Hello my lovely friends, followers and subscribers - thank you for being here, for supporting me and for sticking with me while I bask in some incubation time. I bring you plums of gratitude from my garden.
This week is full of birthday lunches to celebrate my 60 solar returns, and I plan to spend at least some hours in the art shed for some creative time, as well as pottering in the garden. We are having a heatwave here in the UK so I may have to time my pottering for the cooler hours or the shadier parts, and take to afternoon siestas! All in the name of creative indolence.
I love the term ‘creative indolence’. I discovered it in The Way of the Horse by Linda Kohanov, illustrated by Kim McElroy. The book and card deck are forty equine archetypes for self-discovery. I find their insight deeply profound and usually spot on. One of my favourite cards is Desert of Inspiration. It speaks to those times when doing nothing is more productive than doing something; when creative indolence leads to innovation.
The term creative indolence comes from John Briggs’ work in his book Fire in the Crucible: The Alchemy of Creative Genius, where he noted that artists and inventors alternate periods of intensive focus on a project with periods of ‘doing nothing’ - i.e. creative indolence. This period of incubation allows the unconscious to bring to the surface insights and answers, (while the conscious is otherwise occupied on a walk, in the bath, in the garden, on the bus etc), and illumination seems to come from the ether, suddenly and unpredictably.
The challenge is navigating the limbo between letting go of the old and giving birth to the new, which often leads us to prematurely give up on a dream or idea when we can’t make it happen quickly enough for our over-thinking intellect.
I find walking and gardening are my most effective paths of creative indolence, as well as pottering in my art shed. If I am chewing over an idea, I will go for a walk or pick up the pruners and more often than not the answers, or the words, arrive fully formed by the time I return to the house.
You may have heard of the term ‘wu wei’ - the art of not doing. I used to do this a lot with my horses, when they were alive. I would just hang out with them in the field, be with their energy and let ideas bubble up. There is often a pressure to be ‘doing’ something with your horse, but just ‘being’ with these graceful animals is often far more satisfying and productive - for them and you.
And you can’t develop a deep relationship with your own inner ‘knowing’ if you are constantly trying to figure stuff out with the rational, intellectual mind. Nor can you build a deep relationship with an animal that operates purely on instinct. My horses taught me so much about tuning into my instinctual awareness. And when my husband came into our family, they taught him too.
Our hassle/hustle culture also puts us under such pressure to keep moving, work more, buy more, achieve more, take more action, be busier, speed up our thinking with AI (or let it do the thinking for us). It would seem the art of ‘not striving’ has been lost, but it doesn’t have to be that way if we choose to press pause on the busy-ness and bask in an hour or two of creative indolence.
That’s where I am right now. Training my mind with a dose of wu wei, building the muscles of courage and creativity, allowing my birthday lunches, daily walks, weeding, and shed-time to illuminate what comes next as I step into this new decade.
There are things brewing, I can feel the ideas bubbling away - some are already surfacing. One of those is a series of collaborations, where I introduce you to some of the beautiful souls that inspire me, and I am sure will inspire you too. A new offering around defining your voice and self expression is still incubating, and almost ready to birth is the next iteration of the Moving Mountains Journey, this time as a 1:1 personal exploration.
Creativity and wu wei will always form a part of my work, (along with myth, story and the lens of Human Design and the Gene Keys) and so in the spirit of that I will spend the remaining hours of my birthday playing with air-drying clay. Next time I’ll show you what came into form.
Have a great week, lovelies, may you find time for your own creative indolence. And if you also have a birthday this week, then many happy solar returns, my fellow Leos!
with love and twinkles ✨
Wu wei all the way!
HAPPY HAPPY BIRTHDAY to you, dear Tina! Many more solar returns for you.
This was EXACTLY what I needed to see/read today of all days! That oracle card is gorgeous as well. Thank you for sharing your wise words with us.