Grow Creative Wings
  • START HERE
  • MY ART
  • Best Articles
  • Creative Practice Coaching
  • eBooks

Unique Creative Voice: The Challenge of Communication

28/7/2015

4 Comments

 
drawing of Warrior 2 Yoga pose overlaid with text: Unique Creative Voice - The Challenge of Communication

I admit it. Teaching Yoga in Spanish is not the way I'd normally suggest you go about finding your creative voice.

In fact, I spent 10 years in the studio looking for mine. But something didn't quite gel.

Then one fine day, with the turn of life's wheel, I found myself in front of a room full of Spanish Yoga students with the words "Teach Me" burning in their eyes.

​Here was a whole new level of challenge unrelated to contorting myself into extreme postures in front of a group of strangers. 
​
The Challenge of Communication
​

​
My challenge was:
  • Communicating ideas in a language that is not my own. A language in which, I'm definitely competent but I will never speak like a native. 
  • Communicating to people from a culture in which I live immersed, but that will always be 'other'. 
  • Communicating ideas and systems from a third culture that I don't pretend to have more than a passing understanding of, despite my lifetime practice.

For this kind of communication, I had to reach deep within.

I had to bypass all the usual paths. 

I had to find something that resonated so strongly within ME, that I couldn't fail to get it across.

Reaching Within - and Without
​
​What came out was NOT the traditional Yoga of my early Sivananda training.

What emerged instead was:
  • a Yoga informed by my own physical shortcomings. A lifetime of injuries and the corresponding recoveries I've fought for.
  • a Yoga influenced by the myriad of physical disciplines I've practiced. And the insight I've got from them about how the body works.
  • a Yoga focussed by thousands of hours of creative work. Work that honed my ability to quiet my mind.
  • a Yoga of the 21st century in which, thankfully, the internet offers a window onto every kind of Yoga style practiced on the planet.
In other words, MY Yoga.

Collage of yoga photos © Nuria Vargas 2015. Used with permission
Photos of one of my Yoga classes taken by my very talented student, Nuria Vargas.
With each class I grew more confident.

I saw the rapid progress my students made.

The happiness on their faces as they made it.


Something important had shifted. I had freed myself from a belief that had bound me for a long time: That there's a RIGHT way to practice and teach Yoga.

I had become a creator.
​

And so in life, in art

I didn't need rocket science to figure out the same thing needed to happen in my art life.

If my way of teaching Yoga is as effective and valid as anyone else's, then surely my way of making art is too?

And if MY Yoga is a mixture of all my different life experiences, then my art must be that too.

And if I what I did to teach those Spanish students was find an authentic way of communicating, then isn't that exactly how to reach an audience for my art?

Seems I spent so long looking in the studio for my creative voice, I forgot that what I need to express visually isn't about art. 

It's about life. 

And life happens outside the studio.

Even if we need to go back inside to express it.

Your journey towards a unique creative voice HAS to be a reflection of you. You're not going to find your creative voice the way I did. 

What part of YOUR life might you need to bring into your art?

More on why you need to get out of the studio

  • Art Is About Being In The World (by my favourite Art Biz guru, Alyson Stanfield)
  • Why we need to get out of the studio
​

© Author: Cherry Jeffs



Liked this post? Word of mouth is the main way for indie creators to get known.
I'd be SO grateful if you shared this with someone you think might like it!





4 Comments
Alyson Stanfield link
28/7/2015 01:48:10 pm

Cherry: Thanks so much for the reference and the kind words. I'm honored to be your favourite!

Reply
Nuria
28/7/2015 03:54:32 pm

Un placer haber disfrutado de tus clases.
Has cambiado mi vida y mi forma de entender el Yoga.
Me has enseñado que el Yoga es un camino, y no un destino.
Gracias!!!

Reply
Cherry Jeffs
29/7/2015 12:58:11 am

Gracias por ser una alumna tan atenta, alegre y consciente Nuria :)

Reply
Cherry Jeffs
29/7/2015 12:58:53 am

The pleasure's all mine Alyson :)

Reply



Leave a Reply.

Before you go!

Photo of Cherry Jeffs smiling
Get my Quarterly Newsletter:
SUBSCRIBE
Contact Me
Press

Art Cherry Jeffs and Cherry Jeffs are trading names of Craving Distraction Ltd, Reg No. 9131318
​Reg. Office: Flat 1, 14 Orchard Gardens, Teignmouth TQ14 8DS, Devon, England, United Kingdom

PRIVACY POLICY
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.
  • START HERE
  • MY ART
  • Best Articles
  • Creative Practice Coaching
  • eBooks