The Teapot

Chai is a drink that’s best served … shared! In that spirit, this page is made to share some great resources that I’ve come across.

Each item featured has these things in common:

• It really helped me, and is likely to be of help to my readers.
• I enjoyed reading/using/working with it.
• It fits in with the concept of Creative Chai.

Some links are affiliate, some are not.  Any pennies earned through affiliate links go directly into my own training, so that I can develop more skills and offer great things to my Right People! Share the goodness, yes?

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Maryann Devine:

Maryann helps creative people find love and attention for their work through one-on-one consulting sessions and (awesome) classes. I worked with her last year and was amazed at the progress I made. I didn’t realize there were so many options available to me and Maryann presented them in a way that was focused and clear. Once we began working together my vision for what I could achieve just kept getting larger. By the time we’d finished our sessions together, I’d gone from stuck to overflowing with ideas and possibilities, and from feeling shy and hesitant about calling myself an artist to a state of: “Hell yeah, of course I am! What else could I be?” Whenever I need a boost, I go back and listen to the confidence in my voice rising over the course of our sessions.

Aside from coaching, Maryann also has a Secret Society of the Play Date. They’re single tele-seminar creativity sessions where you get support to play and create with other people and work on your own thing in fresh and wonderful ways. Check it out!

Shiva Nata:

Also known as ‘Dance of Shiva’.

What is it? It’s like a cross between martial arts and yoga and brain surgery magic.

It’s difficult because the movements really mess with your brain, and the idea is that you are always moving up to the level that makes you fall apart. If you are getting the moves right, it’s time to progress and get completely lost. This is how all the fresh neural connections get made in the brain. Zap~Zing!

It can be a little rough on the ego, but–oh wow!–the benefits you can get from this practice.

I love the feeling when I’ve finished a Dance of Shiva session, that ‘zinging’ in my head as I do the savasana afterwards. It feels like I’ve been to a brain spa.

Spacious. Calm. Focused. Did I say zingy? and the epiphanies that Shiva Nata brings up are amazing. It’s one of the weirdest, beneficial, and most fun things I’ve ever come across.

There’s a great emphasis on working with the body and the mind at the same time. I sometimes have difficulties maintaining the practice, it can be frustrating at times because you are actually aiming to work at a level that keeps you messing up.

The great thing is that Havi’s kit provides some wonderful support in the form of articles, tips and also a rolling invitation to her dust off the dvd classes which she runs once or twice a year. This package is such an enormous help, I actually don’t think I could have got my practice up and running with the dvd alone.

Sustainably Creative

Michael Nobbs’ ebook is a great resource on finding ways to create when your life is totally squeezed.

Michael is a very creative guy and manages to accomplish a hell of a lot, so I was very surprised to hear his own generously shared personal story of living with chronic energy difficulties. It’s inspirational, and there are tons of tips to help you focus on accomplishing your creative goals without the push-push-push that we are so often subjected to.

Click here to visit michaelnobbs dot com.

 

Engaging e-Courses:

 

I bought this because my dream is to have a whole library of courses that I can run on creativity and the creative process. I loved Kelly’s Sticky Ebook formula and Pace’s work, too. So I actually snapped this up the minute they announced it.

It’s an audio product based on a series of interviews with experts who have developed and delivered successful e-courses and have great ideas to share on the process. Each session is packed with really useable information from an insider’s perspective.

Pace and Kelly are great interviewers, they come armed with insightful questions, make some good points of their own, and best of all–they know how to just sit back and let these experts give out all their knowledge.

I’ve gone through a few times and have a stack of notes and ideas for creating my own e-courses. But there’s so much in here just on how to engage with people, period. Everyone was great, but do you want to know who completely blew me away?

Danielle LaPorte and Mark Silver. Amazing.