I believe we are all creative by nature, though sometimes the creative part of us can get surpassed by ‘more important’ endeavours or get thwarted as we grow up.  Fortunately it is possible to rediscover the part of us that loves adventure, trying out new things and seeing what curious, unexpected creative outcomes emerge.  Young children are innately creative and create new worlds through play. As we grow up creativity can blocked for one reason or another. Often a childhood experience of having the latest painting or play dismissed by a busy parent can stifle your creativity for a lifetime. The creative part of ourselves is very sensitive and needs nurturing with a gentle, kind heart to grow and flourish. It needs to be given space to try things out, and make mistakes without judgement. The critical voices that arise in response to some of our creative endeavours may try and guide us on a sensible path, but they can get in the way of being spontaneous and open to whatever emerges.

In the west creativity is often seen as a result of great creative personalities and we herald well know creative people as brilliant. However there is also a different way of viewing creativity as something less personal, as more of a universal process that we can discover ways of tapping in to. So it’s less about ‘our’ creativity and something that ‘we’, the ‘ego’ creates, but more about finding the creative flow that we can meld with. To this end it helps to ‘get ourselves out of the way’! What I mean is finding a way to bypass the critical conscious ego part of the mind that jeopardises the possibility of allowing creativity to flow.

‘Getting yourself out of the way’ can be achieved by becoming mindfully absorbed with the process of making something, so that the process takes over and the mind becomes calmer and more focussed. In the various classes and workshops I run I will introduce different ways to help you become more present moment by moment as the creative process unfolds.