Creative Resilience Day 10: Balance through breath

Week 2: Practicing Mindfulness starts today

Today’s post is part of 31 Days of Creative Resilience, a monthlong journey where we’ll gently tend to our creativity ❄️

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On this 31 day journey, we’ve just wrapped up the first week themed around embracing our embarrassing selves and shedding light on the inner voices we’d rather hide. PHEW, it’s over!

Loving the shadow parts of self takes a lifetime—I, for one, feel much more relaxed now that the week is over and I can see some of the “ugly art” I shared fade into the archives. Despite this lifelong process towards self-acceptance, what a relief to know that we are now armed with tangible methods to unlock joy in our practice and give ourselves permission to create.

With a little bit more self-knowledge, joy, and freedom with ourselves, we enter in the second week of Practicing Mindfulness. No, we won’t be meditating every day (though that’d be great too!) Mindfulness, or being fully aware and attentive to the present moment, can be practiced through eating, walking, and of course, making art!

My mindfulness practice started with yoga. On the early mornings before my summer college internship in NYC I would trudge down the stairs bleary eyed, ruing my sister for dragging me along to her yoga studio. Back then I was a proponent of anti-exercise, swapping out gym memberships and bike rides for pints of strawberry cheesecake ice cream at the late night cafeteria. So yoga was completely new to me, and I had to practice it at 7 AM, three whole hours before my normal wake time, to squeeze it in before the morning commute.

Still, yoga kept bringing me back. The flow was beginner-friendly so I could keep up, and the teachers emphasized the importance of the breath and ujjayi breathing (an oceanic sounding breath that helps to anchor one’s attention). Wherever my mind went—what am I going to eat for breakfast? Why can’t I lunge as deep as the next person? Wow, this is hard. Wow, this is easy!—my own ocean sound brought me back to the moment.

Through yoga I’ve gotten to learn many other breathing techniques, or pranayama in Sanskrit. My favorite of these is alternate nostril breathing, which is what we’re going to try today.

Today’s prompt: Balance through breath

Let’s start with a quick science recap. The left hemisphere of the brain controls the right side of our body, and the right hemisphere controls the left side of our body.

Modern neuroscience shows that our brain functions through networks across both hemispheres, though there are general patterns in how different types of thinking activate different regions. Most commonly the left brain is associated with verbal and analytical thinking, and the right brain is associated with spatial awareness and visual perception. You may have heard of the classic text Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain by Betty Edwards that reinforces this stereotype.

Regardless of which side of the brain we’re using, we all need breath to balance our body and nervous system. Alternate nostril breathing, or nadi shodhana in Sanskrit, allows us to balance and clear our energy channels (nadi) and equalize the flow of breath.

Source: Huffington Post, “What Your Breathing Tells You”

Alright, enough pretext! Before you begin your creative practice today, listen to and follow the instructions in this audio as I lead you through a few rounds of alternate nostril breathing.

You can always return to this breath exercise when you feel scattered or overwhelmed to recenter. I especially like to use it when I catch myself multitasking across five different tabs while pretending to create.

If you’d like a bonus prompt to guide your art today, create a symbol that represents this exercise. No need to make it make sense, or to explain it in any way. It could be inspired by the counts of breath, the right and left nostrils, or any bodily sensations that came up for you.

My response

No commentary from me today. Symbols are meant to stand on their own!

Week 1 highlights

Here is just a sample of the amazing artwork created for 31 Days of Creative Resilience by members Kim Beyer Rausch, Riana Tadeo, RG, Bianca Ng, and Ariel Piazza! I'm so touched by all of your vulnerability and openness through this journey. And if you've been catching up with the prompts or just joining today, know you're joining us at exactly the right time.