I knew something was changing when I wanted to paint again

I hadn't made a decision to become creative again.

I hadn't put painting on a list of things I should make more time for. I hadn't bought a new sketchbook or signed myself up for a challenge or decided that creativity would be good for me.

I just wanted to paint.

And that wanting caught my attention.

Because for quite a long time, it hadn't been there.

I hadn't stopped painting because I'd decided it wasn't important anymore. There simply wasn't much left over for it.

I could do what needed doing. I could work. I could teach. I could take care of things. I could keep life moving.

But that slightly unnecessary impulse to make something simply because I wanted to?

That had gone very quiet.

So when I found myself standing in front of a canvas again, reaching for colour without needing the result to be useful, I realised something was changing.

Not because I was calmer.

Because I was interested again.

There is a difference between functioning and feeling alive

This is something I understood only after I began coming out of a long period of depletion.

You can function remarkably well without feeling particularly alive.

You can get up.

Work.

Answer messages.

Remember appointments.

Make dinner.

Take care of other people.

Do the shopping.

Meet deadlines.

Even laugh and have perfectly good days.

From the outside, there may be very little to suggest that anything is missing.

But somewhere along the way, life can become organized almost entirely around what needs to happen next.

And some of the first things to disappear are often the things that don't need to happen at all.

Making something.

Playing.

Following an idea.

Spending an afternoon doing something that has no useful outcome.

Getting curious about something for no particular reason.

Wanting.

I don't think I noticed immediately when those things became quieter in me.

That's the strange thing about depletion. Sometimes it isn't dramatic.

Sometimes life just gets smaller.

You stop reaching quite so far beyond what is necessary.

And because you're still functioning, you don't necessarily realize how much has disappeared.

Then one day, there was paint

I don't remember standing in front of that canvas thinking, This is evidence that something in me is returning.

Thankfully.

I was just painting.

There was no plan.

I didn't know what the finished canvas was supposed to look like.

I wasn't painting for anyone. I wasn't trying to create content from it. I wasn't even particularly concerned about whether it would be good.

I wanted colour.

So I started putting colour down.

One beside another. One over another. Seeing what happened. Changing something because I felt like changing it. Leaving something alone because I liked what it was doing.

And there was something almost luxurious about how unnecessary the whole thing was.

Nothing depended on that painting.

Nobody needed it from me.

It wasn't solving a problem.

It wasn't moving a project forward.

I simply wanted to see what would happen.

And somewhere in the middle of it, I realized how much I had missed that feeling.

Not painting, specifically.

Wanting to follow something simply because it interested me.

A few of my paintings

Maybe this was what I'd been trying to get back to all along.

Not calm.

Aliveness.

Calm has a purpose. But I don't want to live there forever.

I've spent a lot of time over these past weeks talking about regulation.

Grounding.

Breath.

Sound.

Deep rest.

Slowing down enough to notice yourself again.

All of those things matter to me. They're part of my own life, part of what I teach, and part of what I'm building into the Regulation Ritual.

But I don't practice them because my highest aspiration is to become an exceptionally calm woman.

I don't actually want a life in which nothing activates me.

I want to be moved by things.

I want to care.

I want to get excited.

I want ideas that keep me awake occasionally because I can't stop thinking about them.

I want to laugh loudly.

I want to make things.

I want to feel desire and curiosity and anticipation.

I want to walk into a room and feel its energy.

I want music to change something in me.

I want beauty to interrupt me.

I want to be surprised.

Calm has its place.

Sometimes it's desperately needed.

But being calm and being alive are not the same thing.

And I think somewhere along the way, this became clearer to me than it had ever been before.

I wasn't doing all this work so that I could become better at calming myself down.

I was doing it so there could be more of me available for my life.

There is a word from yoga that I keep coming back to

Prana.

It's often translated as life force or vital energy.

And I want to be careful with what I'm saying here.

I'm not using prana as a scientific explanation for why I started painting again. Yogic philosophy and nervous-system science are different frameworks, and I don't need to pretend they're saying exactly the same thing in order to value both.

But as a language for the experience of what I was noticing?

Prana feels very close.

Something wanted to move again.

Into colour.

Into ideas.

Into curiosity.

Into making something that didn't need to be useful.

Into wanting.

I wasn't sitting there thinking about energy while I painted.

I was experiencing it.

And perhaps that's part of why I've always been drawn to the language of energy in the first place.

There are experiences that I can describe anatomically.

There are experiences I can understand through breath or the nervous system.

And there are others for which the language of yoga gives me something different.

Prana is one of those words.

Not simply energy in the sense of I have enough energy to get through my to-do list today.

Something more alive than that.

The impulse toward life.

Reignite doesn't have to mean painting

This part is important.

You don't need to become a painter.

Creativity happened to be one of the places where I recognized something returning in myself.

For you, it might look completely different.

Maybe you put music on while you're making dinner and find yourself dancing around the kitchen.

Maybe you suddenly want to cook something complicated on a Sunday afternoon instead of making whatever is quickest.

Maybe you call someone because you genuinely want to hear their voice.

Maybe you start moving furniture around.

Maybe you want to go somewhere.

Maybe you notice desire returning.

Maybe you're curious about something you haven't thought about in years.

Maybe an idea arrives and, instead of immediately dismissing it because you don't have time, you write it down.

Maybe you stay outside because the evening feels too beautiful to go in yet.

Maybe you laugh more easily.

Maybe you start looking forward to things.

Maybe you want something.

None of these moments has to be dramatic.

That's actually what interests me about them.

Aliveness doesn't necessarily announce itself with some enormous transformation.

Sometimes it looks like reaching for a paintbrush.

Regulate. Reconnect. Reignite.

I've used these three words for a long time.

But I think I'm understanding them differently now.

Regulate.

Not because calm is the ultimate achievement, but because sometimes there is simply too much happening inside and around us to hear anything underneath it.

Reconnect.

Not so that we can spend the rest of our lives monitoring ourselves, but so that we can begin to notice what is actually here.

What we feel.

What we need.

What we don't want.

What we do.

And then:

Reignite.

This is the part I don't think I've talked about enough.

The point at which all of that inward work begins turning outward again.

Into life.

Into relationship.

Into expression.

Into pleasure.

Into creativity.

Into curiosity.

Into whatever makes you lean slightly toward the world instead of simply getting through it.

And I don't think Reignite always feels like suddenly having enormous amounts of energy.

Sometimes it's much quieter.

You become interested again.

What have you stopped wanting?

I've been thinking about this question while writing this.

Not what should you be doing more of?

Not what hobby have you neglected?

Not what would make you a healthier, more balanced person?

Just:

What have you stopped wanting?

Maybe there's nothing.

Maybe you're in a season where desire and curiosity are already moving freely.

But perhaps something comes to mind.

Something you used to do.

Something you used to notice.

Something you kept saying you'd come back to when there was more time.

Something unnecessary.

Something pleasurable.

Something that belongs to no version of you except the one who simply likes it.

I don't think you necessarily need to turn that answer into another task.

You don't have to schedule it immediately.

Maybe noticing that you miss it is enough for today.

Wanting itself tells us something.

I'm interested in my life again

I don't paint every day now.

Some weeks I don't paint at all.

That's not really the point.

The point is that I want to again.

There is paint on my hands sometimes.

There are ideas I haven't had time to follow yet.

There are things I'm curious about.

Things I want to make.

Things I want to learn.

Things I want to experience.

And that tells me something that being calm never could.

I'm not only getting through my life anymore. I'm interested in it again.

That is what Reignite means to me.

And maybe that's what I've meant by calling you home all along.

Not bringing you home so you can sit there perfectly calm forever.

Bringing you home so you can go back out into your life with more of yourself available to live it.

A place to begin

If right now you're still much closer to getting through than reigniting, I don't want to turn this post into another demand that you find your passion or become more creative.

That's not the point.

Sometimes we need somewhere to stop first.

The Unspiral is a free twenty-minute practice with my voice and live flute, created as a place to step out of the momentum for a while and come back into contact with yourself.

👉 Experience The Unspiral: soulbreathyoga.com/feltsense

And I'm currently creating the Regulation Ritual — a collection of grounding, breath, Yoga Nidra and integration practices designed to give you both a guided path and individual practices you can return to in the moments you need them.

👉 Join the Regulation Ritual waitlist: soulbreathyoga.com/regulation-ritual

Something in you already knows the way home.