One of the conversations I’ve been having a LOT with my students recently has to do with the struggle people feel around how much easier it is for them to be free and creative and fully alive when they are in painting class or on retreat with us, and how difficult it is to maintain that sense of freedom and creative flow once they are painting on their own. What they tell me is that they feel frustrated and disappointed in themselves for not being able to maintain that sense of creative liberation and they think there’s something wrong with THEM when they lose that thread of creative connection to their wholeness and authenticity. And I have to remind them that the reason it is so hard to maintain that sense of freedom and flow is because in community with us they are FULLY supported and celebrated and believed in to be absolutely, no-holds-barred themselves and once they go back out into the “real” world, they are bombarded by exactly the OPPOSITE energy. They are told in one way or another that their creativity and emotions make them weak or too sensitive. They are continually exposed to messages that self […]