Expressive Arts
& Creativity For Emotional Flow

When it came to emotional flow, I used to be incredibly lost. I felt disconnected from my body and overwhelmed by my emotions. Emotional displays felt inappropriate and unnecessary and frivolous.

Feminine Shame was dictating my life, ruining my health and relationships, and perpetually leading me to believe there was just something deeply wrong with me for existing.

Eventually I realized that befriending my emotions and turning towards them (rather than bypassing them) would help me with many of the challenges I was facing – disordered and emotional eating, addiction, binge drinking, smoking, hormonal and digestives troubles, body pain, and more.

As a sensitive being, emotional intelligence is non-negotiable. Without healthy emotional flow, nothing else will be whole.

There are many tools and resources I have come to love for myself and that I offer to my sensitive clients. One of my favorites involves creating art.

What is Expressive Arts?

Expressive Arts involves intuitively and impulsively creating pieces of art out of your preferred medium in an effort to give an outlet to an experience, an emotion, a sensation. Through this modality we’re able to process, digest, and come to an embodied cognizance.

From this more integrated state, clarity and direction become known. Bringing the imaginal and formless into something tangible symbolizes the gestation and birthing process of the wisdom, ideas, and inspiration inherent in all emotions – if we simply took the time to be with them.

Why Create Art?

Highly sensitive people, and most people in general, tend to be incredibly mental and analytical at the expense of their physical and emotional components.

The process of creating expressive art, that is bringing the imaginal and formless into the tangible, involves all levels of our being working together simultaneously. Through this focused process we’re allowing inspiration, tuning into physical sensation, creating space for emotions, and channeling that energy into something we can perceive through the senses.

Often times emotions and their energetic and physiological frequency create this expansive, nebulous, overwhelming state that drives many of us to do all we can to bypass them. Through channeling this all into the creative process and getting all levels of our being on board, we’re becoming masters of our own subtle energies, building self-trust, and remembering how to surf the waves of our inner Spiral Principle.

What if I’m Not An Artist?

I remember when I first began my own Expressive Arts journey. My inner critic loved reminding me that I wasn’t an artist. Looking back, I affectionately giggle at this sentiment. What does this even mean? What is it to be an artist? I believe it’s one who creates art. What’s art? It’s whatever you want it to be, really. Life is art. The point is, if you create, you are an artist, a creator.

The entire experience of creating is the point, rather than the end product itself. The most wonderful part? The end product will never be what you thought it would be and it will always surprise you, move you, and change you – if you let it.

What Can Expressive Arts Help Me With?

A better question would be where can Expressive Arts NOT help me! No matter where you are along your journey of knowing yourself and coming into right relationship with your sensitive nature, Expressive Arts and the creative process act as the greatest teacher and mirror. 

Embodiment Practices

Movement allows us to become fully embodied, noticing your sensorial experience, noticing your bodily needs, feeling your body from the inside out and outside in, observing the subtle interplay between your environment, your thoughts, your emotions, and your physical body. Learn more

A Simple Practice

There are so many ways to work with Expressive Arts! To get started, simply select some basic art supplies of your choice. I love working with colored pencils and/or oil pastels, personally. However, you can choose to work with collage, markers, crayons, watercolors, clay, anything!

Pay attention to sensations and the interplay between emotional and physical bodies, as well as how those mental body patterns and stories contribute to and influence the state of them. Then take the emotion into an image. Using your medium of choice, allow the energy and experience of this current emotional state come into tangible form. Spend quality time with this process. Breathe deeply into the experience and continue noticing what arises and moves and shifts.

When you feel complete, give your creation a title and allow it to speak to you and share wisdom with you from it’s perspective. Ask it what it needs, what the next best step is, etc.

The creative process is truly remarkable.

As highly sensitive beings, we require this outlet. We require this practice to help us to process and digest all we receive and work with on a daily basis.

Remember, you are your own best healer and you are the creator of your own experience. To truly remember this and embody this, you must create the space to create and get to know the subtle energies within that are creating your gross, tangible experience.