NOV 5th 1-2-3: Health And Your Creative Journey
1: Health And Your Creative Journey ( 4 minute read )
To train your mind you must train your body.
The kind of family that I grew up in was one full of Love, Art, and Food. Lots and lots of great food.
My father being predominately Ecuadorian, my mother being a mutt of sorts, I grew up with a very wide variety of cuisine. With my grandmothers on both sides lovingly enforcing me to eat my plate clean citing it as a way for me to show my love for them, I would eat a lot growing up.
Though it was all done for the sake of love and culture, it resulted in building a rather unhealthy relationship towards food within myself.
Through genetics I was a rather tall boy for my age, and through food I was a rather horizontally tall boy as well.
With my relationship with food not being the best, It was a blessing that I also had a mother who always pushed for me and my siblings to be active within some sport or another.
As a child it was swimming, and thus I today feel the pull to the pool. I am a water baby and there are few environments I feel more natural in than the water.
I dabbled with Soccer for a season as a kid, and later found myself playing good ol American Football. I really loved playing football and played from late middle school up until the start of sophomore year of high school.
After that and even up to today, its all been about weight training for me. I genuinely feel my mind release and prop itself up when I move heavy things. Its great.
But to not get so stuck on the little details, the reason why I am mentioning all this is because I have always found that the more I train my body, the more my mind would follow.
As an artists, making sure that I move my body everyday would only lead to my mind working much more smoothly and my imagination running much more free and wild. In addition, I would also have more energy to actually capture these ideas that ran through my mind in a journal or even a note on my phone.
The other reason why I mentioned all that stuff about food and exercise is because of a certain point in life where I had put on a deadly amount of weight on, my process loosing a lot of that weight, and most importantly the harsh word of wisdom my brothers Art Mentor had passed along to him; and through him, to me.
For a quick flashback, I have always been a bigger guy. My love for the sports I’ve played as well as weight training has always kept me active enough where weight wasn’t really a huge problem.
Or at least it was very manageable.
I had a number of life changes, which I’m sure I’ll cover in more detail as time goes, that led to me dealing with a lot of stress and depression. Unfortunately during that time I turned to food as a source of relief and security. Because of that I put on more weight than I ever had. It seemingly happened so fast that I couldn’t believe it.
I had been taking my music very seriously for a long time, and during this period I felt much more stressed and much less inspired than I ever had been.
It was also during this time that I had decided I wanted to take my writing much more seriously as a complementary skill for my music and life. I’ve always enjoyed writing but never took it seriously until around this time.
That decision alongside the look of that unrecognizable man that would look back at me in the mirror was both eye opening and unbelievable.
My weight was weighing my entire creative side down, and the parts of me that wanted to push past with my art just felt weak and sluggish.
I built up my courage a bit and began doing what I knew I had to.
I began my journey to loose the weight and take specific steps in caring for my health.
Small but powerful dietary changes alongside a small and obtainable daily workout routine, the weight started to drop. Little by little I went down in weight and from being uninspired and tired, I began to have more drive towards my art and creative endeavors.
But I was still not pushing myself to my potential. Then my brother told me something his art mentor, Jeff Watts, mentioned in one of his lecture studies.
Jeff mentioned that all the artists who are taking all this devoted, rigorous time to study and practice their fundamentals must also take care of their health. His reasoning for this was simple, very harsh, but also very true.
He said “Work on your health because if you don’t then none of this studying art is really worth anything. I mean, what’s the point of studying art this much and this hard is your just going to croak by the end of it.”
That lit something in me and it also kind of hurt a bit to realize but, I MUST take care of my health and my body if I am to continue taking my music and writing seriously.
I must do it because it will clear my mind, as well as open my imagination.
I must do it because there’s no point to study this hard if I’m just going to croak in the end.
To those who read this and think that maybe studying hard is pointless because they don’t want to take care of themselves.
I want to personally extend my hand and ask that you do. Whatever it is that only YOU can make, I can assure you that, many people alongside myself really want to experience it.
Now go take care of yourself and create something uniquely YOU!
2: Creative Prompts From Us (ex. Write a short story, a poem, a song, or draw a quick illustration of these! Let your imagination run free.)
I. Picture a young player of football within a fantasy setting making their way all the way from the bottom, to the top. A hero’s journey of sorts.
II. Imagine an archers competition where the goal is to hit the bullseye. Only, the bullseye is the center of an entire solar system and the archers are cosmic gods.
3: Inspirational Quotes From Others
I. “Exercise and temperance can preserve something of our early strength even in old age.”
-Cicero, a Roman Statesman, Lawyer, Scholar, Philosopher
II. “I still need more healthy rest in order to work at my best. My health is the main capital I have and I want to administer it intelligently.”
-Ernest Hemingway, an American novelist and short story writert
III. “His art is the health of the artist.”
-Harold Clurman, American theatre director
Thanks for reading!