Entries Tagged as: interview
Celebrate Your Creativity
April 4th, 2009, Comments (7)
Yesterday, I participated in a super fun celebration call with many fabulously creative women. We gathered by phone to celebrate the end of Jamie Ridler's book club reading of The 12 Secrets of Highly Creative Women (great read, by the way!) and to launch the product Jamie put together, Your Creative Spark.
You can listen to the call here and I recommend listening to it as it's super fun and you get to hear about the wonderful topic of celebration. Many of us on the call, myself included, talked about how we have some trouble with celebrating. For me, it has been something I never really thought much about. When I finish something, my tendency is to dust myself off and move on to the next thing.
But there's something to be said for taking a moment to celebrate your successes, no matter how small. On the call, I mentioned how I've learned a lot about celebrating from the hubster. The way he celebrates a meal he's cooked is hilarious, but it's also fun! He oohs and ahhs over every bite and suddenly you find yourself laughing and appreciating every bite too.
Why not celebrate every bite? Life is delicious!
More recently, as I've recognized the importance of celebration, I've been taking time to celebrate, usually in the form of a happy dance. A little jig (done in your chair or around the room) can be so uplifting and a simple way to celebrate those little successes we experience every day. Why not give it a try?
I'm curious, what do you do to celebrate? How does it impact your creative process?
I hadn't thought much about how celebrating was affecting my creative process until Jamie asked the question, but when I considered it, I realized that celebration is about all self-care and valuing yourself. And you can always create from a stronger place when you're taking good care of you.
Your Creative Spark is now available for purchase from Jamie. It's jam-packed with loads of inspiration from incredibly creative women such as Jennifer Lee, Andrea Scher, Jessie Marianello, Melba, McMullin, Goddess Leonie, myself, and many others! The interviews Jamie did over the last 12 weeks are included in audio and transcript form and there's also some bonus articles from several of the interviewees. Through midnight on April 5th you can get $10 off the price by using the Discount code "celebrate," so if you're thinking about grabbing a copy, now's the time! Jamie did such a fabulous job putting this together (happy dance for Jamie!) and she's such a creative rock star. Thank you again, Jamie, for inviting me to be a part of this fantastic project!
Click here to view more details about Your Creative Spark.
Free Dream Call! Thursday, April 2nd 8 pm EST
March 26th, 2009, Comments (11)
To celebrate wrapping up this month of dreams, I'm so excited to invite you to participate in this free call about dream interpretation with Lianne Raymond! Lianne is a Certified Martha Beck Life Coach and she has trained with Dr. Christopher Shelley in Adlerian Dream Interpretation.
On the call, we'll discuss:
*How you can begin to interpret your own dreams
*How to cultivate your creativity through dream analysis
*Lianne will do some one-on-one dream work (bring your dreams to the call if you're interested in sharing!)
*And we'll be giving away a special gift, a Martha Beck dream journal, to someone on the call!
Sign up for the call using the form below and I'll send you the call in information. The call will be recorded, but you need to sign up below to receive the recording.
I've always had vivid dreams, but never did much with analyzing them until I found the work of Robert Moss and Martha Beck. I truly love how Beck encourages you to see each part of your dream as a part of your wiser self that has something to teach you.
Here's what Lianne has to say about dream interpretation:
Many people treat dreams as some obscure secret with the thought that there is one correct interpretation and if only they can decipher them correctly, then all shall be revealed. I see this in my psychology students every year. When we start our dream unit it never fails that there is a flurry of questions along these lines:
"What does it mean when you dream about horses?"
"I always dream about falling - what does that mean?"
"If a cigar is not really a cigar in my dream, what is it?"
The Martha Beck approach (derived from the work of Carl Jung) treats the dream like a divination tool. Divination simply means an inspired (to be "in spirit") discovery of what is hidden. Many of us have done our own forms of divination - have you ever done the trick where you feel stuck in some way so you go open the dictionary to a random page and put down your finger? And the word you just happened to land on gives you a whole new perspective? Dream analysis is like that, but even more powerful as the new perspective is internally generated and custom made just for you from your imaginal world.
Martha Beck's method has the dreamer become each item in the dream and answer questions about it's purpose, intention and lesson for the dreamer. Sometimes this can be challenging to do alone without slipping back into cynical, rational left-brain land. That's when it can be helpful to have a friend, partner or coach to take you through the process. (Martha has a great breakdown of her dream analysis method in Chapter 5 of her book Steering by Starlight.)
I have used Martha's approach with numerous students in my psychology classes and also with many of my life coaching clients. I have noticed, though, that my students rarely state that they don't dream (in fact they have extremely vivid dreams) whereas the adults who come to me for coaching often have the "I don't dream" syndrome. Of course they do dream, it has just been relegated to the 'that's not important' part of their brain. Often along with their imagination. I believe dreaming is a vital sign for the creative life. Leah has demonstrated here how her dreams have become springboards for her artwork. That springboard can be come even more interesting after a dream analysis. This is a painting one of my students did that combines elements from her dream with insights she gained from the dream analysis.
If you feel like you don't dream it is just a matter of creating the space and intention to let your dreams become known to you again. A great way to do this is by keeping a dream journal beside your bed and making an intention every night that you will allow your subconscious to communicate with you through dreams. Or just simply request that you have a dream and remember it. Keep with the practice even if nothing seems to be happening at first - maintain the space and the intention and write down even the shimmeriest of dream memories whenever you have them. Over time you will find that your dreams with become more frequent and memorable.
The truth is all the answers are within you and they are not secret. What dream analysis does is take the left, rational brain out of the driver's seat for a time and allows the right brain to make itself known. It takes us to the deeper place of knowing that I call the arational. And of course the arational is also the spring of creativity. To cultivate dreams is to cultivate creativity and connection to our wisdom.
You will be amazed at the insights into your own life that you will uncover through dream analysis.
Sound interesting? Want to learn more? Come join us on the call on Thursday, April 2nd at 8 pm EST (find out what time this is in your time zone here). The call will be free, but long distance charges may apply. In the meantime, sweet dreams!
Interview with Robert Moss
March 3rd, 2009, Comments (21)
When I imagined doing the theme of "dreams" for the Creative Every Day Challenge, author, Robert Moss immediately came to mind. I'm so thrilled to be able to share this interview about dreaming and creativity with you!
My interest in dream imagery stems from the fact that my dreaming is quite vivid and I often get a lot of ideas for art there, but the typical dream interpretation books never made much sense to me. Robert Moss's book, Conscious Dreaming was recommended to me by CED participant, Kelly, who found me through a bit of synchronicity and my post about a lynx dream. I deeply resonated with Moss's discussion of dreams and finding the meaning in your own symbology.
Since deciding to contact Moss, his work has been turning up everywhere! An article by Moss was in a free magazine I just happened to pick up at the beginning of the month and then this week an acquaintance emailed me a link to a podcast interview with Moss that she thought I would enjoy. Synchronicities are an important topic in Moss's work and I love his discussions about them. I hope you enjoy this interview with Moss. Be sure to check out his website, his online dreaming courses, and his latest book, The Secret History of Dreaming.
LPK: Have you always been a vivid dreamer?
RM: In my early boyhood in my native Australia, my dreams got me through crises of illness and I had indelible dream visions of traveling to worlds beyond ordinary reality. I learned from Aboriginal friends that our personal dreams can be portals into the Dreamtime, the source of ancestral wisdom, creativity and healing. I did well in exams at school, in part because I used to dream exam questions ahead of time. I started keeping a dream journal in my teens and often turned my dreams into poems, drawings and paintings.
LPK: How does dreaming impact your creativity?
RM: My seven nonfiction books on dreaming and imagination have flowed almost seemlessly from my dreams. My dreams also give me scenes, plot ideas, characters and dialogue for my novels and sometimes the whole of a short story. Sometimes I wake (as Charles Dickens told a doctor he used to wake) with the sense of wave upon wave of words moving through me, and I write with these rhythms rather than from specific dream content. Even more than from sleep dreams, I find my creativity is released in in-between states of reverie, daydream and hypnagogia (between sleep and waking, or vice versa). These liminal states, as I suggest in The Secret History of Dreaming, have been the "solution state" in which creative breakthroughs have been made in many field - in science and invention as well as in literature and the arts.
LPK: Do you think there's a certain amount of playfulness involved in interpreting your dreams and experiences with synchronicity?
RM: At one of my first public lectures on these themes, a very earnest fellow asked, "Bottom line it for me - what is all this about?" I said, very distictly, "Remember to PLAY." And he wrote it down. I'm not sure he really got the point. We do our best work in a spirit of play, and my work as a teacher and writer is essentially to encourage people to play better games.
To harvest messages from dreams and coincidence, you need to develop a talent for resemblances - for noticing what looks like or sounds like something else. If you have an ear for puns, you'll pick up messages in a dream that others may miss. If you have a playful sense that the universe is alive, and that unseen forces may be at play around you and with you - giving you a secret handshake, or mussing your hair, or sometimes pushing you back - then you'll come alive to the great art of navigating by synchronicity.
LPK: I know people who say they do not dream or at least they don't remember their dreams. What suggestions do you have for people wanting to tap into their dreams?
RM: The new science of dreaming confirms that everyone dreams every night, in four to six cycles of REM sleep (when the eyes are moving under the lids) and in other sleep phases too. Anyone who says "I don't dream" is just saying "I don't remember".
If you want to break a dream drought, here's how to begin:
- Before you go to bed, write down an intention for the night. You might ask for guidance on something or simply say, “I want to have fun in my dreams and remember.” Make sure your intention has some juice. Don’t make dream recall one more chore to fit in with all the others.
- Having set your intention, make sure you have the means to honor it. Keep pen and paper (or a tape recorder) next to your bed so you are ready to record something when you wake up.
- Record something whenever you wake up, even if it’s at 3 a.m. Sometimes the dreams we most need to hear come visiting at rather anti-social hours, from the viewpoint of the little everyday mind.
- If you don’t remember a dream when you first wake up, laze in bed for a few minutes and see if something comes back. Wiggle around in the bed. Sometimes returning to the body posture we were in earlier in the night helps to bring back what we were dreaming when our bodies were arranged that way.
-If you still don’t have a dream, write something down anyway: whatever is in your awareness, including feelings and physical sensations. You are catching the residue of a dream even if the dream itself is gone. And as you do this, you are saying to the source of your dreams, “I’m listening. Talk to me.”
LPK: I love how you use synchronicity as guidance in your life. For those wanting to experience more of this kind of guidance, what would you recommend?
RM: You'll find lots of coincidence games, and Moss's Laws for Navigating by Synchronicity, in my book The Three "Only" Things. I'll just mention just one everyday game for now. Think about an issue in your life on which you need guidance. Get this clear and simple ("I would like guidance on......") and write it down. Then as you go about your day, be open to the idea that the first unusual or striking that enters your field of perception is a direct answer to you from the world. It may be the vanity plate on the car in front of you, or a snatch of conversation, or a deer on the road.
LPK: I dream paintings sometimes, but I often have trouble remembering them fully when I wake up. Do you have any tools for remembering dream images?
RM: I find that often dreams come back later in the day, especially under the shower or when an incident in waking life starts to call up a forgotten dream incident.
Remember you don't need to go to sleep in order to dream. You can enter dreaming from a quiet place of meditation, from the twilight zone between sleep and waking, or through shamanic drumming. You may want to check out my drumming CD, Wings for the Journey. You can take a favorite picture and use it as a personal dreamgate. Imagine yourself stepping behind that line of trees in the landscape painting, for example, and having an adventure on the other side. Or take a favorite piece of music and let yourself flow with it into a series of dreamlike scenes.
LPK: What are some of your favorite dream resources?
RM: The most important book on dreams you'll ever read is your own dream journal. I offer workshops and classes in dreaming and navigating by coincidence all over the map, and my events calendar is at my website www.mossdreams.com. I also have a lively blog, www.mossdreams.blogspot.com. I have published seven nonfiction books on Active Dreaming - my original approach to dream exploration and healing - starting with Conscious Dreaming and including, most recently, The Secret History of Dreaming, which describes how dreaming has been the secret engine in great lives and great events across all of human history. I have also produced a video workshop, The Way of the Dreamer (Psyche Productions) and an audio series Dream Gates: A Journey into Active Dreaming (Sounds True).
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Thank you, Robert for taking the time out of your busy schedule to share your dream wisdom with us! I hope that this interview has inspired you to get playful with your own dream imagery. Sweet dreams!
Creating Your Dream Team
March 1st, 2009, Comments (3)
This week's chapter in The 12 Secrets of Highly Creative Women, which I'm reading with Jamie's book group, talks about creative alliances and partnerships. I liked how A Feminist Wife called it her "dream team." It fits perfectly with the (totally optional) dream theme this month for the Creative Every Day Challenge.
I have used the idea of an imagined dream team before (people living and dead that I could consider personal allies), but it's been awhile since I thought about who I would put on my team. Among those I don't know, I'd love to have SARK as an ally as well as Martha Beck. Both of these women are intelligent, funny, creative, down-to-earth go-getters, and totally inspiring. I admire their honesty and integrity in the telling of their stories, their energy, and their wild success!
Fortunately, I'm lucky to have some wonderful creative alliances with people I already know. I have an awesome coach, a sort of Mastermind group that I meet with regularly, and I enjoy taking classes where I meet other like-minded, creative souls. One of my greatest alliances is with the hubster who is a wonderful champion for me and my bff has always been incredibly supportive.
I've made many creative alliances online (one of the wonderful things about blogging!) and I'm extremely grateful for that. It's been so helpful for a super introverted person like myself, as I can feel connected and respond in a way that feels good to me, without feeling the energy drain that happens for me in crowds of people.
I've been working on asking for help lately and it's definitely been interesting. The act of asking makes me feel a bit vulnerable, but it also gives others the opportunity to help (and people generally love to help others, particularly when it's something they're passionate about.)
Along those lines, I've approached some people I admire about doing interviews for Creative Every Day this year and the response has been wonderful. I'll be posting one of these interviews this week! In the meantime, check out this fabulous interview that Jamie Ridler did with the lovely Goddess Leonie.
Happy February!
February 1st, 2009, Comments (17)
I can hardly believe it's February already! So, we've moved into a new month and the totally optional theme for the Creative Every Day Challenge in February is Words! You can learn more about the theme here. There are so many ways to play with this theme and I hope you'll have fun playing with the possibilities. Personally, I think play can be a continued theme for each month as I want to encourage playfulness in everything we do!
One of the ways I use words in my art is in my sketchbook. On the page above, I was taking notes and doodling while listening to a podcast.
I've always been a doodler, I can't help myself. When I was in school, all of my notebooks would be covered in doodles and drawings in the margins. A few years ago, I learned that this doodling I was doing was actually helping me to pay attention! It turns out that for folks who aren't audio learners, doing something with your hands often helps you to soak in the information you're listening to. I had no idea! It made me feel much better about my constant doodling when I was attending a lecture, sitting in a class, or listening to a podcast. And it's so true for me! I noticed that when I'm able to doodle or write down what I'm hearing, I take in the information so much better than if I were just listening. Is this true for you?
While I'm not taking any lecture-type classes at the moment, I do enjoy listening to radio shows and podcasts and sometimes I like to take notes about what I'm listening to. I keep a sketchbook nearby for that purpose and the notes usually become a combination of doodles, drawings and words. If you're feeling nervous about putting words in your art, this may be a great place to start! Just play in your sketchbook and see if the words you write lead to images or if the images you draw lead to the written word. No one needs to see it. Just have fun with it!
If you're looking for something fun to listen to, check out the Craft Sanity podcast with Project Runway Contestant, Daniel Vosovic. I listened to it while painting last night and really enjoyed what he had to say.
Or you could check out my chat with Connie, of Dirty Footprints Studio, on her blogtalk radio program! I loved talking with Connie (she's such a sweetheart!) about everything from symbols in artwork, creating from your heart, and silly socks! Thank you for inviting me to talk on your radio show, Connie! You are a natural radio host! And I got such a kick out of the call from Karen!! Thanks for calling in, Karen!
I spent some time yesterday working on the "Listening" painting. I'm liking it more and more now, but it's not quite done yet.
Hopefully I'll have a little more time to work on it today before I sit down to watch the Superbowl with the hubster, who is cooking up quite a feast for the two of us.
Blogtalk Radio and Linkaroos
January 31st, 2009, Comments (5)
So, in the last interview of this week of interviews, tomorrow I'll be chatting with Connie of Dirty Footprints Studio on her brand-spankin-new blogtalk radio program. We'll be on at 11 am EST and you can listen in live, chat during the call, call in with questions, or listen to it later right here! Connie has a wonderful spirit and I'm really looking forward to our chat tomorrow. We may even talk about our mutual love for silly socks! And as a special bonus, you'll get to hear the radio lady with the British accent say, "Blogtalk radio." Heh.
I'm about to dive into some painting and play, but before I do, I want to share some linkaroos with yous:
- I highly recommend this blogtalk radio interview with the incredibly inspiring SARK. I believe part 2 of the interview is happening on Monday!
- Aurora of Foxy Art Studios pointed me in the direction of female surrealist artist, Remedios Varo and I fell in love! I'm picking up this book about her to learn more.
- Jennlui is starting an online Goddess Journey Women's Circle on March 1st. It sounds incredibly delicious!!
- The "Blog" of "Unnecessary" Quotation Marks totally cracks me up.
Creative Tides and Art Picnics
January 30th, 2009, Comments (36)
...We also change like the weather, we ebb and flow like the tides, we wax and wane like the moon. We do that, and there's no reason to resist it. If we resist it, the reality and vitality of life become a misery, a hell. -Pema Chodron
Today, my interview with Jamie Ridler is up at The 12 Secrets of Highly Creative Women book group blog! I loved chatting with Jamie about creativity and surrendering to your creative cycles.
It took me some time to recognize and accept the creative cycles in my life. I'd get so frustrated when I was feeling uninspired. While waiting for my muse to return I'd end up feeling anxious, wondering if I'd ever feel inspired again, complaining about feeling stuck, sulking, and worrying. (All very unpleasant, by the way.)
But when I began to recognize that my creativity cycles in the same way my body, the moon, the tides, and the seasons cycle, I began to see the beauty in the down period, these winters of my creativity. Things get quieter and I tend to turn inward. There is usually some stuff going on internally, things that I'm processing that aren't quite ready to come out in the open yet. Instead of railing against this time and forcing myself to create when I'm not feeling called to, this an excellent time to collect, gather, play and moodle on things. It's a great time to wander the shelves of the library, watch great movies, doodle in my sketchbook, and take long walks. I've come to love these winter periods of my creativity as much as the up time!
What can you do to play with your creative down times?
One of my favorite ways to get playful with my creativity is to have an art picnic. All you need for an art picnic is whatever materials you have at hand, a comfy spot (I like to spread out on the floor with a blanket and pillows), and some dedicated time to play. I like to begin by giving myself permission to make "bad" art and then I jump in by selecting whatever material I'm drawn to in that moment.
I'd love to lead some virtual art picnics this year by phone! I'm thinking I'll do it in a similar style that Jennifer Hoffman does with her office spa days. Ideally we'd meet for about a half hour to check in, do some grounding, maybe do an intuitive art exercise, and then go off and have our own creative fun for an hour. Then we'd come back and check in again for a half hour at the end. I think it'd be a great way to plan for some pure creative fun with a great support system in place.
I'd love to play with you guys in a virtual art picnic!! I'll keep you all updated on my plans for them!
A Long Rambling Post about Interviews, Play, Money and Being Carded
January 27th, 2009, Comments (13)
Today, the lovely Sarah J. Bray of S.Joy Studios has interviewed me for her fabulous new blog, MaTweeps, where she features cool people (tweeps) who use Twitter! I jumped into the Twitter fray fairly recently and I have to say, I'm really enjoying it. You can see my MaTweeps interview with Sarah here and if you use Twitter, feel free to follow me where I go by @leah_art.
In her interview, Sarah called me an artist and creativity consultant, which totally tickled me. Now there's a label I can have some fun with! 
It just so happens that this is a week full of interviews! On Friday my 12 Secrets of Highly Creative Women interview with Jamie will be up and Sunday at 11 am EST I'll be on blogtalk radio with the ever so sweet, Connie of Dirty Footprints!
Here's what I've been up to creatively:
This is the latest stage of my work-in-progress painting, which I'm calling "Listening" at the moment. More layers of paint, some waves at the bottom. It's coming along, slowly. I've been playing with a self-leveling gel which is fun, but a bit hard to capture in a photograph. I'm not sure where the next step is in this piece, so I'm going to continue to play with it and see what comes.
I've also been playing with my ideas of money. (So much to play with!! Seriously, I think I could spend the whole year with play as my focus!) I'm currently taking a class with the amazing Havi Brooks. I was on a call a couple days ago where the focus was on shifting your perception of money. It was suggested that we think of how we define money, the good and bad ways, and then try to find an idea or image that combines the two.
I wrote out some of my feelings about money: how it's something I want to hold on to, how it can be used for wonderful things, how it's scary, how it represents growth, how it's an energetic exchange. But an image wasn't coming to mind. Actually, the only image that came to mind was that of a sort of "money monster," but that wasn't quite right. So, I decided to sit down, write out some of the words, and then just start to draw to see what might come up. First I drew the scarier image on the left hand page. It ended up being a sort of "money monster tree" with tentacles that attached all octopus-like in my hair. And it was over me like a heavy, huge burden.
Then as I imagined how my more positive associations with money might tie into this tree image, I drew a different sort of tree, one that is light, resilient, growing, and energetically positive. It's fun to play with beliefs and perceptions through art and I highly recommend it to anyone feeling called to do so!
And since I'm rambling on and on, here's a funny story to close out this post. This morning, I heard a knock at the door. There was a delivery man with a package for the hubster that needed to be signed for. I told him the delivery was for my husband and I could sign for it. I put my hand out to sign, but he didn't move. He was giving me the strangest look, like he didn't believe me. I thought maybe he was thinking I wasn't married to my husband, like maybe I was a sneaky roommate trying to sign for his stuff, so I went in to get an id (and realized that I couldn't find my license anywhere. Doh!) I grabbed a bank card that had my married name on it, showed it to him, and then he finally hit me with his real concern,
"Are you over 21? Because you don't look it."
Oh! So, I laughed and told him that I was definitely over 21 (I'm 32) and then he let me sign for the package. Of course, I love being mistaken for 21 at this point. The only time I hated it was as a teenager when everyone thought my younger siblings were older than me. The most humiliating experience was when my parents took me out to celebrate the fact that I was going off to college that week and everyone (including my younger brother) was given an adult menu and they asked if I wanted a kid's menu. Ouch. Heh. I can laugh about it now! And I found my license this evening too. Phew! So all is well. Next time I get carded, I'll be prepared.
Interview with Goddess Leonie
January 8th, 2009, Comments (10)
Hello everyone! As part of the Creative Every Day Challenge in 2009, I'll be sharing interviews with fabulous creative people! This month, I'm thrilled to be interviewing the beautiful, Goddess Leonie. I immediately thought of Leonie when I thought about this month's theme of "play." Her youthful energy is contagious! Be sure to check out her site for loads of juicy, creative, and playful inspiration. I put part of this interview in the extended section, so be sure to click below to read the rest!
Leah: Leonie, please share a little bit about yourself.
Leah: What does creativity mean to you?
Goddess Leonie: Creativity means paint on the fingers, ink stained palms, gluey fingernails, pastel smudges on the cheeks. It's that place where you feel pure bliss, and unabashed joy, the moment where you remember you were born to be a creative goddess. It's about writing the stories the world needs to hear, painting your beauty and truth, showing the world what it means to see through your own eyes and feel with your own heart. Creativity is the place for your spirit to soar, like white geese flighting into the air together, honking wildly, exuberantly and vibrantly.
Creativity is finding where you are on your sacred journey, and finding the way forward. It's
finding the temple of expression, sharing, divinity and wisdom inside you. All with colour and
paint and papers and glue and pens and a camera.
Leah: How do you infuse your daily life with creativity?
Goddess Leonie: For me – my creativity and spirituality is intertwined. Art + soul = my way to be a goddess in this world. Creativity is my way of expressing my vision, heart and soulful truth... reminding myself and others that we are beautiful and needed and precious. It's about being brave enough to trust the voice and wisdom and insight inside me... and letting it pour out in all kinds of ways for others to see.
But that's so not what you asked me – tee hee hee! Hello passionate ramble!
My creativity + spirituality is a part of my every day. I meditate. I dream up ideas and visions.
I live tenderly. I write. I walk the mountains. I share. I paint when I'm called to it. I think up
ways I can help all the Goddesses
My most treasured part of creativity is creating a life that is rich and lush and textured and FUN. Fun is way more sacred than we give it credit for! FUN is Fabulous Universal Nourishment. It's laughter and play and ridiculousness and being a kid again.
Yesterday, my crowning creative achievement was an impromptu dance party at my cubicle-job-sweetheart-teammates to George Michael's “Faith”. Hello shopping trolley dance! Hello walking man dance! Hello working out how to Y-M-C-A F-A-I-T-H. It was full of spirit and laughter and possibility and invention and inspired movement and rapture in the moment – total creativity.
Leah: Our (totally optional) theme for the month is "play," so I'd love to hear about how you incorporate play into your creative activities!
Goddess Leonie: This is such a gorgeous question! I love your theme I want to be a cheerleader of creative
play + soulful replenishment – a cheerleader with pigtails and pom poms and synchronised
moves and everything!
I run Creative Goddess Circles, and one of the first things I make the goddesses do is paint... and then throw it across the backyard into the grass. And we – as adults – tend to freak out about it. We worry about “wrecking” it. Or letting go of control. But then we do it, and we begin to laugh, and let go, and have fun with it. We become that gorgeous, slowing child inside us filled with innocence and wisdom and enthusiasm. We remember that creative goddess wise woman inside us who trusts, and knows, and accepts, and enjoys.
Run the hose on it. Paint with your feet. Jump all over it. Do all the things you think you shouldn't do. Play is about remembering there are no mistakes – only exploration, discovery and joy along the way to be had.
Because I'm in the mood for making words acronyms today, I reckon PLAY would have to be
Perfectly Luscious Adventures with Yes. Or Pants-free Loony Abseiling while Yodelling. Probably
the first one actually. 
