Show your rough work

This felt like an important piece for me to write—on art and shyness. You can read it here, and below. I've had some very positive feedback from women friends who have encountered the same issues in their creative lives which made me wonder how much of a women's issue this is? I am very interested to hear from men who have experienced this too!

Do you remember being asked to do that in school? “Show your rough work” makes me think of taking maths exams (which is already enough to make me feel a bit nervous) as that instruction would come without fail: Show how you arrived at your answer, demonstrate your process.

In terms of maths or science, I suppose that the examiners wanted to make sure we weren’t making random guesses or cheating, and I certainly have made a few wild stabs in the dark in an exam hall. I’m okay with that, as indeed I am with showing the sums that helped me solve an equation.

But where the idea of showing my rough work became really difficult at school, in college and in my creative life now, is in art and music. As a child, I drew endlessly; on paper, on walls (sorry, mum and dad), furniture (sorry, bedside table), in home-made books, as a means of illustration, as a way of telling a story, as a way of expressing myself.

I got a lot of positive feedback about my drawings and was aware that people thought I was artistically gifted—which is a special thing to feel. But somehow by the time I was a teenager at school, this encouragement had muddled its way into the misunderstanding that I was expected to come up with something perfect and finished; that art was a kind of “ta-dah!” gesture.

At a school parents’ evening, when I was 15, I remember my brilliant art teacher saying to me and my parents that I needed to worry less about the end result—the final painting—and get more involved in the prep work, the sketches, the rough studies. I felt horrified. I thought: I’m sorry, but I just can’t do that.

Similarly, I fell deeply in love with piano music age 5, hearing my dad play Bach’s Moonlight Sonata. I took classical piano lessons which I loved, but which emphasized very specific directions, when what I really wanted to do was go heavy on the sustain pedal and lose myself in the music. I was not in love with someone else’s idea of “getting it right”, but it didn’t seem to me that there any recognized value in playing with sound.

My shyness about exposing my creative process moved from being an external thing to an internal thing, too. I didn’t want to expose my own vulnerabilities and experiments even to myself! Often, the times I feel most free to experiment as an adult is when I’m on holiday, somewhere warm and beautiful and free from expectation; my own or anyone else’s. When I’m in the city and in my work zone of achieving and competing and hurrying, I have found it very hard.

But I don’t want to live like this—not least because it doesn’t really feel like living, to have to monitor my own creativity. So, lately, I’ve been stepping into the shyness. Feeling the awkwardness and moving through it, knowing that there is something on the other side of that fog that’s worth getting to.

My yoga teacher, Tara Glazier, told a beautiful story about Krishna and Radha recently. Lord Krishna, the supreme Hindu deity, was lost in a terrible storm. Radha, his love—often described as Krishna’s heart—came looking for him. She took his hand and led him back to his village. His heart led him home in the storm.

There was a great storm here in New York yesterday. I took out my harmonium and sat with the door wide open onto the patio as the rain came down. I started singing devotional chants and let myself move into the music and the rain and the sense of something bigger. Then a song came. It seemed to unfold itself, and I went with it—even though I’d decided to record the rain and the chants and the red record button was on, and if my made-up song wasn’t “good” it would be there on my iphone as “proof”.

I loved what came out. It sounded true. I love that when music is honest it can be like holding a seashell to your ear and hearing the sea; only instead you’re hearing someone’s soul. There is of course work to be done with a song sketch or a study drawing or any kind of doodle; there is sculpting, and more experimenting and honing and refining and pursuing. A sense of, where will this go? Catching the melody and riding it.

But I think the need to present something as perfect is not helpful, and not actually true. We don’t try to polish our own souls; it’s more, I think, about taking a journey towards touching our own truth or light, and maybe expressing that, if it feels natural to do so.

I love yoga asana because it is a practice.There is no finished “ta-dah!” result, no goal beyond residing in a truth that’s already inside you. We are always moving towards. We are stretching, extending and relaxing in awareness; moving, finding and discovering. Yoga is “showing your rough work” in all its own perfection. And in this sense, it is practice for doing so in our lives off the mat. It helps me sing. It helps me draw. It helps me live honestly.

May you find creative joy in your vulnerability this week.

Saying yes to the heat

My latest post is about saying yes to the heat, even if it involves a burly Russian masseuse thwacking you with oak branches. You can read it here, and below.

For the first time in my life, I went to the Russian baths. Have you been to the Russian baths? It’s really quite something. I knew a little about what it would be like beforehand: that there would be lots of hot and cold, and (the part I was most intrigued by) that one is likely to be thrashed with a big bundle of leaves in the name of good health.

I’d already spent a lovely afternoon at Coney Island with my pal from London: we’d braved the whipping winds and sand on the the beach and ridden the Wild Water log flume ride at Luna Park, so my inhibitions were down. Really, once you’re on a rollercoaster and it’s inching its way to the top of its climb, pre-descent, there is nothing you can do but surrender to the experience and the joy and the screaming and the delicious terror. Which is what we did.

So we got to the spa nearby, where we were taken in hand by a commanding, jolly Russian man called Yuri. He told us that we would take a medium hot sauna then two very cold showers, then a very hot sauna followed by immersion in the icy cold plunge pool, and we’d receive platza—the treatment with a broom of oak leaves. He told us that one of the many benefits of the hot and the cold cycles is that at first your body goes into “fight or flight” mode, but once you keep taking the counterintuitive course of action, your body kind of throws in the towel and de-programs itself—“Fine, do what you like”—and starts to relax more deeply.

Yuri was emphatic about the benefits of heat on the body; on the circulatory system, the skin and on the organs. To receive platza, you lay on the highest (and hottest) bench in the sauna, and the swishing of the leaves creates yet more heat. He said we might find it uncomfortable, but if we fought it, it would only feel more uncomfortable, more panicky. He said, with a shrug, that you have to say yes to it.

So there I lay, with Yuri gently thrashing me with a bunch of twigs, sweating and feeling very, very hot. But I did let go of the panic; even when he pressed the twigs right down on my belly where my liver is. (Okay, the second time he did it, I pushed the leaves away after a while, but still!) Similarly, I dared to go in the freezing plunge pool afterwards, which I’ve never done before in any kind of spa; I’ve always been too scared. It felt wonderful! Absolutely stimulatingly relaxingly amazing.

And here’s what it got me thinking. It put me in mind of Tara Brach’s excellent book, Radical Acceptance: Embracing Your Life With the Heart of a Buddha. Brach’s approach is about gently but directly looking at what’s really going on in your mind and body, and accepting it. This is a radical approach because it goes against our instinct and conditioning to move away from pain, fear and discomfort as quickly as possible.

It’s important to note that in saying “Yes” to what’s going on, you’re not necessarily condoning it or agreeing with it, you’re just not struggling with it. Equally, in any kind of abusive situation, getting out as fast as possible is imperative. But what Brach is talking about here are the basic everyday struggles and tussles we all get into with our minds and bodies.

She offers one particular meditation which was a real eye-opener for me, called “The Power of Yes”. In it, you sit in a comfortable seated posture, calm down and find your breath, and then call to mind a situation that you find hard or painful or uncomfortable. You summon those feelings fully, and then you say “No” to them. You watch what happens in your body when you do this; you see how the resistance manifests itself physically. You imagine yourself continuing to say “No” in a month’s time, a year’s time. When I first tried it some months ago, my body felt like a flower curling up, in physical distress. Then you return to your breath.

Next, you bring to mind the difficult thing again, and this time you say “Yes” to it. As I said, you’re not saying, “Yes I agree with this, it’s brilliant.” You’re simply accepting it for what it is. And you notice what happens in your body and your mind. Again, you imagine saying “Yes” in the future, and you observe. My body stayed open; my mind stayed open. The feelings that arose, in this case of sadness, discomfort and anxiety, were able to exist simply as they were. It was a profound and liberating exercise.

So that’s what I thought of, as Yuri swept me with the oak broom in the soaring heat. I mean, I thought that, and periodically, “Get off!”, and also “Ooh, that’s nice”. I surrendered to the heat, and the heat did its transformative work in my body and my mind.

May your own Yesses this week bring you health and clarity.