Photo #1 courtesy of Julie Bleadow-Wilson on Pinterest.com,  Photo #2 courtesy of wonderhealing.net

Highly creative people are especially in tune and aware of the mind-body connection – we live and breathe so that we can create. What is happening to us is deeply and irreversibly connected to what we create. As artists we are expected to be a product of all of our experiences both internal and external. This is so obvious that it is often overlooked in the bigger picture of creativity. We are all products of our environment, but some more so than others.

Most likely you have all known people who are super sensitive – to sunsets, to sadness, to death, to birth, to chocolate chip cookies and everything in between ….they feel more deeply. They absorb the world around them, inhaling it deeply and storing it in their limitless mind-body experience storehouse where even the smallest event or the tiniest living being is worthy of remembrance and honor.  This is the art Buddha’s home, in my opinion; the Buddha whom I lovingly, reverently and affectionately reference frequently.  At the other extreme are people we have actually known and even perhaps loved (once) who are like the highest quality Teflon – everything seems to bead up and roll right off. They have the depth of a birdbath – they skim the surface of life. How they manage that is beyond my understanding, despite many years of trying. It is a form of denial perhaps, or maybe just fear in its simplest form.

Most of us live and thrive in the middle ground of those two extremes, happy to be there, but even then occasionally surprised at ourselves when we slip off the dead-center bubble position over some thing or another that takes us off guard with its power to shake us to the core. That is so human. Usually however, we are conscious and aware, balanced, normally functioning and just fine, thank you very much.

If you are an artist, writer, creator of any variety reading this, I am wondering where you place yourself? Are you super-aware or medium or just not all that aware of your own mind-body connection?

The six major types of consciousness are:

Auditory – Awareness of sounds

Gustatory – Awareness of tastes

Olfactory – Awareness of smells

Tactile – Awareness of touch and bodily sensations

Visual – Awareness of what we see as color, shapes, etc

These five types of awareness depend upon the totality of your mind and body  – your general health. If all of your senses are up and running then you have a lot of incoming data to work with – all systems are go – you are receiving information twenty-four hours a day – filtering in what to keep and discarding what you do not need. It’s a full time job. You have to be an air traffic controller on steroids. It is exhausting, especially if you are an artist – so many ideas, sights, smells, conversations, feelings and tastes. It all factors into your daily experience. But if one or more of these senses is a little OFF or under the weather, or totally gone in a major permanent way, that requires an enormous mind-body compensation.

However! There is also a sixth sense – an awareness that depends upon none of the above  – it is a state of mental consciousness  – and it is aware of all the other senses but not necessarily dependent upon them. It is also more powerful than the sum of all the others, but less well known. Some people do not acknowledge it – others swear by it and use it daily. It is a sort of super-human tuning in, or special consciousness, to everything your mind-body connection has to offer you for a rarified, limited space of time. You will recognize it when it arrives, and you will most certainly know when it has left. It comes and goes, and lucky be you if it visits you often, as Yoda might say.

If you are an artist, a writer, an athlete or any kind of creative creature and you have experienced the astonishing level of sensory awareness known as the zone, then you know that is where miraculous things can happen. Master paintings are done, the best music is written, literary classics are penned and athletic records are made and  broken – almost effortlessly. Many books have been written about this phenomenon – most notably the national bestseller titled FLOW, The Psychology of Optimal Experience by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi.

The Chakras are zones of your body which are the seat of all the mind-body connections. That is an entirely fascinating and astonishing subject, worthy of many other blogs. But let me just say that the seat of creativity lies in the second Chakra – the area of your body that is the most sensual, the most sexual, and the headquarters of sensuality itself. Those of you who have experienced being in the zone, doing your best and most brilliant work, for hours on end almost at the exclusion of the outside world might agree with me that it is an extremely sensual and pleasurable place to be – akin to making love. In my blog archives is a post of many months ago which I titled “The Love of Making Art is Like the Art of Making Love”.

Are you, or have you ever been “in the zone” ? My wish for you is that you find that place and visit it often.