How Inner Child Exploration Leads to More Creativity
By: Dr. Denise Renye
If you’ve spent time with children, or you remember from being a child yourself, children are naturally playful, curious, and creative. Give them a cardboard box and they can create a castle, a car, an airplane … However, many adults see a cardboard box as just a box – something to put stuff in or an object to break down for recycling. Sometimes adults lose touch with that childlike part of themselves and forget how to be playful, curious, and creative.
One way to reawaken that innate sense of wonder and creativity is to engage with inner child exploration. When I work with folx, I call this venture “inner child play” instead of “inner child work” because it’s not work in the traditional sense – something laborious and dull – it’s befriending a part of yourself that has perhaps been dormant for many, many years. Rekindling this side of yourself and getting to know your little ones can be a playful, joyful act. These little ones may be different ages – an infant, a 3-year-old, a teenager, and anything in between. There is no set age. It’s whatever appears for you and that can change from day to day.
Getting to know these dear ones is not only playful and joyful, but it’s also creative. That’s why one example of a simple exercise for getting to know your inner child is drawing – not with an agenda or to create a masterpiece, but rather with the sole purpose of creating.
Children know how to create innately and inner children do as well. With inner child exploration, people are able to spark their creativity in ways that are perhaps unexpected. Maybe they rediscover a love of playing music or become more creative in the kitchen. Or it could be they don’t acquire any hobbies (new or old) and instead feel more alive in general. The creative spark of life can be renewed within. This makes sense because, in the Indian psychology paradigm of the chakra system, the second chakra is one that focuses on creativity and it’s also understood creativity is the spark of life.
Why? And why this chakra? Why not the throat chakra, which also has to do with expression? Because sexual energy is creative energy and creative energy is sexual energy. We are often taught and think of sexual energy as just the way in which we reproduce or physical intimacy. Doing so is an oversimplification. Sexuality has five circles and yes, sexual energy can be about one body part with another body part, but it’s also any act of creation – a project, art piece, and yes, a baby too. Sexuality is life force, or prana in the Indian psychology/yogic system.
Your creative, and thus sexual, energy is life-sustaining. It’s an expression that is unleashed and followed. Your creative expression is an energy that can be surrendered to and followed. It is the flow of life. The flow of life can be blocked for numerous reasons – primarily trauma, but also social conditioning. Inner child play can unblock that flow and transform your whole person.
Sometimes, it can also help to meditate specifically on the second chakra. By connecting with this energy wheel (chakra) of the body, you may be able to get in touch with the deep wisdom the body has to offer you. Through trauma, we are often disconnected from our body sensations and, thus, our sexual feelings and expressions. In the words of my teacher Dr. Anodea Judith, “Sensation is a valuable information source for all levels of consciousness.”
I offer you this second chakra meditation. You can find a longer version of it in audio form in my shoppe soon.
· Find yourself in a comfortable seated position where you are connected with the Earth. Notice how your breath effortlessly enters and exits the body.
· There is nowhere else you need to be at this time. No one needs anything from you. This time is for just you.
· Notice as you inhale the breath enters the body through the nose, passes the sinuses, and moves all the way down into the depths of the lungs.
· The lungs expand outward so there is even more room for the life force, the breath to enter.
· Notice your back body expanding outward and how the breath moves further down into the lungs, the lower belly, and the back. In the depths of your belly, gradually become aware of a warm orange light that is glowing more and more. It glows and grows, finding its way through your pelvis and your genitals.
· Notice what this glowing light feels like. What is the temperature? What is the quality of it? What does your body tell you when you focus on this area and allow the energy to flow freely?
· When you’re ready, come out of the meditation and journal about your experience or any messages you received.
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