I spent a remarkable afternoon with a friend recently. As we walked near his office along a mesa toward the beach, my friend asked me about my work and I told him I was writing this book. He paused for a moment and admitted in a somewhat confessional tone that the one element in his life that he feels is missing is spontaneous play. He is internationally successful, committed to his marriage and his meditation practice, but he doesn't play.

As we continued our walk, my friend asked if I would teach him one of the movement practices and I described A Moment of Movement to him. He stood close to me on a rise of white sand, and with the sky and the ocean as his backdrop, began to dance. I fully delighted in the intimate pleasure of observing his arms sweep from side to side, his back curve and arch, his knees dip, and when he finished, I applauded with genuine enthusiasm. My friend then asked me to move so that he could observe. I stood yards away and closed my eyes. I had been feeling sad due to a conflict that had arisen with a professional colleague that morning so I let the melancholy move me. My head dropped to my chest, my shoulders caved downward, my knees drooped until I fell, and I rolled slowly across the sand. When I finished, I felt lighter, and I relished the moment of release and truthfulness.

"I get it," my friend said, grinning.

By witnessing my movement, he had come to understand what I had been attempting to say with language — that when a person dances, we see not only physical movement but also the inner life of the person who is moving. And by being the mover who is watched, we allow what is inside our hearts and bodies to come out, and we feel better.

My friend and I continued our walk, appreciating the touch of sand against our bare feet, the sudden emergence of the sun from a bank of low clouds. Our conversation flowed with a notable ease, quickened by our having danced for each other. When the time came for us to return, I asked my friend if he would do an experiment with me.

"What is it?" he asked.

"Take one minute and build a sculpture out of things you find," I said.

"One minute?" he asked.

"Okay, two," I said.

He leapt up and ran to a huge plastic buoy that had washed up on the beach. I stayed where I was, sorting white pebbles from shale. When we were done, we looked at each other's art. My friend had assembled a coil of ocean-drenched rope, propped on top of the buoy by a piece of driftwood, and at the foot of the sculpture he had set the bright orange shell and turquoise claw of a crab.

There is a word in Sanskrit, I learned from an article in a music magazine (and have now unfortunately forgotten), that means the way the psyche is affected when looking at art. I have since been told that there are many Sanskrit words describing specific influences that regarding an artwork has on the mind. But in English there are no such words so we are vague about how we are affected by our gaze. Yet we feel the transformation. And we are affected not only by looking at art but also by making art.

Walking back to our cars, my friend and I paused for a moment at the top of the mesa and, looking out over the rolling waves, we confessed to each other how happy we were to have played together.

The practices we had done were easy — games that anyone can play — and took only a few minutes each. Yet the effect was profound in ways that can be spoken and ways that cannot be spoken. The games we played were not particularly unique; we have all at one time or another danced for a minute and arranged objects in a way that has pleased us. But most of us do not spend our afternoons this way, even if we are with a friend whom we love and trust and are on the beach and the sun is shining and shells and pebbles and driftwood abound.

The reclamation of our creative spirits is an easy and enjoyable journey. We only need to devote a modicum of courage and short, but regular, periods of time to find our way back to our essential nature, which is unfettered, playful, and free. The heart of most spiritual teachings is the same: that each person is born in a state of perfection, and this quality is innate to being itself and does not require that we do anything at all to achieve it. But due to personal, family, intergenerational, and cultural conditioning we lose sight of our innate wholeness, and we look to the world of things to satisfy our longing. Yet our longing can only be satisfied by turning our gaze within and becoming aware of who we truly are: radiant beings, already wise, already rich, already content. We know this, but we forget. All we need do to remember who we are is to reconnect with the freedom within our hearts, which is always there, waiting for us to come home.

"In the greatest confusion there is still an open channel to the soul. It may be difficult to find because by mid-life it is overgrown . . . But the channel is always there, and it is our business to keep it open, to have access to the deepest part of ourselves."

— sSaul Bellow

Guidelines

You may decide to read this book and follow all the practices as you go chapter by chapter. If followed in this order, you will notice that the practices build one upon another so that you feel guided step-by-step through a process that unfolds and spirals.

You may read the book through and do only a few of the practices, or none of them at all, and then later when you feel the need, pull the book from the shelf the way you reach for a cookbook and turn to the section to which you are drawn. You will find that each section can stand alone.

You may read the book through ignoring the practices altogether and suddenly find yourself dancing in the living room, or singing while you walk the dog. The notions encoded in these pages can influence the mind whether you do the recommended practices or not, but you will benefit most if you engage in some form of creative self-expression on a regular basis. You might invent your own practices, or amend the ones presented here to suit your own taste.

You may pick up the book when you have an evening alone, or when you are going on a weekend getaway with a friend. You might close your eyes, flip through the pages, and land somewhere, guided by chance.

You might choose to set aside "studio time" and take an hour or two a week to do a combination of practices: movement, voice, writing, and visual.

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Copyright © 2002 by Nina Wise. Excerpted by permission of Broadway, a division of Random House, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.

Tags: Creativity, Spirituality

About the Author

For more than thirty years Nina Wise has taught and led life-changing workshops. A recipient of three fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, among many other honors, she holds degrees from the University of California in religious studies and the aesthetics of movement. Currently affiliated with Esalen Institute, UC Berkeley, and the Spirit Rock Meditation Center, she lives in Marin County, California. More