Need some ideas to give an original gift to a loved one or friend? I am a big believer in the value of creating a gift rather than buying one, also because it hold more meaning and can also provide a useful aspect rather than a material one that can sometimes just add more clutter to someone's home.
The holiday season is a perfect time to talk about what makes the artist in us tick so we can put it to work with some great gift-making ideas.
Creativity is seated in our second chakra – the svadisthan, which means to create and recreate. In fact, it is the seat of sexuality and fertility, the womb where we all came from. The making and growing of a child in this area is a metaphor for creativity in that artistic expression should be pure and innocent like a child and free flowing like water (the element of this energy center).
Creating is really a form of meditating. When you consider traditional meditative art like calligraphy, painting, Indian mandala making and Zen poetry, they are all spiritual practices, which translates to art being a form of divine expression. This of course is true when we create in the present moment, in thoughtless awareness (nirvichara samadhi). As Eckhart Tolle explains, “All true artists, whether they know it or not, create from a place of no-mind, from inner stillness.”
Featured in this post is one of the easiest and most appreciated DIY gifts you can create this season:
Peppermint Coffee Sugar Body Scrub:
A gift for exfoliating and energizing, this is an easy and economical gift that will have skin glowing while uplifting our physical and mental energy.
Peppermint is a chosen ingredient for the holidays for a reason – it is a great remedy to relieve depression and stress while stimulating energy. How to make the scrub:
1-cup white sugar
1-cup brown sugar
1-cup almond or grapeseed oil
20-25 drops of essential peppermint oil
3tbsp coffee grounds
Mix and gift in an empty half-pint mason jar.
Bonus Tip: make extra to keep for yourself! Activating our 2nd chakra is a great way to relieve any holiday blues that may creep in on us. Creating art raises our self-esteem as we see how capable we are in making something beautiful and sharing it with the world. It helps us let go of fear (the main block of this chakra). By letting go of fear, we gain freedom to express ourselves in a way that we do not fear judgment but rather embrace that others appreciate our creations.
More DIY holiday creations can be seen in my full article on youaligned.com.
