So many people live every day of their lives in fear, in pain, and at high levels of anxiety. In this podcast episode, Julianna Raye discusses how creative and artistic people can use Mindfulness Meditation to prime the mind for creativity and free the mind from what inhibits creativity.
Looking back at her life 20 years ago, Julianna was in a lot of pain. When her therapist first recommended meditation, she had some doubts about what the practice could do for her. She didn’t have high expectations, which was probably a good thing! But still, Julianna did it because she thought that maybe it could help lower her anxiety and stress. But something magical happened! Julianna Raye discovered how profoundly physiological practice could be and that blew her mind. Who could have imagined that doing mental techniques could have such an impact on your over-all well-being!
Over the years, Julianna’s baseline of tranquility, energy, and emotional well-being has improved radically. It’s like a boomerang effect so if something difficult or challenging happens, she doesn’t get stuck for long. She can’t help but bounce back to this new baseline of a profound sense of well-being. So, Julianna experiences suffering and challenges like anyone does. However, she doesn’t get stuck the way she used to. She has tremendous bounce back as a result of systematically applying the skills of mindfulness to her life and the place she bounces back to is becoming increasingly more tranquil, pleasant, and full of positive energy. Living that way really changes one’s perspective and gives you so much more to offer. It’s not easy, because you have to be willing to walk through the pain you’ve been in the habit of trying to avoid. But, you’ve learned the skills to live through it in a new way and that makes all the difference. It can be hard sometimes, but when you learn how to do that and you begin to trust that process over and over again, it permanently transforms you for the better. And that’s well worth it.
Mindfulness Meditation is not about getting rid of any of our emotional life. It’s actually about enhancing and enriching our access to our emotional life. There’s this idea that you’ve got to get rid of unpleasant emotions like anger. But actually, with mindfulness you feel that anger. You feel it so fully, clearly and with so much acceptance that you release the energy that’s bound up in it. As a result, you don’t get so caught in it or identified with it and you take more appropriate action in the world. That is the real difference. When you’re truly making friends with your full range of emotions, which is absolutely necessary for creative expression, you’re completely free to tap into the limitless resource of your imagination. When you can turn towards your emotions and fully embrace the full range of emotions, that is also a kind of personal accountability, which improves your life. It enables you then to make more appropriate choices in your behavior and to have greater choices as you execute a role in a play, or as you perform on stage, or as you play your instrument.