Response to Reading

Chi and Creativity, Vital Energy and your Inner Artist
by Elise Dirlam Ching and Kaleo Ching


Chapter IV: Exploring Chi and Creativity

“The capacity to create is part of being human -whether that means making art, writing, teaching, cooking for friends, gardening, giving a massage, nurturing relationships or following a spiritual path. Nourishing and maximizing your vital energy, or Chi, is an essential part of fulfilling your human potential.” - from book jacket

The authors of this book spend a lot of time introducing meditation and self exploration techniques like guided imagery, keeping various types of journals, and practicing exercises for sensing Chi. Chapter 4 pulls these techniques together as it explores the correlation between Chi and the creative process, for the purpose of making the secular activity of creative process sacred.

The chapter sections are dived as follows:

Sacred Time and Space
Chi and Creativity Altar
Your Personal Place in Nature and Circle of Chi
Sources of Chi
Chi Awareness to Stimulate Creativity
Creativity and Ancestral Wisdom

Each section explores its stated concept through example, then pulls the guided imagery and journaling into exercises to be done separately. I found the imagery helpful to record into a digital recorder and play back later. The journaling explored written and art journaling techniques, which I've been combining in my summer art journal, and the later activities suggest creating costuming or talismans to wear as part of further chi rituals, particularly the ancestral wisdom or altars to help guide and focus the creative process.

I enjoyed the activities, particularly how the authors crossed the boundaries of many cultures with their work, bringing ideas of
Tai Chi, Hawaiian surfing culture, artistic endeavor and Native American values into one set of activities. This appealed to my own multi-cultural sensibilities, and brought together a variety of trainings I have experienced in my life, including Tai Chi, Shamanism, work with the Artist's Way, and growing up in southern Californian surf culture. Little did I know when I picked up the book that it provide such a bridge that paralleled my own experiences and serve as more of a reminder then instruction into ideas I had previously explored.