Baba Yaga Altar for shadow work.
What is a creative block?
I work a lot with creative blocks in my shamanic practice, it’s a fascinating process! Clients are often held back on an ancestral level – possibly feeling that they’re ‘not allowed’ or ‘not good enough’ to create what they want to in the world. There are patterns to be released here and blocks to let go of. Whatever you do, hopefully you feel inspired by doing the work you love. If you’re not doing what you love, then make small manageable steps towards your dreams. When you work with passion in your life, the universe will step in and support you in your endeavours and try and make things easier for you.
A creative block could be:
- A ‘heavy’ pattern of behaviour,
- A self sabotaging response,
- A leaking/loss of energy over a long time or from a traumatic experience,
- A negative self belief/ contract with ourselves
- Anything that we tell ourselves or do that stops us from moving forward towards our creative dreams and future.
How can we track to the root of a Creative Block?
Ask a shamanic practitioner to track the root of an issue for you if you don’t feel confident doing this yourself. In my own practice, I would get a client to pick a Khuya (a stone imbued with loving kindness from my mesa, or medicine bundle) and blow the essence of their creative block into it. Then I would track and tune into four animal archetypes: Serpent, Jaguar, Humming Bird and Eagle to help me to see where they were being held back.
The pattern or leak could be on an ancestral or karmic level and it could also be soul loss. Tracking will be able to help to determine where the root is very quickly and then we make a plan together as to how to proceed. One of the most powerful tools to use around the issue of creativity is shadow work.
Our shadow contains our juiciest creative power or treasure. they are the parts of ourselves that we repress because we don’t feel good about showing them to the world. The older we get, the harder it is to keep these shadow parts hidden away.
Facing our fears and shadows can help to dissolve a creative block.
Shadow work also can help us to be more discerning with our energies, seeing where we leak or give away energy instead of using it for our own creativity. In order to be creative we need to be organised and to look after ourselves, nurturing ourselves with natural foods. Listen to your body and develop body awareness. Keeping a dream diary or creative journal has also helped me through some of the most difficult times in my life.
One of the ways we can approach our shadow parts is by journeying to a specific part of ourselves that may need to be brought into balance through the arts, ceremony or visualisation and having a conversation with them.Often, these repressed parts of ourselves just need recognition and love, in order to re-integrate and harmonise with our energy fields once more. They are only creating havoc or resistance because they are trying to get our attention.
The story of Baba Yaga (found in Clarissa Pinkola Estes ‘Women Who Run With The Wolves’) is a very powerful metaphor for learning to trust our intuition.
Other ways of clearing creative blocks could be through illumination, extraction or entity release .
Allow yourself the freedom to express yourself through art, music, sculpture or dance and allow those aspects of your true self to really shine and be integrated. When we engage in a creative practice, we receive inspiration and well being on so many levels.
In my next post, I will be talking about shamanic ceremony and creativity.
May you walk in beauty
For all our relations
Ali
