How and why 'streams of consciousness' are a useful practice for developing your creativity

So, streams of consciousness.

When I was 14 or 15 there were two events that really significantly changed and developed my creative practices.

One of them was reading The Artists Way (which is quite a famous book and I still think of it as being a bit naff but I can't deny that the exercises that I did, did help).

One of them was 'morning pages' which is... you wake up each morning and write three pages of everything that is going through your thoughts. So, "oh shit not this again I don't have time for this..." and just write everything, keep writing continuously for 3 pages, for eight weeks. It really frees you up to stop you from self-censoring and to help you get things 'out'... and I think it probably serves a similar function to Mindfulness to be honest. 

Doing that, I think, is responsible for unleashing the ability to write stream of consciousness poetry.

So I had been creative writing for some time even that age, but ever since I was about 15 I have written poems that don't have any pre-thought to them. It just starts with a word that pops into my head, or a phrase that just has that quality of inspiration.

And I write it, I don't know what's going to come after the first five words, it just flows, I'm not thinking about it.

I'm quite a thoughtful thinky person, so these practices help me bypass my critical mind, so there is there is a freedom in it, accessing other parts of yourself, and the emotional qualities.

The other thing I did at that time was we had to do work experience, and I didn't know what I wanted to be, but I chose art therapy as my experience. Luckily there was a woman who was doing a training day for counsellors in art therapy, and I was invited along.

One of the exercises was to draw inside a circle your inner world and draw outside the circle your outer world. It was just doodling: a colour, a texture, a scribble... and then we did another one and it was a group drawing with awareness to how we approach the edges of other people's drawing on the paper.

I think from there on I was freer about the marks that I made, not so precious about trying to draw a specific thing, just exploring how I expresses emotion.

What am I feeling right now? If that was a colour what would that be? 

What sensation am I feeling right now? How can I make a line that expresses that sensation? 

And then as time went on... I think ok, where else do I not feel free? Where else do I feel a bit stuck?

So 4-5 years ago I was too self-conscious to dance alone in a room. So I started doing 'Contact Improvisation' which means dancing with other people and staying into contact with them... and it looks very contemporary but it's really just following the movement and seeing what happens next, so it's very similar.

And this year I've moved to voice. Because I'm good at responding after a period of time but responding in the moment, I tend to hang back. In terms of but in terms of really expressing my heart I've always held back. So I've started improvising even.... first it was no words, just sounds, but I can even say I've freed that up enough to be able to start singing a stream of consciousness song. Which is just weird (and crazy and brave). But yeah, I put those on Instagram increasingly.

There is just something to be said for it, and it's a way to make a start when you don't know what you want to do next.