VIST ALL MUSEA EVENTS
Today I am sharing a recent challenging experience that led me to these questions and reaffirmed why I am calling together an intimate circle of healers, leaders and teachers for Prisma, our Intentional Creativity Practitioner Certification Training in 2022.
- An invitation to weave Intentional Creativity into your life work with others
- Especially if those you work with are experiencing trauma
- Especially if you are a helper/healer who feels at your own edge
- And most especially if you are looking for a sacred container for 2022 to hold yourself and your work
One of my dear friends and colleagues, Dr. Lissa Rankin, came to Musea yesterday so we could film a series just for our Prisma trained Practitioners about how to be trauma-informed when working with Intentional Creativity! The series has 5 Modules and is called Mystery not Mastery: Reckoning with Power. I can’t wait to share it with our students next year!
If you are called to apply for Prisma, now is the time. As the great wheel turns towards a new year with a renewed potential for healing, your work is needed in the world, yes. But more than that, YOU are needed in your own world. Together we can explore both what you need, and what you wish to bring forward in 2022.
EXPLORE PRISMA
PRISMA: Intentional Creativity Practitioner Training
Applications REOPEN TODAY for our second cycle of enrollment. We are more than half full with about 10 spots left and begin January 1.
If PRISMA is calling you, APPLY TODAY!
New students who apply by December 22nd will receive complimentary access to A Symbol of Healing Daylong Medicine Painting Class with Shiloh Sophia on December 27th (a $295 value) that also qualifies as your Prerequisite.
In the last cycle, we had over 60 applicants, but we only brought 20 into the training – you do have to be ready. Filling out the application will give you an idea of your readiness for this experience.
I also wanted to tell you that we are actively working on founding a University and PRISMA is our first Certification Training for consideration in our programming. More on this another time, for now… continue reading for my thoughts on the relevancy of Intentional Creativity in crisis and chaos.
Image: Song of Healing – Watercolor on Paper – A process I did for myself during one of the many evacuations from California fires we experienced. I was heading home and had to re-route because we could not return home. Instead of losing it, I painted her. We can do this for ourselves. Creativity can be the go-to, to self-regulate and become a devoted practice for us.
A message from MUSEA Curator, Shiloh Sophia
Red Thread Letter #868: Hope in a Time of Hopelessness
Dear Ones,
Can creativity offer hope in a time of hopelessness? I fully believe it can. Because creativity offers access to life force and insight. In hard times, we need both of those.
I have been thinking a lot about crisis, chaos, and the potential for creativity to offer tools for resiliency in the coming years. Is creativity really capable of offering a solution in hard times? Is it a trauma-informed enough method? Or is it only for the privileged who have time to ‘practice’ and afford art supplies?
Clearly, I want it to be available to all, which is also why I have been working with ‘hands in space’ so that we can draw right in the air. If you have nothing to write or draw with, your body can be your instrument, your tool for making art. This is somatic science in action. This is part of a concept I am developing called ‘shaping consciousness by hand’ which explores the role our hands play in creativity and healing.
The conversation got hot fast
What sparked this inquiry about applicability in challenging times was an exchange I had with two respected colleagues this past week regarding all things vaccination, pandemic, and the potential of re-opening our Musea Sonoma school and museum in 2022. They were on extreme far ends of the spectrum of what they thought was happening on a large scale – but it wasn’t what they both thought about the pandemic that was the issue, it was their belief about how it all started and how it can all end and why. Both women have eaten at my table and are educated, brilliant artists and moms. On one hand, I was delighted to have such a diversity of views in my friend circle because I am truly a middle woman. The middle is my view. I stand in the middle and look both ways like a kid looking before I cross the street.
As the conversation progressed and we moved past surface memes, it quickly became heated and there was little room for any other narrative. I read our exchanges over and over looking for the place in the conversation where the tone had turned. Note, it did not turn on me directly because I hear both sides and resist neither one and never make anyone feel badly for their view on topics like this. What I DO resist is judgment and fanaticism. Perhaps in both of their minds, they were judging me for not siding with their version of ‘research and science’, and they both had those at hand. They had enough couth not to turn their beliefs upon me. I am unavailable for that kind of rigidity, researched or not. I am a non-stick surface for judgment of this nature.
To be clear, neither woman was debating the realness or impact of the pandemic or the Covidian era. They were mostly looking at their viewpoint for how they thought the whole thing was orchestrated, or not.
The level of polarity demonstrated by my colleagues is its own form of crisis that is dividing communities on a large scale. Right at the time when we need to stand together and create respect between us, we are fighting instead. I knew that I had to come right into the heart of our Intentional Creativity work and Musea’s mission in order to discover how we could help, even that level of extreme polarization – because I really do care about the women who hold both views.
I also recognize everything is for a cycle. Each new cycle eclipses the one before as we formulate new opinions that can be largely based on media coverage as well as interactions with our friends, both virtual and physical.
Rigidity leading to separation
The real topic that stuck with me didn’t seem to be whether or not people should gather, wear a mask, or show proof of vaccination. Those are hugely important factors but something else was present that really caught my attention. As a researcher of human behavior, I felt concerned about the rigidity of belief, position, and certainty. I am certain that nothing scares me more than people who are certain, lol. I do believe in taking informed stands. I believe that learning how to do that without judging others is the real work; an authentic practice. Even if you are kind to their face, inside of your mind are you thinking they are a fool? My mother Caron taught me not to think that way, and I am most grateful.
Intentional Creativity is an ideal resilience response to crisis and chaos. It is available in the moment, if you know how to choose it. It can create clarity and a state change very quickly. It expands intelligence and access to choice. While we may think we can’t use it if we are running from the proverbial tiger; I propose the inquiry of, what if we can?
Creativity is more than art; it is thought causation made manifest. What if creativity is what shows us the pathway to take when we are running? What if creativity is what I was using at different times when I was about to lash out but didn’t because of my creative response? What if creativity is what my family used when we created safe-houses for women who were on the run, even when we had barely enough food ourselves? What if creativity is what my mother and grandmother used when those seeking safe harbor needed money so we provided work until they could get on their feet. Somehow it worked, and the thread of love was what stitched it all together.
So yes. Creativity is a valid response to crisis and chaos. Yes working with creativity as a doctor, healer and shaman can relieve some of the pressure for you to have all the solutions and invite your clients to create their own solutions. Yes for those working in offices, home-studios, cafes and gas stations. This is for anyone and everyone. And it can be as simple as a pen and paper, or hands in space. Truly.
Here and now, in this moment, I reaffirm my own commitment to understanding, sharing, and promoting the efficacy of creativity as an approach during challenging times. It can work, does work, and will work as a way to guide people to navigate seemingly impossible situations.
Creativity is hope in a time of hopelessness because it grants access to the interior intelligence and heart of each person. Together as a community, we will work through this next thirty year+ cycle of change. Our plan is for 100 years, and we are only about 20 years in. Jonathan says Intentional Creativity is the tool for resilience that can be used with ANY other healing modality, and I agree.
Captain of the Possible, Acrylic on Canvas 2015
Creativity offers hope in a time of hopelessness because we are at choice for how we relate to what is happening around us. We can’t control what is happening around us, but we can curate our inner world.
What is coming up for you as you read this? What thoughts? Images? Ideas? If you’d like to share, come over to my post in the Red Thread Cafe and see what the other creatives are saying and sharing.
I am grateful for this community and for the chance to ‘practice’ the art of Intentional Creativity together. Let us continue to refine our ways of working and sharing this incredible gift. You may have forgotten, but you already know how to do it.
Intentional Creativity is what you did the day you made your first handmade greeting card for your parents. Intentional Creativity is what you used when you made a mix-tape for your lover (for our younger readers that’s an old-school equivalent of a playlist. LOL) Intentional Creativity is what you used when you ensured the food you made had your love in it. Intentional Creativity is basic to human experience when we are sharing our love with others. Yet we often forget to share that kind of intentional love with ourselves through self-care, self-regulation, and self-expression.
Here at Musea, we are choosing to focus on the powerful life force of creativity and amplify it for the good of all beings.
With love,
Apply for PRISMA Today
We will be sharing what we discover with you. In 2022, those who are studying to become Intentional Creativity Practitioners in PRISMA will be working together to offer labs for our community to try out experimental meditations in watercolor, and ‘hands in space’ processes. We will be offering a ‘pay what you can’ pricing structure, as well as complimentary choices because we will need to practice and we know you will want to experience it. I know that not everyone can afford the time, resources, and headspace to study for a year and I really hear that.
That is why the training is for those who do have capacity at this time. I assure you that we will be offering wonderful opportunities for you to experience the work as it unfolds. There will be many ways for you to use Intentional Creativity for yourself, and for those you love in 2022. You don’t need to be certified to use Intentional Creativity with others; you can share it with all who you can reach. What people pay for in the training is the container of study as well as the work of the women who devote their lives to delivery and support. However, it is important to remember that the Intentional Creativity approach cannot be bought and sold as a commodity.
Questions? Contact sarah@musea.org
How can we actively work to not re-introduce trauma but invite healing potential? Trauma-informed care through an Intentional Creativity lens is going to take some time and practice. As we explore we will learn more.
For now, we are exploring shifting the focus from “What’s wrong with you?” OR “What happened to you?” to “What is happening for you right now?” and “What can we do now to create a sense of what is best at this time?” Our creative approach is somatic and self-expression based so it actively engages the client – and isn’t about talking, but about creative space that is created collaboratively.
A trauma-informed approach for us means we are creating a healing field where we are as clear as we can be on how to not re-introduce trauma and to improve client participation, awaken their healing capacities, create engagement and work with them to set their own outcomes.
Further, this approach can work directly with relieving the stress of the practitioner to get it right, be fully intuitive, and know the answer. Instead, that they have the tools to create the pathway of potential. We are in process together. We are actively exploring with our trauma-informed team how to work with what is possible.
This can have challenges because we know art making can be fear-inducing. So we need to pay attention and devise ways of creating containers that really work.
Dr. Lissa Rankin will be one of our guest speakers on this topic, and she has worked with Intentional Creativity before and has featured it in her book, Sacred Medicine.
May love be at the Center of all Choices.
