Tag: pause

Permission to Pause

Steps to pause and refuel creative energy.

Excerpt from Reframe Your Artistry, the book:

Picture the last time you powered down. If you cannot recall, I’m not judging. I very much relate. Nights pass with a neglected feeling of wanting to connect with my husband at bedtime, even if it’s a few highlights or lowlights from our day. Too often, we’re both scrolling through our phones for latest updates and what-nots. Take it from me, power down more often. It’s liberating! And it’s healthy. And your artistic growth depends upon this healthy freedom.

            Silence your cell phone and camp out in your make-shift art cave. Or just make eye contact with someone, anyone, or anything, during prime time.  Maybe this sounds too good to be true, right away. But like Kevin Costner’s Field of Dreams, build it and it will come to you. Intend to make it happen! And it happens!

MECHANISMS TO PRACTICE PAUSING INCLUDE:

three part breath, three times: inhale – belly, chest, nostrils, exhale – nostrils, chest, belly

set an intention and visualize actions that embody that intention

make eye contact and follow a child’s or pet’s lead for ten minutes

journal for a few minutes, early in the morning or to engage creative circuitry during a lunch break

sketch a familiar spot

meander down an unfamiliar lane

back to the ground, study the sky

            With pausing practices under your belt, powering down is within reach. Pausing with natural elements, repurposing energy, or marveling at supposed mistakes shift our outlook. It warms up our brain to thaw technological chills. Pause and fresh point of view are some of the best nutrients for a twenty-first century brain. They are also vital nutrients to expand concentration to find your flow for art making. The practice of pausing is productive for the brain no matter what you’re engaging with. And I bet the time spent pausing off-line will translate into more time spent art making.

            Begin by setting aside pockets of time throughout the day and choose to pause. Some of these pockets may be straight-up pauses and some may be time for art making. Some pauses could be as brief as a drink of water or three even breaths. Some might be as simple as a two-minute shower or as long as thirty minutes meal. Length does not matter as much as mindful attention to one grace-filled thing at a time.

NOTICE THAT GRACE-FILLED THING WITH BEGINNER’S EYES AND ATTENTIVE REGARD.

            Pausing becomes second nature like flossing rituals. The tool’s brand may change, and certain brands work better for some than others, but the effect is similar. Pauses clean out excess goop and create healthy foundations.  The more habitual the practice, the cleaner the space. I consider quality of mind, or the health of our mind-body-spirit connection, to be our mental ability to maximize intentional living and decrease distractibility or reactivity. Give pause, with or without art making, the same hygiene regard as flossing. Like any habit formation, after a matter of weeks, it becomes part of your lifestyle.

by honigjq

One Minute Mindfulness

 

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Take a minute, and fly to a higher consciousness. 

Got a minute? Then you have all you need to be mindful.

If you ask me, hour long meditation – while good for us – is another layer of complication that most of us are either intimidated by or use as an excuse to not-getting-around-to-being-more-mindful.

Truth is, mindfulness is an outlook that pairs well with actions in the real world.

Rather than merely a way of being, mindfulness is something I come in and out of throughout any given day….just. ask. the. people. that. have. to. live. with. me.

Take a minute, now, to welcome mindfulness into your day. It could revolutionize our world, and most importantly – it revives your point of view regarding the world.

 

ONE MINUTE MINDFULNESS

  • SET AN INTENTION FOR A WAY YOU’D LIKE TO BE, TODAY.
    • For instance, I would like to be focused.
  • RECOGNIZE THAT THOUGHTS, FEELINGS, PHYSICAL SENSATIONS, AND CIRCUMSTANCES SWIRL WITHIN AND AROUND US.
    • Identify and acknowledge these aspects of being human.
  • TAKE A MOMENT TO BE INTENTIONAL, ALONGSIDE WHATEVER THOUGHTS, FEELINGS, PHYSICAL SENSATIONS AND CIRCUMSTANCES SWIRL ….
    • For instance, I will focus on this blog for one minute, even though my tummy grumbles.
  • WITH CLARITY OF CHOICE, CHOOSE TO RENEW YOUR INTENTION FOR ANOTHER MINUTE OR SET OF MINUTES.
    • If you can afford the time, renew a mindful minute.
    • If any one distracting thought, feeling, sensation, or circumstance needs to be addressed – and only if need be – move along, and attend to that…
    • Know that you can come back to this mindful minute, and clarity of choice        regardless of the specific intention, hour, or circumstances…

 

THANK YOURSELF FOR THIS MINDFUL MINUTE TO REFRAME YOUR ARTISTRY…

 

by honigjq

Pause with a Purpose

 

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Find Clarity with a Purposeful Pause

The more we practice pausing, the better equipped we are in an artistic moment of need. Take my cooking as a parallel universe. A decade ago, I cooked almost every night. I’d carve out thirty minutes from the rest of my schedule and labeled the time, “cooking.” Cooking is a form of pausing if you grant open space for its cause. I liked what I made, then. A few (perhaps lying to be polite) recipients even said they liked my meals. My pausing paid off.

Life happened, work picked up, a kid arrived, and I’d blog or hit the gym while my husband started to cook for us. He likes to cook and is great at it. Hallelujah! He enjoys pausing, in that way. While I didn’t mind the call of duty, I found I preferred to pause at the gym or via art making. My cooking skills went out the window. When I recently tried to make a meal for us, I couldn’t even come up with a menu. My mind had fallen out of the practice of making space for cooking. When I did try to cook, my husband hovered, reminding me to pay attention to an active burner and pan. It was more fire safety than micromanagement (that’s what he said). By this point, I had removed myself so far from the cooking pause that my personal experiences swallowed the meal I made long before it hit the table. I’d think about what to write about next or grab a few extra push-ups while noodles burned to the bottom of pans.

The more often you automatically check your Twitter feed while I’m trying to talk to you on this blog, you can bet you are doing a similar kind of burn. And if you usually review social media screens while art making, you more than have priorities wacked, you have your head wacked. Your frontal lobe short circuits, and the rest of your brain needs some loving. How may you recalibrate? Practice intentional pauses.

I needed to pause and show up to cooking if I had any chance to get back on track. Well, I didn’t. The further I removed myself from pausing in this way, the further my cooking focus and interests dissolved. When we pause in productive ways, in directions that matter to us, our lives become more fulfilling. Otherwise, you risk chronic distraction. Practice pausing in ways that interest you.

LIST THREE INTERESTS:

 

 

 

 

SPEND AT LEAST 30 MINUTES PAUSING WITH THESE INTERESTS, WEEKLY

TRY THREE TEN MINUTE INCREMENTS OR A 30 MINUTE INDULGENCE….PAUSE!
by honigjq

Find Your Artopia

 

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I prefer the imaginary places. Maybe that is apparent to you after reading my philosophical blah blah blahs.

My mind longs to go to places to which neither plane nor train can transport.

I imagine kindness as a core currency and what makes us different makes us beautiful. Thoughts of global compassion fire me up. Imperfection is sexy. And I hope these angles come through as distinct elements of my art making. For those elements are true to me and therefore belong to my true art making. Every artist will be different, as will every artistic moment or decade in a true artist’s life.

But what makes mindful art original is the awareness of the creator to be able to identify their personal, community, worldly, and imagined sources. With such awareness, narrow aesthetic values inherently erode, replaced by broader options, because no two people, no two places, no two moments in time could ever be the same.

If you are aware of what it is you like or what is unique to you, act on that impulse regularly. In time, those with appreciation for similar impulses will gravitate toward your work. Your audience may grow. But start with you, you are the base and the original audience to please.

by honigjq

Loving Tilted Frames

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Locate a tilted frame. Intend to marvel. We all have one nearby. Some of us are more comfortable letting them be. Before you supposedly “fix it” (DON’T YOU DARE TOUCH IT), sit back, relax, and marvel. MARVEL, yeah, MARVEL, that’s what I said. Quiet the rest of your mind and follow along:

 

Intend to marvel just as the frame situates. Pause and take it all in from a fresh point of view.

 

Find yourself in a comfortable posture, lengthening your spine to channel new energy. Prompt yourself to carry on steady breathing. Do not force your breathing, remember like your artistry, mindfulness is a human practice of let it be not be perfect. From this posture, notice the frame. At first, you may fixate on the tilt. You may want to fix it based on how you’ve learned most others like it should be. Let it be, instead. Stay as still as possible. All you are doing is looking at the frame.

 

Redirect your energy from tilts and shoulds. What else do you notice about the frame? Ornate or subtle design? Smooth or coarse texture? Take a good look at what’s inside the frame.

 

Thoughts, feelings, physical sensations may pull you from your intention. Practice self-compassion and do not judge nor force personal experiences away. However, like clouds, allow them to pass and come back to the intention of noticing the tilted frame. Intentions are the blue sky constant, same as flight, eventually we move through the clouds and clarity returns.

 

The frame is permission not to fix or fixate, letting go of what doesn’t matter, pausing long enough to sit with what does.

by honigjq