Why Your Creative Wellness Is Essential
Embracing your creativity can bring a profoundly positive impact across all areas of your life including your work, relationships, and most importantly, your wellbeing. Creative wellness is a critical component to cultivating an embodied and integrated state of wellbeing. For many of us, the creative label may feel foreign or reserved for technically gifted artists. It may come secondary to the practical and tangible qualities we find more accessible and safe.
I invite you to consider creativity as the process or act of expressing yourself and exerting your power into the world around you. It is the vehicle in which your imagination, visions, and ideas can take form and it is something that you are already practicing in some capacity. Creativity like any quality or function is strengthened with greater focus and application, and by developing this capacity we expand our range for making a unique and authentic mark in the world around us.
Engaging the creative muscle develops our capacity to experiment and innovate with greater ease, it enriches our senses and connection to the life, spaces, and people around us. It is where inspiration is birthed and fed, and provides a generative force to enhance what we are engaging within our work, relationships, and lives. It brings joy into the process and enables us to contribute our perspectives, voice, and inner selves with greater confidence and authenticity.
The core element of exploring creativity is to do it your way. Find avenues to create that are meaningful to your lifestyle, longings, identity, and comfort level. Don’t get caught up on finding the right classes, tools, time, or intended end product; this is about nourishing your creative wellness and allowing it to become a natural extension of yourself. What is important is to devote time to your creativity and be willing to engage in a process of learning and experience. For example, devoting 10 minutes each morning to a creative ritual with commitment or carving out 3 hours across the week for creative time are ways to build a creative discipline.
The content of the creative space is yours to explore, evolve, and enjoy over time. For some, it may be a personalized ritual of lighting up a favorite candle on their desk, one page of free writing, and one page of doodling. It could be dedicated time dancing to your favorite genre or attending a movement class that you’ve never experienced before. It might be paying attention to the ways we dress, accessories, and present ourselves in the world. It might be getting creative in the kitchen by introducing different colors, smells, and challenging routine ways of preparing meals.
The discipline serves as a nurtured space to connect with our inherent creativity, yet the effects of this overflow into other spaces and time throughout our day as we become more aware and invested in our creative nature. We become more in tune with our emotional states, and energy levels and have a healthier amount of space and outlet when needed.
Take a moment to consider what being creative means to you, how it already shows up in your life and what is one creative practice you can add into your life. Start simple and welcome it as a positive challenge to your priorities, habits, and routine. Your creativity is a gateway to an inspired and empowered life – and well worth the investment
Sahar Kazemini is a Wellbeing Educator, Creativity Enthusiast & Belonging Advocate. Providing high-impact coaching, facilitating workshops, and curating creative, healing, and intuitive experiences; she takes an intimate and intentional approach to support communities with sensitivity to their cultural context, sense of identity, values, and personal practices.
Sahar is diasporic Iranian – Thai, a daughter of immigrants, and a complex human being. She utilizes creativity to activate the heart, and brings the imagination alive through her poetry and written word; exploring themes of wellness, spirituality, healing, and magic. Her creative works are a means of self-exploration and making meaning of the world within and around her. She is a storyteller, and a creative trailblazer, constantly reinventing herself and the life around her.
She has worked as an educator and facilitator within institutions across the globe including New York, Singapore, and Thailand, and has expertise in intercultural awareness, community engagement, and identity development. She holds a Psychology degree from New York University Abu Dhabi, and a Masters in Higher Education from Columbia University.
