Integrity means practicing what I preach

Hello my beloved community,

When I first began putting together my new schedule of classes I was struggling with deciding what to call my classes now.

It finally dawned on me that the real reason I had been stuck was because I had been trying to hack the marketing and feeling pressured to compete. Trying to find the best phrase and descriptor to try and convey what we’re doing and explain why this practice is different than the now many other art meditation classes offered online. It was very liberating when I finally came to the obvious conclusion that this work is too big and too deep and too complex to fit nicely into a single flyer or one-liner. The beautiful truth is that the Intuitive Painting process that I practice and share is as complex and varied as everyone who practices it, and it changes moment by moment, day by day depending on what YOU need and where the energy takes you.

This isn’t ONLY about making art to calm your nerves, or find your power, or process grief, or embrace your rage, or release perfectionism, or find your creative spark again. It is actually ALL of those things and more, and having to choose one for the sake of “niching down” or finding my target market is doing a disservice to the possibilities available through this practice.

Intuitive Painting for Liberation is a spiritual somatic practice for embodied liberation, using creative expression to become more whole. In any class, one person could be deep in devastation and grief, another person could be pushing the limits of how much joy their critic says they are allowed to experience, another person could be doing meaningless scribbles not thinking much about anything, and someone else could be meditating on the luscious, sensual sensation of the paint smearing around on the paper, and any other number of possible experiences. And all of them are doing the work.

The foundation of our practice is that we are all naturally self-healing beings, and your intuition knows exactly what you need in order to live, heal, and thrive. This practice allows you to connect into your intuitive self, which also invites in the inner critic, creating the opportunity for you to work with your own inner rules and limitations in a new way. Whatever experience YOU need when you arrive to class in order to grow, heal, live, is the experience you will have. My mentor calls this “The Predictable Miracle”. It looks different for everyone and every class, but we all experience the healing power that arises from showing up for ourselves in this way.

So, I’m leaning into the big juicy Aliveness available through this practice and sharing it all instead of trying to keep it simple for the algorithm. The reality is…liberation work is big and deep and powerful and messy and beautifully the same but also profoundly different for everyone at different times, and Intuitive Painting for Liberation doesn’t fit into a nice, neat little box. And I don’t want it to.

There is beautiful clarity in practicing what I preach in my personal life and my work, because it all applies and nothing is off limits. This isn’t just an art practice, it’s a way of moving through the world with integrity, authenticity and wholeness. The practice offers all of these things depending on what YOU need in the moment. And you don’t have to know what you need each night, you just get to show up and practice trusting your intuition with the support and invitation to do so with others practicing doing the same.

Healing is possible. Liberation is available. Let’s get free. Together.

With the deepest love and gratitude that you exist,

Amy