Return to Presence with the RAIN of Self-Compassion Practice

If you are finding the weight of the world a touch too weighty, and your thoughts are echoing such, if feeling a little displaced, vulnerable, uncertain or insecure, try this potent practice, complete with its easy to remember acronym, to help you return to calm presence. Sharing as part of a new series of humble healing posts for conscious creatives to heal your writing, life and art, for it truly is a potent practice.

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Rainer Maria Rilke on Trusting in Nature, Loving Small Things & Living Questions

In the great silence of these distances, I am touched by your beautiful anxiety about life, …even more than I was in Paris, where everything echoes and fades away differently because of the excessive noise that makes Things tremble. Here, where I am surrounded by an enormous landscape, which the winds move across as they […]

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Find Clarity & Presence with a Swift Meditation for Busy Creatives

If you’re feeling a little mentally clouded, a touch hazy in the head, and want to liberate yourself from this place, so you can get on with the work — with writing, creating, and making your art — one swift means to clarity and calm is to practice this simple meditation technique each time you feel overwhelmed, stressed-out or in […]

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Happy Birthday, Frida Kahlo—Arte, Amor, Dolor: Pain & the Healing Power of Art

“Nothing is worth more than laughter. It is strength to laugh and to abandon oneself, to be light. Tragedy is the most ridiculous thing,” said Mexican artist Frida Kahlo, who was born on this day in 1907. In honour of her 110th birthday (though Frida preferred to state her birth year as 1910 — the start of the Mexican […]

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9 Ways to Make Peace with the Inner Critic

No matter if your creative confidence sings from rooftops or hides in the darkest garret, rise above the rantings of your critical voice and make peace with your inner critic with these techniques. Speak Kindly to Yourself “Every time you judge yourself, you hurt yourself,” as Brazilian lyricist and novelist, Paulo Coelho once said, a statement that is true on many levels, and […]

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Poetry | Tonight I Can Write (The Saddest Lines) By Pablo Neruda

Tonight I Can Write (The Saddest Lines) Tonight I can write the saddest lines. Write, for example, ‘The night is starry and the stars are blue and shiver in the distance.’ The night wind revolves in the sky and sings. Tonight I can write the saddest lines. I loved her, and sometimes she loved me […]

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15 Tools Inspired by Eastern Wisdom to Find Stillness in a Storm Part II

“Life has no other discipline to impose, if we would but realise it, than to accept life unquestioningly. Everything we shut our eyes to, everything we run away from, everything we deny, denigrate, or despise, serves to defeat us in the end. What seems nasty, painful, evil, can become asource of beauty, joy, and strength, […]

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When Things Go Wrong—15 Tools Inspired By Eastern Wisdom to Find Stillness in a Storm Part I

 During life’s inevitable shifts, these tools & teachings help you find calm in chaos, ground & centre you, giving you a little control in how to respond—in even the trickiest of circumstances. Read Part II for 8 more practices, here. “I feel like an inadequate machine, a machine that breaks down at crucial moments, and grinds to a dreadful halt,” wrote poet, novelist and memoirist, May Sarton in […]

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[Interlude] Compassion, Vulnerability & My Unexpected Plot Twist

“In order to flower, self-compassion depends on honest, direct contact with our own vulnerability. Compassion fully blossoms when we actively offer care to ourselves,” wrote Tara Brach, psychologist, meditation teacher, speaker and author of True Refuge: Finding Peace & Freedom in Your Own Awakened Heart. Reading these words, an uncomfortable chord struck, for despite my musings on […]

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