Monday, June 22, 2020

Courageous Creativity with Leslie Nolan

The interview I watched today was with Leslie Nolan. She is an art coach for intentional creativity which sounds really interesting. The exercise was to create an intention on around how to cohere in our lives right now then pick 3 objects at random and outline them on the journal page.

So right off the bat, I didn't do mine quite the way it was intended. I outlined each object, but from the examples that Amanda and Leslie did, it looked like you were supposed to make the outline around the group of objects. Oh well.

Next we looked at the lines to see if we could pick out figures or objects. We could add line and color to help develop the story of what we were seeing. When it felt done, we were to write an affirmation under the drawing.  We then asked 3 questions of the figure in the drawing and wrote them down with space in between.  She then had us answer the questions from the point of view of the figure.

I used a bottle of ink, a weird circular cap that was cluttering my workspace and an old paintbrush that my kids didn't rinse out.  This photo recreated because I forgot to take photos of the steps (rolls eyes).

Here's what came out of that:


So she seemed angry and defensive and she didn't have a body below the blue thing. The diamond shape immediately felt like a "yield" sign to me.  My affirmation was that maybe I didn't need this defense of not feeling anymore and I could find my way to my body.

My questions to her were:
1. How else can we feel safe?
2. What does yielding mean?
3. How to transform the anger into action?

Her answers:
1. Use art to express yourself. Set boundaries in a healthy way. Communicate your needs and intentions.

2. The yield sign is a way to communicate. You can be "right" or in relationship. Distance can be made up. You don't always have to push away.

3. Transform anger into action with your pen, with your art. Use it to know when boundaries are needed and when something needs to be said.

What a simple exercise with some pretty powerful results!
 

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