By Dave Storer
We are all born with incredible creative abilities, and few things in life make us happier than fully engaging those abilities. To let a belief that we haven't the proper "permission" — from either society, family and friends, or ourselves — stop us from developing our creative abilities and expressing our deepest, truest selves in the best creative way we know how would be a terrible loss.
How Society Tells Us Not to Create | How Friends May Convince Us Not to Create | How We Convince Ourselves Not to Create | Suggestions for Giving Yourself Permission
Guided Imagery intertwines words and imagination to evoke positive scenarios and possibilities to stimulate and inspire your creativity. These meditations are centered around the themes of discovery, expansion, surrender, nurturing, trust, courage, play, freedom, and comfort.
Discovery | Expansion | Surrender | Nurture | Trust | Courage | Play | Freedom | Comfort
Natalie Goldberg lived in Brooklyn until she was six, when her family moved out to Farmingdale, Long Island, where her father owned the bar the Aero Tavern. From a young age, Goldberg was mad for books and reading, and especially loved Carson McCullers's The Ballad of the Sad Cafe, which she read in ninth grade. She thinks that single book led her eventually to put pen to paper when she was twenty-four years old.
By Anne Marie Bennett
SoulCollage® is a unique blend of spiritual practice and the fun of collage. It was created by Seena Frost in 1980 as she worked with clients in her therapy practice in California. Each card in a SoulCollage® deck represents and honors one of the following facets of my unique life: a voice that lives inside of me, a person who supports me, an animal that has special energy to give me, or a mythical figure which guides me.
By Robert Moss
Part of the secret logic of our lives may be that our paths constantly interweave with those of numberless parallel selves, sometimes converging or even merging, sometimes diverging ever farther. The gifts and failings of these alternate selves — with all the baggage train of their separate lives — may influence us, when our paths converge, in ways that we generally fail to recognize.
Everyone Who Dreams is a Little Bit Shaman | Meeting the Soul of the Soul | In the Secret Library | Dreaming the Soul Back Home
By Jan Phillips
We're like caterpillars getting close to the Great Transformation. In preparation for its metamorphosis, the caterpillar eats 100 times its weight, falls asleep, and then forms a chrysalis. When the first imaginal cells of the butterfly begin to form themselves, the immune system of the caterpillar tries to fight them off. The immune system fails, and the caterpillar cells become the soup that nourishes the emerging butterfly.
No Ordinary Time Interview | Creativity and the New Cosmology | Homo Sentiens: Feeling Human | Once, in India
By Ernestina Gallina
This fun series of rock painting tutorials will teach you how to transform smooth stones into unique works of art. Once you understand the fundamentals of rock painting, you can use your imagination to design your own creations!
Love Bugs | Pansies | Messages in Stone | Flower Cactus
By Bonnie Neubauer
Take the Write-Brain writing challenge with one of these 20 challenging writing prompts, story starters, and creative exercises. Download original printable PDF pages from The Write-Brain Workbook and get ready to stretch your imagination and flex your creative writing muscles!
Ambidextrous | Muse-ings | One Sill a Bull | Onomatopoeia | Revenge of the Journal | Run-On | Scribble One | Sideways Glance | States of Mind | Tooth Fairy | It's All In Your Head | Comfort Foods | Dribbling Bananas | Emoti- Cans and Cant's | A Forkful of Spoonerisms | Hodge Podge | Invisible Ink | Take a Letter | Time Traveler | Truth is Stranger Than Fiction
By Whitney Freya
I began my art career as a COMPLETE beginner. I even opened an art center without knowing what colors of paint to order for the painting class and NO formal art training. I learned quickly because I had been unexplainably inspired to catapult myself from a sales career to an art career.
By Tom Evans
The brain is about two per cent of the adult total body weight but consumes something like 25 percent of the energy from our bodies. It also burns about 25 percent of the body's nutrients and it is estimated it takes 70 percent of the glucose we consume.
By Whitney Freya
What is a "Quantum Leap" and why would you want to create one? "Quantum" refers to the "smallest amount of a physical quantity that can exist independently." Quantum physics has observed the quality of energy that enables it to instantly move from one space to another, without a visual transition — it leaps rather than progresses.
How to Create a More Intentional Life |
The Eight Principles of Design |
Everything I Ever Needed to Know I Learned Painting
By Barbara Abercrombie
[In writing] we all have our own road up the mountain, or down into the valley, or in a small rickety boat over deep and dark water. Pick your metaphor. There's no way to glide gracefully into writing, no way to hide who we really are. There's always that loud space of emptiness and silence when you start to write, whether you're in a cabin or your bedroom or an office. There's no way to guarantee a safe, easy journey into words on the page. It's just you and your memory and experience and imagination. Naked.
Switchbacks up the Mountain | Daring to Tell | Racing Hearts and Churning Stomachs | Life Rafts | Writers with a View | The DVD in Your Head | One of the Worst Things a Writer Can Do | A Mess of Questions and Detail | Sailing from Context | Getting Published | Writing Dangerously Interview
By Chris Dunmire
A comparison and contrast of two iconic art pieces and subjective take on the visual elements, principles of design, and differences of viewing the art either in-person at Chicago's Art Institute and in an online gallery.
By Tom Evans
There are several states of being that stop light bulb moments in their tracks. I say 'states of being' as they are not limited to our state of mind. If you are in pain or discomfort, creativity can fly out of the window. A toothache perhaps affects an area of just a few square millimeters but it can put your whole mind in abeyance until you get it sorted. While you are in that dentist's chair, you probably won't be composing an opera. Somewhat ironically, if you could manage to do so, it would make the time go much faster.
Light Bulb Moments on Tap Introduction | What Blocks Light Bulb Moments? | The Anatomy of a Light Bulb Moment | Moments of Light | The Inspirational Breath | Which Side Are You On? (Mind Mapping) | The Goals of Learning
Nine Modern Day Muses
By Jill Badonsky
I would like to acquaint you with a creative concept in the persona of a Muse. The concept is paying attention and the Muse is Aha-phrodite. What does paying attention mean to you in the creative process? If you are so inclined to engage your brain actively in this moment (always a good exercise for strengthening creative muscles), make a list of all the ways your creative process could benefit from paying attention. Go.
Take Ten for Writers Exercises
By Bonnie Neubauer
A biopic is a film that depicts and dramatizes the life of an important historical person, sometimes stretching the truth and telling the life story with varying degrees of accuracy. For this exercise, think of a riveting event from your life; get a good mental picture of it. You will be using it as the basis of the opening scene for a biopic of your life.
Super Wordacious | Hearing Voices | I Wood If I Could | LINGO-istics | Listing | Seuss-erific Q&A | Saucy Millionaire | Simile But Different | VocabuLeery |
Inspiring Creativity
By Kate Quinlan
We've all heard it. Many of us have muttered it in frustration, or silently surrendered to the anguished thought. "I'm just not very creative." When I hear someone say this (or hear the words drag dejectedly through my own mind, like the losing team leaving the field), I politely but firmly repudiate this damaging admission. Let me start with what I offer as proof that you, whoever, wherever you are, undeniably possess creative ability.
Repudiating You're Not Creative | 5 Eroding Notions to Resist | 5 Nurturing Practices to Embrace
Photo: ©Melinda Nagy...
Habits to Spark Creative Genius at Work
By Jeannine McGlade
What if we could change the world through play? Or stimulate our creativity with humor? What if how we imagine was recognized as being more important than what we know? According to Plato, "You can learn more about a person in one hour of play than in a year of conversation." Since the beginning of time, play has been an important way for humans to express ourselves, unwind, and create. Historically, humans have used some form of play to act out our stories, experiences, and rituals. From art on caves to the epic Olympic games of Greece, play is part of who we are and how we express our creative energy.
5 Steps to Unblock Creativity | Build Confidence for Your Next Creative Leap | Why We Have a Need to Create | Develop Action-Oriented Habits | Manage Your Energy, Not Your Time | Play with Possibilities | Stimulate Creative Genius | Spark Passion for Creativity
