Giving this working artist bit a try, I have a lot of time to think all day now that my baby is in full day kindergarten… I’m also reading The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron. It has led me to thinking about how to sustain creativity and health. What do we need to do to refuel our creative tank, be healthy and a productive art maker?
I think about Maslow’s hierarchy of needs and what he wrote about being your best self. He studied famous people in history, like Abraham Lincoln, to find out what they did to become fully actualized human beings. Maslow found that we need first to have our physiological needs met, then safety, love/belonging, esteem and only then can we have self-actualization and reach our highest potential.
Yoga, also, is a system for self-actualization. It helps your mind, body and spirit be the healthiest it can be. It helps your body to sit or stand comfortably for long periods of time while writing, painting, drawing or playing music. If I were to create a hierarchy for creativity, it would look something like the one below.
I feel so very lucky to have my basic needs, or bottom tier, met (thanks to my dear husband, his employer, and living within our means) and wish everyone in the world had theirs met too. How amazing would our world be if everyone was walking around with a full belly, a peaceful mind, and had the capacity to work on their creative projects?
For the sake of design, I simplified my little hierarchy to this:
Here is the papercut work in progress:
To find out more about Maslow and see his hierarchy, click here.