letting your art run free

I started running, again, recently...

Running and I have an interesting relationship.

As a former D1 athlete, I ran to train. 

I ran to succeed.

I ran to score goals (soccer player).

In many ways, I ran to "survive."

I received a lot of feedback on my running...

"Great endurance. Needs to work on agility/mobility," were the words written on my eval forms at summer regional camp at 14.

"If you were my daughter, I'd never let you run or play again," the words from my surgeon in the recovery room after my 3rd knee operation at 22.

Running was a means to an end.

"Better get running if you want to pass your fitness test."

"Run faster, harder, longer."

Running was, by definition, something I was required to do that never seemed to come super easily to me.

Yet, during my divorce at 26, running was my therapy.

And all of my life, I would watch the "runner runners" - you know those folks - the ones that float down the trail and secretly wish I could move like that.

I had ultrarunner and author Katie Arnold on my podcast last week. 

We talked about this, specifically...and what it feels like to come back from catastrophic injuries to the medicine that means most to us.

For both of us, it turns out, that's running and writing.

Reading Katie's new book, Brief Flashings in the Phenomenal World: Zen and the Art of Running Free was a journey home for me.

And over the course of the last few weeks, I realized that the half marathon I said I wanted to run a few months back has no real meaning for me.

I simply want to run so I can feel what it feels like to run.

The irony in this is that I never really understood how to run for the sake of running, itself, until it was taken from me.

And now it's all I want to do...

Isn't that the way? (cue Joni and Big, Yellow Taxi)

I share this with you today to spark your thoughts about the things you've told yourself you need to make something other than what it is really is.

Allowing art to be art and your vocation, your craft, your holy skill set to be your offering.

In this chapter of your life, in this season...

• What form of artistry do you hold sacred?

• What transforms in your world when you treat it as an art form?

• What moves within you when you put down all pressure & fully enter where it's asking you to go?

Everything I create in my business these days goes through this filter.

Not surprisingly, everything I need meets me here.

Here's to the aliveness in your art...