up for it as well, to come to the page, the easel, the instrument, to bring your presence and attention, on a consistent basis.
I’m giving you just some very basic ideas here, a simple recipe for you to adjust, add to, and build from with whatever inspires you.
1. Create a creative space.
Begin with creating a space for creativity; choose or build or create a section of your home—a room, a corner, a desk, a segment of your desk—to be a designated creative ritual space.
Of course, you can always create elsewhere, but it helps to ready our brains and bodies to write, draw or be creative when we come to a specific place for it. It also helps us transition from other types of work into creativity to have a separate dedicated space, even if it’s just moving to another side of a desk or table.
And if you don’t have the capacity to delineate a particular space (like, you have to work and create in the same place), you can use some of the techniques below to decorate or embellish and then activate the space—to demarcate your ritual creative time, temporally rather than spatially.
2. Decorate the ritual space with objects, images, colors, scents and sounds that inspire you.
Gather one or more objects to decorate your space. You can add rocks, crystals, plants, pinecones, seeds, photographs or paintings, sculpture, images or quotations of inspiring artists, leaders, dreamers you admire, candles, incense, music, instruments, etc. Have fun with it. Take an inspiration walk and gather natural objects.
We’re really turning our space into an altar here—an altar to honor, worship and empower our creative selves, and to connect with whatever higher (or lower or deeper or internal or external) force we channel when we tap into our creative power.
You can tie these to the season, to the moon cycle, to the current astrology. You can adjust and update them as desired. Have fun, this is part of the play.
3. Activate the ritual space.
Design a way to signify to your subconscious that you’re entering creative mode. This may be turning on a specific lamp, lighting a candle, burning incense, bringing a specific glass or specific drink to the space/altar, saying a phrase, singing a song or line, or playing a song on a device.
Think of this as a way of turning the space on, setting the bounds of the ritual container. When we do the same ritual regularly in preparation for our creative time, it really helps influence a muscle-memory effect on our creativity, helping prompt and nurture inspiration.
4. Incorporate movement, meditation, and mindfulness.
Designing a ritual that includes some kind of movement at the beginning has a two-fold benefit—first, it helps us (again) access the subconscious and creative part of our brain, which is intricately and inextricably connected to the physical body; and secondly, it boosts serotonin and helps us feel good before we start our project.
Do what movement works well for you: yoga, stretching, dancing and qi gong are some of my personal favorites.
Doing a short meditation prior to beginning your creative practice is also deeply useful—alerting the subconscious mind (the ringing bell), and activating the alpha brain waves so important to creative work. I have a short meditation here that I often use before my own writing time.
The key with this is to strike a balance—you want enough mindfulness/movement to channel that creative flow, but not so much that it dissuades you from actually starting! Play around with different approaches to see what works, and change it up when you need to. Some days it may be a one-minute meditation and rocking out to a song, others it might be a ten-minute yoga and breathing practice.
The idea is not to get too rigid (unless you find that a really strict practice works well for you), but to get yourself into the creating groove—and find pleasure in it! Pleasure is key! When something feels good, when it’s fun, we come back to it again and again.
5. Turn it on.
Do the movement +/or meditation. Light the candle and the incense. Call on your creative genius, your ancestors, the spirit of your project. Drink the coffee/tea/water. Activate your creative space, and work in it. Close it when you’re finished. Repeat.
