Creating a Practice You'll Love

Please bookmark the new Blog site for more specific Recreational Music Making Sharings!

I just finished a week long retreat working with 12 other women in Costa Rica in which every day we danced, played music, practiced Hatha Yoga and shared our stories. One of the workshops I offered was called "Creating a Practice you'll Love." This is such a vital piece for an individual to continue growing and evoloving in whatever their art form is, and for the retreat we did, it felt to me so integral as a way to support the women in taking the practices we shared home and keeping momentum in their daily lives.

Practice is how we become. It can have many forms, and my definition of it is really more about connecting with source and self and allowing some time for that connection to deepen and mature over time. It is valuable and so vital to maintaining our passion and purpose in our lives.

Creating a practice you love requires a few simple external pieces:

1. Creating a space for your practice: free of distractions, kids, pets, phones, and computers. A place where you can really be alone and undisturbed.


2. Carving out the time for your practice: For some of us that's 15-30 minutes, if you have the time, I recommend an hour even if part of that time is just settling in, having a larger chunk of time allows for a deeper practice, but start with what you can commit to realistically.


3. A practice Journal to write and reflect on your practice and how it has affected you or what your frustrations were getting there and how you overcame them, but a special journal that is just around your practice.


4. Giving yourself Permission and requesting that from others in your life who may need to understand your need for not being bothered or disturbed in that time, perhaps your spouse or child.


5. Sacred Environment: Choosing music or silence, incense, candles, etc that help to facilitate the energetic space you are wanting to drop into

Internally, creating a practice you love requires a little bit more! If you already have a strong practice, ask yourself how much joy you are really getting out of it. I don't mean just satisfaction that you did your practice, I mean joy and inspiration! Do you leave your practice feeling excited and hungry for the next one? Are you practicing your passion or what you think you should be practicing?

If you fiind yourself stuck or stagnating in your practice, try these tips:

• Try a new space, perhaps go into nature and allow it to inspire you for a few days a week or more, or rearrange your practice space, pick a different room, etc. Buy a plant or change the decor a bit to bring life into the space.


• Switch it Up: Try something different, if you love to play drums but you haven't danced in a while, use your body to connect to the rhythm and see how that changes your relationship to your instrument. Try doing what's not as comfortable and familiar in your practice, step out of your box and make yourself grow, even it it feels akward, do it for that very reason!


• Expand and challenge yourself: Go take a class or a workshop or find a way to be in community with others who share your passion and to learn something new to bring into your practice that is challenging and makes you feel fresh and WOWed.


• Practice with others: Have a gathering and bring others together to practice, even if there are different forms going on, say you are a dancer, bring some other dancers and a few drummers together and practice together, others often inspire new ways within us


• Pray when you practice: use it as a way to move energy and manifest your heart's desires


Lastly, it's OK to take a break sometimes for a short period of time to allow for newness to come thru. Sometimes space is the only way to get to that next place. Becoming rigid or attached to our practice being a certain way is not a healthy way to allow for creativity to flow organically, and is often what gets us stuck so explore allowing your practice to be just being, and listen to what may be waiting to speak thru the space of letting go!

Enjoy!