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Hi, I'm the Maestro. 🙋🏽‍♂️

Touch your body

Published about 1 month ago • 3 min read

Read time: 3 min 15 sec

Whatup Reader!

Hopefully that subject line got your attention. I promise this isn’t a bait and switch. I actually want to talk about touching your body.

I make it a point to try and create more content than I consume, however, consumption is often an integral part of my inspiration process.

These days, much of what I’m consuming is serving as examples of what I don’t want to create, which, conversely, makes the good stuff stand out that much MOAR.

A few years ago, Bonnie Week’s put me on to writer, Cole Schafer, and I joined his newsletter, The Process. (Fun fact because I like to share stuff with you folks: The newsletter was called Sticky Notes when I joined it, and it didn’t have that same direction or focus that it does now. He rebranded. You’re allowed to rebrand. It’s ok.)

I’ve actually written about Cole before (3 years ago actually), and while I still find a fair amount of his stuff to be a little too metaphor-heavy (saying this so you don’t think I just blindly support whatever he comes out with) I respect his creative process and value the insights he offers up.

A few days ago he sent out an email that 100% inspired today’s email. In it, he wrote:

“One of my best friends is a wonderful psychologist. His name is Ian Holbrook. He is the first person I call when I am in a bad way.
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Ian never gives me answers. He instead helps me find them on my own. When I am feeling overwhelmed by a particular emotion––anxiety, sadness, shame, fear, jealousy––he encourages me to pay attention to where in my body the feeling resides and place a gentle hand there.
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To give an example, I feel anxiety in my throat. When I am anxious, I place a hand over my throat. This light pressure disperses the anxiety and leaves behind a quiet, reflective calm.
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We can develop the same practice but with our creative work.
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Underwhelming, unoriginal work tends to manifest between the ears––usually in a whirlpool of confusion and little visibility. Whereas extraordinary work seems to manifest somewhere else: the nose, the throat or lower in the heart or stomach.
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If we can gain an awareness of where in the body our rawest, most honest creative work comes from, perhaps we can return to this place again and again.
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Most enterprises aren't lacking in thought or expertise. They're lacking in feeling. Day after day, they are met with these enormous creative problems, like trying to create something that consumers will care about.
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They think their way through this creative process. But this thinking only makes matters worse. It's as if they're attempting to untangle a tumbleweed of Christmas lights in the back of a dune buggy.
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To solve a creative problem, you must feel the creative problem.
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If you take an overly cerebral approach to creation, the consumer might mentally comprehend what you've created. But they won't be emotionally moved by what you've created.
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And so it comes down to feeling.”

I don’t love the metaphor, but I adore the message.

I have no idea what your background with movement is, but there’s a good chance if you’re subscribed to my newsletter, a newsletter written by the Movement Maestro, you’ve got some tie to movement.

Ya’ll, Cole is speaking our language.

You’ve gotta feel it.

Somatics. Embodiment. (Click here for my favorite somatic resource.)​

With all the time I’ve been spending hanging out with ChatGPT lately, Cole’s words felt super timely and super accurate.

AI can do so much for us, but what it produces, you feel it in your head, not in your chest, if you feel it at all.

I know that some of you reading this, like me, have been a bit off kilter for the past few months.

I think Cole’s email serves as a great North Star: Note where you feel things. Touch your body. Listen to your gut. Follow your heart.

Happy Tuesday, Reader.

Maestro out.

​I write differently over here. Less advice, MOAR musings.

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Hi, I'm the Maestro. 🙋🏽‍♂️

Dr. C. Shanté Cofield | Brand Strategy & Online Business Coaching

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