Cross-training: find more time & inspiration without spending an extra minute! (BKI 27 in Bulgaria)

Do you often feel we don't have enough time for your art, whatever your art form is? If you use the power of cross-training, your practice time and inspiration soar! All without spending an extra minute of time or ounce of worry 🙂

Learn how to use cross-training in today's Bright Knowledge Instant from Sofia, Bulgaria (I'm cross-training right now!)

Hi, this is Diana. Bright knowledge instants give you one thing you can do today to move your creativity ahead. And today I'm in Sofia, Bulgaria. Sofia is one of my favorite places to be. This is where I got my PhD in music. And it's Bulgarian music that inspired me to learn harp in the first place. When I'm traveling, I consider it a form of cross training, and that's what I want to speak about with you today.

We oftentimes feel like we don't have enough time for our art form. So what if we started using the other things that we're doing in our lives as well to help our art form? When I am traveling, I get a lot of inspiration from my art on so many different levels. It helps me review what I'm really attracted to, what I really want to do with my art.

I get to see new things that I'd never thought of because we don't know what we don't know. And when we travel, many new things come to us. And likewise for you, what are the things that you're doing right now that you can use to inform your art? For instance, if you do yoga, how does that physical and spiritual practice interface with your writing, with your performing, with your painting?

There are ways that they overlap, and almost any other activity that you enjoy and even some that you don't, can be considered forms of cross training, which exponentially increases your practice time. For me, I also do a lot of writing. And so as I write and as I read, I really take note of narrative arc, and narrative arc I use all the time in my music compositions. I use it in my improvisations, and I even use it to interpret fixed pieces.

I'm like, where's the climax? Where's the golden mean of this piece? There's another cross training thing. I'm a big fan of fine art, and yesterday I was at the Icon Museum in Sofia, and as I was looking at these magnificent works of art, I was seeing the golden mean in them, which is a ratio, a proportion that we find throughout nature. And when it's incorporated into your art form, no matter what art form that is, we inherently have a primal reaction to it, that it has integrity, and we feel love for it.

So today, notice what are the things you're doing in your life that can be considered cross training? How do those things inform your art? And notice how really you're practicing all the time. So don't worry if you don't feel like you have enough time. You do. Try cross training. Let me know how it goes for you. I always love hearing from you. And I'm heading to Belgrade in a couple hours, and I'll talk to you from there.