Last weekend I guided some muses in exploring their inner wisdom through intuitive painting.  Many were uncertain that working on one painting for the duration of the workshop was possible.  The blank paper staring at them brought out a host of insecurities and of course voices of inner critics chimmed in.

Guided visualization was used to open the doors to their inner creative.  Inner critic ramblings were shelved.

After getting into our bodies with some expressive arts warm-up exercises participants began to break past barriers blocking them. This was the hardest part; to begin.  Perfectionism and a need to be in control likes to interfere.  Often an over-riding fear that there was no turning back is experienced and can paralyze the process.  Fear that mistakes will haunt them and they will be stuck with a painting that they don’t like, or worse that reflects back to them their imperfections.

But what are we but imperfect beings? Is it not our uniqueness and our individuality packaged with these idiosyncrasies that make us beautiful beings?

This is not easy for most of us to except.  We have been trained to believe that mistakes are failures rather than opportunities.  We have been taught to ignore our intuition and look outside of ourselves for the answers.

Our intuition is a tricky thing, it sometimes gets muddled by our thoughts, expectations, and wishes when really it is an inner knowing – sometimes our inner critic interferes with this inner knowing and confuses us- for example the critic may tell you “you are hopeless”, “you are not doing it right”, or may even tell you not to listen to your “intuition” for fear of being led toward the “unknown”.   Our inner critic likes to be in control because the unknown can be a scary place.

For the day I guided these beautiful beings through process painting, staying with the process and not the product.

The painting is of course a gestalt of all it’s parts, the layers of paint, emotions, thoughts, struggles, acceptance, letting go and release that brings it to an end point and finished painting.

The painting is much more that what is seen in the end, it is more than the sum of these parts.

This was the dance that they engaged in.  This was the process they struggled through but in the end embraced.

It was a journey into self.

The next Painting with Your Muse Workshop in Toronto takes place on May 10th, 2014.  Not in  or near Toronto? Get on the Painting With Your Muse e-course list to be notified when early bird registration opens for my online course.