What magic are you creating right now? Your creative life is an energetic force that influences everything around you. Your body is a filter for this energy. It can transmute negative frequencies into harmonic ones. How does this happen? Continue reading
When an animal appears in your life, whether through images, stories, dreams, or in the flesh, and you suddenly take notice of it, there may be a personal message being delivered. Last week I taught another Animal Totem Workshop. Each time I facilitate this class, a new Continue reading
Looking at my plate,
there are a dozen crumbs staring back up at me.
With every bite
another cluster of crumbs falls.
Each one a unique experience.
Each one with a story to tell. Continue reading
Red hot? Lava-like? Thorny, like a ball covered in spikes?
I’ve been asking this question a lot lately, trying to get to the root of it. Anger is like a star. It sits in your tummy and when everything is going okay, you don’t even notice it. But as soon as you perceive a threat, the star begins to change. The shifts may begin in a subtle way. A strange poking here and there caused by the points of the star. If it is not addressed, it will begin to dig harder, like a thorn in the skin. Everything you do, every interaction you have, it’s there, just under the surface, waiting to Continue reading
I’m not going to lie to you. I have a natural repulsion to Adult Coloring Books. This is precisely why I chose to create one. I wanted to truly come to terms with why I didn’t like them by creating one that I could love.
This is what I see when I watch people coloring: They are focused on staying in the lines. They suffer over the decisions of which space should be colored which color. They are obsessed with Continue reading
Consequence: A result or effect of an action or condition.
This morning I went for a run. I like to run. I don’t run far or fast, but I enjoy getting sweaty and the feel of my feet pounding the ground. I even enjoy the aches in my knees that tend to let up after a minute or so. But the best part of running, is what happens to my brain. It’s what neuroscientists call “transient hypofrontality.” Really, if you want to know the truth, it’s what I live for. It is what happens when we are experiencing our creative potential. It’s also what happens when people who don’t usually allow themselves to paint or draw give it a try.
I’m no neuroscientist, but basically here’s how it works: So when I run, my body starts doing stuff that it doesn’t do all the time. It has to work at it, because I’m really no star athlete. My age and condition require that my normally busy brain devote some effort to this activity so that I don’t fall off the sidewalk and into oncoming traffic. Yeah, that would be bad. Because my brain is just like yours and the most awesome organ, it automatically knows how to Continue reading
Some people have been asking me why I have been purging my original artwork on eBay for ridiculously low starting bids. Well, I thought I would write about three good reasons why, just as I list another lovely piece of original art from my collection. World, meet “Bean.”
I created this painting in 2008, so it’s been in my possession for nine years now. A lot has happened in nine years, and frankly, I’m ready to move forward. So, part of my purging has to do with Continue reading
You can’t walk a few feet without seeing one around my neighborhood right now. Their cheerful little heads atop long thin stems bobbing joyfully like little yellow flags in the breeze. They seem to shout out to everyone who passes by, “Hey! Look at me! Wheee!” They are wild and their lives may be short, but together they have the capacity to brighten this dry desert landscape. Their very existence proves that even under the harshest of environments, there is beautiful bubbling life, just waiting for the perfect conditions in which to burst forth. Continue reading
I taught a creativity class last week about “Detachment.” As creative beings, detachment can be difficult. We become very attached to things, possessions, people, memories from our past, our creations themselves…
What does it mean to detach? I used to feel that if I detached from something it meant that I didn’t care about it. Now I realize that when I detach, I allow the object of my attachment the freedom of independence.
Bonnie Kelso 