The Quarantine Chronicles: Day 8

A couple weeks ago, I had my weekly Singer-Songwriter Mastermind write songs about quarantine. Some were rather serious and some were hysterical, but one lyric stands out in my mind...

"Dear Quarantiiiiiiine, my hands have never been so cleeeeean..."

And this...could not be more true.

I think about that song every day, multiple times, as I wash my hands, and chuckle to myself.

Today's creativity prompt has to do with not just having clean hands but a clean mind.

Uhhh...does that mean brainwashing, you might ask?

Well...to a certain extent...

Yes.

But not in the way you think...

More like brain cleansing.

I would like to invite you to join me today in practicing a creative exercise I have been doing almost daily for the last 20 years - but with a twist.

For those of you that are familiar with the brilliant book, The Artist's Way by Julia Cameron, we are going to do Morning Pages today! And I am going to introduce a form of this that I have developed over the years called, 'Gushing'.

But first a little explanation...

Morning Pages is, indeed, a form of brain cleansing/brain drain. It is three, long-hand pages, written as fast as you can. Whatever is in your mind, just put it to paper and get it out there.

It's usually encouraged to do this first thing in the morning, so that all the fears and anxieties that might be taking up residence inside our brains, can get out onto the page and we can examine our thoughts and see if that is really what we want to be thinking. Cleanse them, so to speak. But you can, in fact, do it whenever you want.

The most important part of this exercise is to stick to speed...which, to be honest, is not something that I really understood when I first read The Artist's Way and started practicing Morning Pages. Doing it at a slower pace still has benefits - which is chiefly why I continued to do Morning Pages for so many years. But the main benefit from taking the speed seriously, is that truly:

1) You get to really take an honest look at what is going on in your mind

2) When you can write, as close to the speed of thought as possible, you get to step outside of judgment, which is...the most delicious place ever...this is your true voice...and the voice of the creative force within you combined...this is when things start to get really exciting.

You want to start out just writing, as fast as your little hand can manage (which at first may take some practice before it doesn't feel like your hand is about to fall off - we are soo not used to writing by hand in this tech saavy day and age). Whatever is in your mind is what you write, so even if it looks like..."I'm so tired, I'm so tired, my head really hurts, ugh, my head hurts so bad right now" that is totally okay. Whatever you happen to be thinking is what you put on the page.

If you are anything like me though, a true perfectionist by nature, journaling (including my Morning Pages practice) can look like this:

Write a few sentences...

take a sip of coffee and look back at what I wrote...

wonder if anyone will ever read my journals if I died suddenly and what they would think about what I just wrote...

resolve to throw away said journal soon or just scratch out part of what I just wrote...

This kind of self-critical journaling process is the opposite kind of journaling experience to what we want to practice. This kind of experience is filled with self-judgment and creative paranoia and this...is not a mind cleanse. This is a mind...something else.

Which is why I created 'Gushing'.

Gushing is basically brain drain/thought cleansing through spoken word. So...if you ever had a fantasy about being a spoken word artist? Now is your chance.

Jk. Basically, I like to take my phone and turn on the voice memo recording device, and just talk, at the speed of thought, as fast as I can without stopping, for 15 minutes minimum. Once I get going, it feels so good it's usually easy for me to go 25- 30 minutes and I am not exaggerating. Once you get through the subtle (or not so subtle) fears and anxieties that are being held captive in your mind and start to speak through to the core desires, dreams and ideas that are swirling at your center...you will find that there is a startling amount of revelation, wisdom, new energy and LIFE that lies within you bringing you into a realm of creativity that you might not even know is possible for you to access.

Countless times as I've practiced, both Morning Pages and Gushing (but more so Gushing because the speed allows me to get to a more profound space of non-judgment), I've started weeping tears of joy, simply because that inner voice is encountered...and there is simply nothing more beautiful.

It's a bit like praying without ceasing...just laying your entire heart, mind and spirit out there without limitation. It is so freeing, so cleansing, so brilliant...it makes you feel connected to your heart in the most extraordinary ways.

So...I encourage you to try this exercise and really go for speed. That is the key here. Sometimes I will Gush and make a voice memo recording and then send it to a secret e-mail address that only I know about...and then delete it from my phone. This isn't necessary but there is something about recording yourself that holds you accountable to the speed factor. Maybe one day I will go back and listen to those recordings....or maybe not! Hehe.

At any rate, I believe so much in this practice of brain draining in order to really give your mind a rinse, take a look at what is actually taking up residency in that head of yours, and then once it's outside of you, deciding which thoughts you want to put back in, which thoughts are going to really serve you.

That brings us to a whole other process...the practice of being intentional about what we are going to think. But giving our minds a good thorough cleanse is the best way to start us on the road to discovering which thoughts feel really good to us versus which thoughts do NOT.

That's it for today, my friends. Happy Friday Eve! And let me know how this goes for you!

There is so much love for you here,

JennyRebecca