Nurturing the inner, yin stages of creation as a sensitive, creative woman
I’m sure many of you who have been in the world of sharing your heart led work and creative projects, understand the feeling of truly having nothing that you feel drawn to create and share ‘out there.’
And you may also have felt a sense of guilt or wrongness around this- because most of us in the modern online business/creation world have at some level internalised the belief that we should always be creating new things and producing outwardly- or at the very least we should have a very consistent cycle where our ebbs and flows are clearly mapped out in advance.
Yet I know that often there is no way of pre-empting our deeper rhythms. For some of us these quiet periods can go on for a while, whereas for others there may be shorter patterns of ebbs in what we outwardly create.
We may have times when we have so much to create, so much newness, so many things that are asking to bubble over from our inner world into tangible form.
And we may have times where it seems that very little is happening.
Sometimes, there may be a sense of so much running through you, yet not being able to, or not feeling ready to translate any of it into actual words, or things that you can tangibly share with others. (an indication that things are coming to the surface, and moving into natural coherence, but are not quite ready yet).
There may also be the feeling that you have completely emptied yourself for the time being, and anything you create at this point will be forced from a place that is not true to you (an indication that it is deeply necessary to receive and replenish)
A third feeling is when you feel completely full and ready to burst, yet something seems to be holding you back from actually crystallising your creations (an indication that there is something deeper occuring in the subconscious that is asking to be acknowledged and tended to).
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I think I’ve spoken about this before in one of my courses, how often the actual external creation (writing the content, creating the course, building the offering), only happens once all of the unseen ‘work’ has gone in to gestating the project- the receiving, the collating, the agendaless simmering of ideas, the allowing things to settle, the natural siphoning down of vast concepts into what feels most important/timely. (This has actually been the process of every single one of my blog posts- over a hundred of them over the years, none of them scheduled or forced).
This gestation time is also a time where I believe the body is allowing us to establish a greater sense of safety around creating and sharing our work. For many of us in solopreneurship, the type of work we offer/share, is not necessarily conventional, and can bring up a lot of subconscious fears around what might happen as we move deeper into our more intuitive, heart-led paths and soul expression.
Yet what often happens, is that because this external creation is deemed as the most important part of our business (and the part that is seen to create the money..) we are constantly trying to figure out the ‘how to’s’ around making our ideas tangible, overcoming procrastination, or developing discipline around creating our work.
However, I believe that actually, our external creations are a very natural thing and will come about exactly as needed- as long as we feel supported and nourished through the inner gestation process that naturally encompasses any creation.
The problem is, we live in a culture that has not set us up well to allow ourselves this nourishment during our inner processes, instead modelling a constant rush-produce- achieve-mentality.
As a result, what tends to happen during this gestation process, is that we spend most of our time berating ourselves for not ‘creating’, and trying to force and contort things into tangibility. This leads to cycles of never truly allowing the receptive, yin process of creation to take place- which at some point leads to our creative energy feeling sludgy, exhausted or blocked.
I believe we intrinsically know this, which is why our deeper wisdom draws us inward at points.
Yet usually we are taught to view this as a negative, as procrastination or self-sabotage. But actually, I see this deeper wisdom of our instinctive body not as the saboteur, but as a protector.
Our body intimately and intuitively knows the intricacies of all of our past experiences. It knows our unique make-up and senses the nature of our unfolding soul in a way that no-one external to us could possibly understand- and in a way that even we ourselves could never understand with our intellectual mind.
Our body is full of wisdom and isn’t trying to derail us or keep us stuck, but is instead asking us to respect and listen to her needs- and then nurture these needs accordingly so we can move safely, naturally and joyfully through a creative process that is right for us.
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Often, the things we do when we are seemingly procrastinating/self-sabotaging, are actually just the ways that we are naturally balancing our energies and drawing attention to our deeper emotional needs.
The conditioned mind, though, with its analytical and judgmental function, usually tries to step in according to what we have societally internalised as ‘right.’ This means we tend to place an intellectual overlay above our natural rhythms, true needs and intuitive processes, according to what we have been taught is the ‘correct’ way that things should look and be.
It can be easy to come out the other side of these gestation periods and proclaim from the heightened flow of our external surges of creation that ‘It’s easy!’ and ‘You just need to do ‘x, y and z to be more productive and motivated!’
It can be easy to position the internal, quiet stages of creation as the bad, unproductive stage, and place the outer, the finished, the tangible on a pedestal.
Yet there is deeply vital and imperative work being done in these quiet periods- especially as women who NEED our creations to gestate and grow in the womb, in the darkness, in the private mysteries of the interior.
And if we could just stop berating and pushing and trying to forcibly push our creations out, these slow times could feel joyful and nourishing, rather than frustrating or ‘wrong.’ Instead of feeling shame or not-enoughness around the idea that ‘it is taking too long’, we could remain anchored in our knowing that our lives- our creations, our businesses, our art, our writing, our children, our minds- need time and space to breathe, and root and be and crystalise. We have deep rhythms and intuitive paths and processes that cannot be imposed upon us from the outside, as though we are commodities in a production line.
Because what ends up happening if we feel frustrated and wrong, is that we exhaust ourselves and take away the nurturance that is needed to effectively birth what it is we truly hold. We stop creating from a natural sense of fullness, fertility and inspiration, and instead create from scarcity, fear and rush. We exhaust ourselves trying to always be on output mode, rather than surrendering to the deep yin in our creative rhythms. We chip away through the linear mind, pushing so hard against our naturalness, and disconnecting from the heart.
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I understand that it can often feel so hard to soften into this perspective, when all we know of business is that the final external creation = income. When our main education systems are based around end performance/grades, where we are tested on what an outer authority has deemed as being important. When the normalised ways of working linearise us out of our natural cycles of ebb and flow, to make things easier to control and to meet economic imperatives.
Yet I also know that for the woman on the path of heart, her potency comes from honouring these times of inner nurturance, so she can actually create the things in her business (and life) that she is truly aligned with. Because from this space of alignment, everything flows more easily for her. But most importantly, she is honouring her true rhythms and needs, and coming back into balance with the feminine wisdom and heart that holds her deeper power, purpose and peace.
Belinda x
hi, i’m belinda
Writer and founder of Soul & Self, an online space for sensitive, creative women who want to deepen into the call of soul and unearth healing, purpose and peace through the feminine path. Here, you’ll find writings and resources on softer approaches to healing, living and sole business/creation, that nurture and enrich your feminine soul. Start here to learn more.