Today is the first day of my Calm Creative Retreat - it’s an online retreat, with creative wellbeing exercises and prompts landing in email inboxes each morning. There’s no schedule, everything is to be worked through in your own time. If you’ve not signed up already, this is what’s happening for Day One.
Reflection exercise: unpicking your emotions
How has your festive season been?
It can be a complex time for many of us. It can be joyful, and magical, and an opportunity for connection, but it can also be stressful, and demanding, and tiring, and a time when grief or tensions are particularly raw. And it can be all these things, all at once.
Often we try to tell ourselves that we're purely joyful, because that's what we feel is expected of us, even though being constantly filled with joy is far from realistic. At the same time, we can allow negative emotions to overwhelm us, making us forget the little moments of magic. Today also sees a full moon in Cancer, bringing a lot of intense emotions and making the highs and lows particularly pronounced. If you've been in the Christmas pressure cooker, spending a lot of time with people you don't normally spend quite so much full-on time with, or more time than usual alone, that impact is likely to be felt very strongly.
So in this exercise, we're going to work to untangle our emotions, and look at them all objectively.
Firstly, sit quietly, somewhere you won't be disturbed and where you feel safe. Close your eyes, and concentrate on your breath for a few moments. Then, in your mind, revisit the last few days or weeks. What have you been doing? Who have you been spending time with? What were the highs and lows? Try to remember all the little details, and just notice the different emotions that you experience as you look back. Don't judge them, just notice them. Pay attention to how they show up for you, now, in the memory. Where do you feel them in your body? How do they feel - do they come with a sensation of heat, cold, discomfort, tension, unwinding...? What colours and shapes do you see associated with those feelings? Allow any feelings to come up, and just allow them to pass by - think of them as clouds crossing the sky, they move and change, and the sky (that's you) remains unchanged, it just allows them to pass. Clouds aren't good or bad, they're just clouds.
When you're ready, come back into the room and open your eyes. Write down all the different feelings that you observed, and the colours and shapes that accompanied them. You can then create a colour chart to show the different emotions that you have passed through over the festive season, or you could draw mountains and valleys to represent the highs and lows that you have passed through - some highs might be bigger than others, and sometimes the lows might be bigger than the highs, and sometimes vice versa. You can also colour your mountains and valleys with the appropriate colours to represent your different emotions. Interpret your feelings on paper any way you like - the key thing is to allow yourself to acknowledge the different emotions that you've passed through and to recognise the impact that they've had on you. And now you can move on.
You may find it helpful to spend some time journaling on what came out of this exercise for you, and how you feel in the present moment.
Creative prompt
Use this prompt as a starting point to inspire your ideas. Take it anywhere it wants to go, use any creative medium that calls to you. Incorporate it into a project you currently have on the go, or use it to start something new.
Today's prompt is:
Family
If you enjoyed that, and you’d like to take part in the rest of the retreat, sign up FOR FREE here: https://mailchi.mp/9336e40611c7/s2ntxgtt83