How do I know if dance or movement practice counts as real creativity?

I think this question comes from a place many of us know—the suspicion that unless you're performing or producing something external, it doesn't really count. But I'd gently push back. When you move, you're observing yourself in real time: how your body wants to unfold, what rhythm feels true, where you're holding tension or finding ease. That's the examined creative practice. Murasaki Shikibu didn't need an audience to validate her interior observations. She wrote because she was paying attention. The same applies to movement. A solo improvisation in your living room, a walk where you're noticing how your spine wants to lengthen, a stretching routine that becomes almost meditative—these are all acts of creativity. They're conversations between you and your own embodied awareness. The moment you stop asking 'is this good enough?' and start asking 'what am I noticing?'—that's when movement becomes undeniably creative. The work is real precisely because it's yours, observed closely, examined as you go.