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on February 02, 2012

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The amazing health and well-being benefits of Creative Practice

According to the world health organization February is Healthy Lifestyle Awareness Month . The world has taken a different turn since the Covid pandemic and physical, mental and emotional well being is much more considered. There is awareness about the well-being benefits of creative practice on the psyche, spirit and the mind. I can recall a time when many creative practioners were not physically healthy at all and were bound up with unused energy spinning off the planet with anxiety. Now there are more integrated practices like yoga and somatic movement techniques helping people and artists to process better. In 2022 I did a qi gong course with my teacher Dr Thomas Jahn. I was one of those creatives who was bound up and having panic attacks. I had a far too great accumulation of energy from over stimulating myself drinking, drinking coffee, in my personal life, at art fairs, galleries, artist talks, in my studio and was not sufficiently expressing any of that. I was

Once in a shuttle between Port Elizabeth and Grahamstown

A miner and an au pair. It was that moment when you meet someone you have never met before in a public place and hold your breath, wave all friendly in the vein hope that that is the person you are looking for. I think it was a Toyota of some kind, a gunmetal green shuttle; if that is a colour, and a driver waving at me across the zebra crossing. A match! He was in fact from Blunden Tours who have the monopoly in the Eastern Cape for Airport trips between Port Elizabeth and Grahamstown. I had been on a Mango Airlines early-bird flight from Cape Town International: Lock door, get into Uber, arrive at airport, thank driver, pull little case on wheels to the sign board, check the check-in counter number, check myself in, check my need to be controlling when I’m stressed, stand in a queue that is not moving despite gate closing in 5 minutes. Deep breath, bite bottom lip. It was not yet 06:30 and my heart rate was racing as I had downed 2 espressos to avoid airport coffee.

The Art of Well-being: Part 4 Magic at hand

It took me a while to understand what my friend Tanya really meant when she told me the story of an epiphany she once had: She said she had had the realisation that her hands were a powerful tool. That she could use them to change her environment - transform things. She could take a boring room and make it an interesting room. She could plant a garden. She could cook a yummy meal. I watched her do it again and again; making her environment magical. I love being in her space. I had always thought it took money, but, have come to understand that through creative action it mostly doesn't. Resourcefulness, yes, but not a lot of money. I am the kind of person who needs to be told things twice, or a few times more, for it to really land. And, so after I met my dear friend Inge and witnessed her enthusiasm and power to choose a level of quality she wishes for her life I too started to understand that I had the power of using my mind and hands to make magic. It is not exclusiv

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