(painting by Jennifer Lee)
NOTE: This first appeared as a guest post on Way of the Happy Woman.
As a creative entrepreneur and life coach, I’m always integrating my many passions to better support me on my path. Two of my passions, yoga and creativity, serve as cornerstones for helping me bring more authenticity and awareness into my work. In my yoga teacher training, It’s Yoga founder Larry Schultz shared, “Ashtanga is a science of sequencing poses using bandhas, breath and movement to create change.” Besides describing the practice of yoga, Larry’s philosophy also resonated with me as a meaningful way to approach running a creative business (and living my life, for that matter).
As I grow my business I’m stringing together a series of small steps to create positive change. Bandhas, breath and movement help me consciously flow through the entrepreneurial world with more intention and ease.
How can these yogic elements help you off the mat and in your business?
- The bandhas are specific energy locks in the body. Engaging your bandhas connects you to your core strength and keeps you stable so you can stretch and move safely. The other week, I injured myself by overextended in a backbend without fully engaging my bandhas. I strained myself moving into a vulnerable position because I neglected to stay connected to my core. In business, bandhas are your core mission. What are you taking a stand for in your work? What will ground you as you challenge yourself to move beyond what you think you’re capable of? When I lose sight of my mission or compromise my core, I find myself overextended and overwhelmed. Aligning to my mission keeps me strongly rooted in what matters most to me and to my business.
- The breath connects mind, body and spirit. Larry would say, “Breath is food for the spirit.” Pranayama, or exercising breath control, helps you stay present and focused. When the mind wanders in yoga, you bring your attention back to your breath. Off the mat, many of us juggle so many balls that we can get distracted from our mission or disconnected from ourselves. If breath is food for the spirit, how are you feeding your spirit in your business? How do you stay inspired and connected to your own innate creativity? What keeps you present and focused? For me, inspiration and breath show up by giving myself plenty of white space to develop new ideas, to reflect on what’s working or not working and to practice self-care. What will breathe new life into your business today?
- In Ashtanga yoga, poses are linked together through fluid movement accompanied by breath and engaging the bandhas. The vinyasa practice can be quite rigorous and yet it has a graceful flow as one asana leads to the next. Being in business can be demanding. There’s a lot to get done and usually with limited resources. In the midst of these challenges, how do you maintain a graceful flow in your business? What actions can you take to connect the mini-milestones that make up your business plan? If you find yourself stagnant or stuck, what can you shift to move forward? What helps me move forward is identifying small steps and taking them one at a time. I have the big picture in mind, but I know it’s the culmination of taking all those small steps that will help me manifest my vision.
Yoga philosophy offers many insights into bringing more conscious intention and ease into your creative business and your life. Trust that the ancient wisdom of integrating the bandhas, breathe and movement can help you access core strength, focus and flow. And from there, you can create powerful, positive change on and off the mat.
Namaste!
The Creativity in Business Conference in D.C. this past weekend rocked! What an incredible experience connecting with so many creative visionaries and forward-thinking people. From improv games to on-the-spot tweets, from informative presentations to experiential, expressive exercises, I learned so much from everyone I got to play with.
Photo by ShinyHeartVentures via Flickr
Thanks to conference founder, Michelle James, for bringing together such an amazing community and for giving us a fun and engaging forum to explore navigating the new work paradigm. I had a blast leading the breakout session on the Right-Brain Business Plan and was inspired listening to the new insights that participants gained from accessing their creative intuition. I also enjoyed sitting in on the other breakout sessions.
Here were some of my take-aways:
Social Media Creativity and Innovation Panel with Jennifer Abernethy, Frank Gruber, Sam Rosen and Jesse Thomas, moderated by Jen Consalvo
The expert panelists provided some great insights and tips:
- The improv principles of “Yes, AND” and “make everyone else look good” also apply to building relationships in social media. They help us co-create a conversation that adds value and we help promote the good work of other people.
- Using hashtags helps you connect with others who have similar interests. I loved being able to find fellow conference goers on Twitter in real-time by searching for the hashtag #bizcreativityconf.
- While it’s great to meet people online, it’s even more impactful when you can build those relationships off-line. I couldn’t agree more! The past several months I’ve had the pleasure of getting to meet some of my online friends in-person in the Bay Area and in Boston and D.C.
- Grow awareness by tagging people who are in your photos and posts on Facebook so that it will show up on their news feeds.
- I learned about the cool new online gratitude journal thankfulfor.com that was started by panelists Frank and Jen.
- Graphic recorder Diane Cline did awesome job illustrating notes of some of the sessions. The visual map above documents the Social Media panel (you can click on the image to see a larger version and more tips).
Brand Story Mojo to Increase your Brand Value with Michael Margolis
Michael shared his framework for storytelling:
- Believe in yourself first and why you’re communicating what you’re communicating. Authenticity is key.
- Successful leaders are ones who can tell a story.
- We are always telling stories (most of them in our heads). Facebook and social media are a way for us to externalize our stories and co-create them with others.
- Entrepreneurship is about making something better and getting others to care. Stories help get others to care.
- People need to identify themselves in your story and then it will become their story. It’s a way to engage people.
Improv Principles and Practices in Business for Breakthrough Performance with Mike Bonifer
Mike gave some great examples of companies who use improv principles to enhance their business success and facilitated exercises to help us embody the learning:
- Companies tend to focus on the successful outcome. They try to re-create the next innovative product/outcome but fail because they really should’ve tried to institutionalize the successful process. The game is the process.
- Mike defines games as engines for exploring the theme of your narrative. They help create focus and discipline and they energize and invite team members to perform. Good games attract the good players.
- He had us play with the improv principles directly by inviting us to co-create a message around a random thing. It was amazing to see what our group came up with to market cookware. It was even more fun to get up in front of the room and “perform” it!
- Improv asks us to be very present with each other and to look for what we can build on. What a great way to leverage creativity in the workplace.
For more session notes, please check out Ana Ottman’s great write-up about the sessions she attended (including mine!).
I was thrilled to connect with Sam Horn, author of one of my favorite books POP! Stand Out in Any Crowd. I’m grateful for the insights and advice she generously offered. And in our improv session we learned we both don’t like to cook 
!
During the evening festivities, “quantum comedian” Vanda Mikoloski had me in stitches with her irreverent enlightened humor that pokes intelligent fun at spirituality and personal growth. She also did a great job of reminding all of us that we’re doing important work in helping to shift the consciousness of the planet and that’s nothing to laugh at!
To top it off, I had the good fortune of catching a ride to the airport with Jeff Klein, author of Making Good: Making a Difference While Making a Living. I enjoyed learning more about the inspiring work he’s doing with conscious capitalism.
I look forward to staying connected online with all the great people I met and continuing to learn from their creative genius.
This Sunday October 4th, I’ll be in Washington D.C. leading a Right-Brain Business Plan breakout session for the Creativity in Business Conference. I’ve been excited about this awesome event for months. I just got off the phone with conference founder Michelle James this morning and am even more pumped for what the day has in store!
Creativity is widely considered the new capital of 21st century business. New ideas, new innovations, new systems and new structures depend on accessing novel levels of creativity — for everyone, not just the creatives or “artists.” Everyone is creative and everyone could use an extra creative boost, especially in the world of business. At this event, we’ll explore different facets of creativity as the key driver in navigating and thriving in the new work paradigm.
This event is for entrepreneurs, leaders, managers, learning/innovation officers, trainers, consultants, coaches and anyone who wants to be more innovative and adaptive in the changing world of work. I bet that’s YOU!
I’m looking forward to being in community with other creative entrepreneurs and professionals. If I don’t see you there, I can’t wait to share with you what I learned.
Can you believe it’s already December?! Time sure flies when you’re having fun with your creative business (and your life!). It’s been ages since I’ve posted on this blog. I am working on a strategy for how to best share creative business resources here and through other means in the new year.
One of the things I’m excited about is starting a collaboration to create a telecourse for the Right-Brain Business Plan in the spring. If you want to be alerted to when this is happening, please sign-up for my Artizen Coaching Newsletter and I’ll announce details there.
With the year coming to a close, it’s a great time to revisit your Right-Brain Business Plan and vision for 2009 and beyond. I created a whole new plan for next year during the final day of the Art Every Day Month challenge (where the first Right-Brain Business Plan was born in 2007!). I will be working on fleshing out the details around marketing, new products and services, financial goals, etc. over the next few weeks. You can see more pictures of my 2009 Right-Brain Business Plan in progress on my Life Unfolds blog.
During this time of economic challenge, positive, creative visions for the future are needed even more so get started on your new Right-Brain Business Plan today.
