This site is about my life in the art studio. It includes drawings, paintings, knitting and cross stitch and fun art techniques. I will also include recipes and yoga and book reviews. This is a lifestyle blog with intentional and simple living ideas.
It has been awhile since I posted about The Creative Cure, by Jacob Nordby. (it’s been a long few weeks, no time to read) I have included chapter 7 and chapter 8 in this post.
Chapter 7 he writes about the creative formula. It was enlightening to read and brought me to a place of “Wow, this is just what I need.”
pick something you want to do, Here is my creative formula: “what would I love to create?”
being an artist who sells art:
imagination: going into the art studio. I can smell the turpentine, paint and hear the brushes on the canvas.
Feelings/intuition: excitement, overjoyed, “in my element”
story: If I make more time to be in the studio, then I can creative more art and can be creative daily.
Actions/results: Finished canvases, more to paint and enjoying the outcome of how my life can change.
Why do we need a creative formula? Because it helps with our dreams. It helps with a plan to make dreams be part of our life (steps to make it happen. And it can help us when we are stuck. it can provide a way to see how we might be sabotaging our dreams.
He explains with this formula, the progress and reality of the dreams happening the action, the resources and people to help and strategies will appear. All because you kept focus on the creative process.
He includes a personal discovery assessment in the book. He writes that writing in a journal daily along with meditation and relaxation and the personal discovery assessment can increase clarity to bring your dreams into reality.
Chapter 8 is a review and recap of the book. It reminds us of what we read about what if…?, socialization, the creative formula and living the life that is nature to you.
I will be taking time to do the personal discovery assessment on my own.
This book was insightful and I can see myself going through it again, taking time to do the exercises and continuing to write daily in a journal.
If you ever find yourself unsure of your creativity and intuition, read this book.
“…ask yourself what you can do to get creative with your creativity.” Pg 131
Chapter 6 has some great thoughts about creating a space to be creative.
Space-what is your space like? friendly? Declutter needed? Music? Lighting? Color of room, books, artwork, plants, rugs etc
Time– time of day, “honor this time as scared and let those around you know that you won’t be available.”
Ritual-“…transform ordinary moments into focused, sacred time that builds meaning and honors the inner creative self.” Mark beginning and end of your creative time. (List of ideas are included on page 140)
He wrote about forming a creative group which would be a support for each other, allow time to be creative together, trade ideas, help each other and be accountable for the creative work.
On page 134, Jacob Nordby shares an exercise, that includes a few good questions.
What creative practice would bring more joy into your life? There’s a list on page 128-129 that is helpful to answer this question.
My answer: sewing and textile art, knitting and crochet, painting, growing a small business
What is the smallest habit that could bring me toward this practice?
My answer: Experiment with painting techniques, find new knitting stitches to learn, learn more about weaving and start gathering supplies to make a quilt and/or dolls.
This was my favorite topic to read in this book. Very helpful.
Two more chapters to read, more posts to come about this book.
Products on Etsy..see shop for more to choose from:4pawsartstudio
The last part of chapter 5 of The Creative Cure, by Jacob Nordby, had many writing exercises. I decided to return to those exercises later, as currently my mind has not been into the writing mode.
Chapter 6
Chapter 6 is about revitalizing Action, page, 116 “I never feel more alive when I am in the midst of making something from nothing.” That was certainly true for me this past weekend. I spent the entire day in the studio painting and being creative.
Here are the key statements the author wrote that caught my attention.
“Creative practices also reduce anxiety, provide a sense of accomplishment, and connect us to others and the environment around us.” pg 119-120
“…the magic of practice lies in two ingredients: mindset and commitment,” pg 122
pg 123 “We compare ourselves to others and then reject our own work, not realizing we are rejecting ourselves and our pursuit of joy in the process.”
pg 126 the author stated that we may have a regular schedule for our craft but stated “..but we want to broaden the scope and meaning to include anything that helps us restore our connection to inner joy.”
Joyful Practice: it can decrease anxiety, stress, sadness, depression etc.
there is a list in this chapter and what makes you have strong emotional response he suggests to pay attention to that.
so here is what gave me a strong emotional response:
rescuing or raising animals
gardening/farming
photography
flower arranging
playing an instrument
sewing and textile art
fashion design
jewelry making
knitting/crocheting
hand-spinning yarn
making your own anything
growing a small business
This list will be used for the first exercise at the end of this chapter.
I am not surprised at the list that gave the a strong emotional connection. I’m curious about this exercise later in the book. Aren’t you?
I am reading the creative cure by Jacob Nordby. This chapter has some deeper writings to try.
It focused on the internal story we tell ourselves and to learn how to write your own story.
“the inner creative self takes a back seat, and the enemies of creativity take over.” Page 97.
The impact of the stories “…can lead to feeling uninspired, helpless, or hopeless in certain areas.” Pg 97-98
The exercise is about taking a list of “should and should not,” and explore changing that story.
Here’s mine: I should have studied art in Europe.
My story rewritten:
I stayed home to be with my mom. And discovered I wanted to work as a healer and art therapist like I wanted to when I was looking at colleges. This time gave me the insight and awareness to focus on my career and to become the art therapist I wanted. I now have a good paying job, and own my home and I can always travel Europe. With this experience I can be a creator and healer and can help others be stronger. I learned about my inner strength.
I am enough. I am safe. I love myself. I see myself.
I never wrote a poem this way. I liked it. It gave me a nostalgic feeling, a longing to return to that time, it brought tears in me, that I’ll never have that touch again. The tears are about the loss, grief of my mom’s passing, but it’s also a longing of wanting to have affection again.
Page 97. “…The real practice is to nourish a sense of safety and begin to send signals to your subconscious that you are good enough and worthy of being heard and seen and accepted.”
The last part of chapter 4 of The Creative Cure, by Jacob Nordby, is more about intuition but he added exercises to connect with emotions.
He writes on page 67, “Cultivating your intuition is a lifelong process best approached with curiosity, imagination, and even playfulness.”
He writes more about traumatic experiences and how it can close off our joy. page 73, “healing from trauma is also healing the connection to your inner creative self, which often involves giving your feelings expression in the outer world.”
He explains unhealed trauma and the diagnosis that are connected to it, such as anxiety, depression, eating disorders, addiction etc.
exercise
page 77, he has a practice exercise about making big decisions.
write one sentence or a word that describes the issue: Do I leave my career and find something less stressful to do?
where do I feel this in my body: my head and chest
pretend I am looking at a picture and relax my eyes, allowing things to get fuzzy: think about What would bring me joy in this situation?
Daydream…then at the end say aloud :”Let it be so.”
next exercise
pg 81, Relax body for a few minutes and ask How am I feeling right now?
write one word that describes how you are feeling: Numb
where do you feel this emotion in your body? chest,
give the emotion a color or shape, temperature, texture- color: light gray, shape: blob, temperature luke warm, texture-smooth
write mental story about these emotions:
If you read my previous post, a person I know, died from a long battle with cancer. I couldn’t stop crying, I drove home crying, I sat on my sofa crying. I went to bed sad and my physical pain increased. I had a hard time talking to the family member, because I was hurt. I was hurt by the feelings he is going through, as I lived them when I was his age. Everything returned to me. To watch someone die of cancer, or any illness, it a trauma. But to be at the side of someone’s bed and watch them die and see them hemorrhage is a trauma that will never be forgotten. I am numbed by so many health issues of people around me. I tend to be alone when I hear “bad” news, I never have anyone to talk to me about it as it is happening, I have to wake up alone with it. And go on with my day as if I didn’t hear about anything traumatic. I am always alone dealing with emotional issues. I am tired and need to escape away from work and death and illness. It’s taking away my creativity.
Both images on this post is in my shop on etsy: 4pawsartstudio
I have been reading The Creative Cure by Jacob Nordby. It has been an interesting to go through this book and examine what’s lodged inside of me.
This chapter is about trusting your intuition. Page 63 “The problem is that most of us weren’t taught the skill of listening to and following our intuition, as we live in a society that’s imbued with a logic-based cultural bias.”
Page 64 “I can’t imagine returning to a time when I shut down the guidance of that interior voice.” “When we shut down or ignore our intuition, as so many of us have been trained to do, it’s no surprise that the element of joy in our life suffers.”
This is compelling, as I feel my joy has been cemented inside of me, can’t escape from the past traumas I have witnessed, experienced and heard. Life has been too traumatic for me.
He writes further about if you are lost to feel your intuition that reconnecting to it will feel awkward. And to distinguish between intuitive feeling and wishful thinking will become difficult. Old habits, fears and biases may dominate your thinking.
There are exercises in this chapter: Blind contour drawing, dream log, intuitive painting.
I will share about the exercises in the next post about chapter 4….
If you have been following my posts lately, I have been reading The Creative Cure by Jacob Nordby. It has been examining how a person can have a creative block caused by socialization, traumatic experiences and rejection.
Chapter 3 is about Restoring Imagination
He writes on page 38, “As we grow older, we tend to trade imagination for logic, and like any other skill we don’t use, we get out of practice using our imagination.” We must have the right answer, the right way of doing things etc. No imagination anymore when we are adults!
I love this statement on page 39. “Imagination is personal-each of us does it differently (though it can be done in groups with exciting results).”
in summary of this section of the book : Imagination is a muscle and we can practice it and strengthen it at any time.
Exercise from the book: Problem-solving with random words
Chose a problem:
my problem is: Not having enough fun and laughter in my life.
use online random word generator: grab the first word you find
My word is: Defend
write about the ways your problem might be like this word:
here’s my writing:
I have to constantly defend myself, my actions, my decisions. I felt all my life everyone watched me, watched what I was doing and had a sarcastic input about it. I have to defend my work, my counseling skills, my decisions at work. I have to defend my requests and comments. I have to defend my opinions. I have no one to help defend me. I am alone in this world fighting for my place, guarded ready to defend. I feel insecure to let go of my defense and become vulnerable while everyone is watching. I have to defend my decisions with my home, my decisions with my career and my decisions with my money and my physical health. I have to answer to everyone, but I am alone. This makes me irritated. I don’t know the solution to this. I feel happier when I am alone in my own space. I don’t want to defend myself about my decision to create art and focus on my self-care. I don’t need to defend myself to others, no one owns me. I can decide what I want and allowed to make my own mistakes. I am allowed to live and take chances with my life. I am allowed to spend my money on a vacation or my home if I want. So be it, people just have to accept that I am alive and that they don’t need to control me. They need to accept that I want things that are different than they want for me. So be it. I need to not focus on defending myself but just taking chances and not feel anxious about making a mistake and people watching me.
exercise: Daydreaming Meditation: daydream about having fun with someone
That was difficult because I had to meditate for 10 minuets. I daydreamed about having fun with my childhood friend, Kim. I miss her and wish we stayed connected.
exercise: artists dates:
Make a plan to do art stuff—I kinda do that. maybe I need to actually label it in my calendar
exercise: shoulds and should’ts: the tools of socialization
I need to start listening to when I say or hear or think “I should, or I should not.”
exercise: what if you are perfect now?
he suggests to write these down, and essentially think about them and write about it later.
What if I am perfect just as I am right now?
What if I am enough?
What if everything is just as it should be right this moment?
What if I am doing the best I can?
This was a chapter with an overwhelming amount of exercises. I definitely want to do the meditation again. I want to be able to remember the fun and creativity we had together.
I have some thinking and processing to do with this chapter.
This chapter is about the joy and the art of self-discovery:
The past traumas certainly can burden anyone from “creative self-discovery.” the author explains about using a mentor-muse, he calls it Joy.
The joy we once had as children. “Joy is the essence, the fuel, and the energy of the creative life.”—love this quote from the book!
He explains how we lost track of joy, and seeking it in others and acceptance of others. As well as failure and rejection. “we try to live the life others want us to live or become who others told us to be and acquire what others told us we should want.”—How true is that?
Let me share a little: When I was young, college was expected, I was told along with others in my generation, go to college and you will have anything and everything you want. So off to college. I studied art, but I had to figure out how to make art a living to not go against the norm. —the society norm. I really wanted to own an art studio, self-employed in the small town I grew up, but…
off to graduate school to study art therapy and counseling. Now don’t get me wrong I like helping others, but honesty if I can do it again, I would have spent the time and money and energy into owning an art studio. But I heard a nag at me, get a job that offers vacation days, sick days, 401K and other incentives, mainly health insurance. You won’t live a good life unless you have those. So I studied and struggled through graduate school and not to mention the torture of writing a thesis.
Then I got the job with PTO days, 401K, health insurance and the incentives. Well what were the incentives? I got free supervision to increase my licensure for practicing counseling in my state, but still have to take another exam. Another expense. I hate exams, terrible at exams, but I did it. I passed. And onto working and making money. Oh I guess at this time, I am to shut up, because I got the job with PTO, 401K and health insurance and the incentives.
Where’s the joy? I am screaming mad. Was I fearful of trying something that went against the social norms and my family’s expectations? YES! I would be a failure if I left everything and went for something that was different and no one else in the family ever did.
So I compromised. Did I? I left my job of 7 years and went into private practice. I went against part of the social norm. I am now working as a contract worker. So no more PTO, 401K, and incentives. But I had to buy my own health insurance, and anyone in American knows how expensive that is! Where’s the joy?
Let me step back a little…I worked mainly as a counselor, I did some art therapy. Meaning sitting at a chair talking and processing with clients was most of my day for about 6 hours. If I did art, I was not making it, it was the client who got to make the art for about 20 minutes, then we processed it using the counseling process.
I lost my creativity and my feeling of being creative after I witnessed something in elementary school. After that year it seemed more traumas occurred and I spent countless years of anxiety especially during school. I saw too many teachers get angry and yell at students, toss them out in the hallway and throw things. I saw too many times someone physically assaulted-even at a young age. I saw too many times health issues getting out of control. I heard too many times people teasing me. I heard too many times that I wouldn’t go to college because I am not smart enough-insert–laughter. I saw my mother’s death. I am now seeing my aging father getting thinner and weaker. I did not do art during these times to help in my healing. i didn’t know I needed healing. I had no idea I was traumatized until I started taking a better look at my life experiences. I never felt my life experiences were important, but other lives are more important. I grew that my sisters, my brother and my neighbor and cousins lives were more important and my experiences were none. Why did I get silenced from a life I should have been living and instead was living a life of a silent nightmare and no one knows what I experienced?
ART IS MY JOY.
The author included a few questions in this chapter:
Question 1: what am I feeling right now?
Tired, bored in life, depressed, sad and have too much physical health issues from having rheumatoid arthritis, my back is tight, my neck is tight and I guarantee after I finish this blog and wash the morning dishes, I will want to take a power nap. Not to mention I just work up for the morning.
The author mentions to “answer the question as it relates to your inner world.”
I really can’t stand the people who were once in my life. I am angry at them. I am angry at myself for holding onto those friendships. Once they found someone else more interesting they dumped me like I was trash. I cried for days and years over these people. I am angry at the men who acted as if they wanted to date me, but they were tied to some other girl, one was married. Where do these people get off to destroy me and my beauty and love that I can give to others? I am angry that there are people in my life today, that don’t realize how I have been lonely for decades, but they think I am fine. I have to put up a front, if I don’t everyone will “fix me up” with their choice of who I need to be with. Ughh, trust me, I was once asked by someone who wanted to fix me up. NO!
Oh and those people never really supported me with my art and my dream of having an art studio. They popped my dream. But I had no choice but support them on their dreams of marriage and family. Whatever!
Question 2: what do I need right now?
I need some paint and canvas and throw my anger out on it! I need someone who will mentor me to own an art studio, even though I have debt and need health insurance and need to still pay on my mortgage. I need to find a way. I need to find a way to show the art skills I know from being an art therapist all my life. I need to have time to write the book about art journal making that I want to self-publish in the next 5 years. I need to not work 6 days. I need to work on not wanting every expensive thing for my home renovation in order to not work so much. I want to work from home. I don’t want to work for the current private practice. I want to work for a telehealth counseling center for 4 days and them work on my book and art the remaining days. I want to go against the expectations that everyone has for me. I want to own my own art business.
Question 3: what would I love?
I would love to have an art studio that has endless storage for supplies. Has space to rent for artists to us for their personal art work. To offer art classes, no therapy. To energize the community with art and creative activities for all ages. I would love to work on more YouTube videos and have time to write my book. I would love to sell my art.
I can tell from this writing, there is still anger in me about my past friends and relationships. There is fear of going against everything I worked hard for and vulnerability to do this alone. Thischapter really did not hold back on getting me to think about fear, failure and vulnerability. Thischapter certainly did not hold back on pushing to get me there quickly. It was a force that needed to happen.
Now what?
Today my plan is to work on a painting for a few hours. Then I will be concentrating on the cross stitch and most likely will be watching Hulu or Netflix this afternoon. I will be cooking lemon chicken in a crockpot today. And if I have the motivation, maybe do some small house cleaning in-between.
coming up in posts: more about this book and the exercise I am willing to share. And more updates of knitting, cross stitch and painting.
4pawsartstudio 
You must be logged in to post a comment.