Connection and Creativity : Mindfulness for the New Year Event
Saturday Feb 8, 2020 ~ marked a turning point in my creative career as I was invited to speak at the Annual Northside Women’s Breakfast. A turning point because this was the first time that I had the joy of combining my singing, painting, speaking and teaching all together in one event.
It was an honour to share a message that I feel is super relevant to our particular time in history.
We live in such amazing times of technical connectivity and yet there is an epidemic of loneliness, restlessness and disconnection. Could this disconnection actually be the result of a disconnect from our souls. Surely we are body, mind and spirit….and yet many struggle to connect with their spirit in a conscious and ongoing way.
I shared a Stillness Reflection that I had written in the weeks prior to the event that expressed my new intention in life….living from a place of stillness and awareness, connecting to my authentic self. How it is possible to access this sacred stillness on a daily basis, how this can bring us to a place where we experience a peace that passes all understanding and a ‘creative flow’.
“Stillness is where creativity and solutions to problems are found”
There were songs about ‘letting go of fear and doubt and chains that tie your spirit down’ and allowing our souls to ‘rise above & beyond’ the expectations of the world. There were insights about my art process and the stories behind their creation. Woven throughout were personal vignettes describing moments in my own life when I was disconnected from spirit and caught up in ‘my mind’. But through it all, the awareness that my soul has intuitively been guiding me, even from a young age, prompting and awakening me to the deeper spiritual realm around me. Singing and painting became my prayer offerings, my way of connecting, my meditation.
And then towards the end of the session, the women had a chance to connect with their stillness and create a collage artwork. It is always such a joy to witness souls’ creating with colour.
Photography ~ thanks to Bruce Smith
I believe we need to reach beyond mindfulness into soulfulness, beyond a daily mindset to find our unique ‘soulset’ the place where creativity flows and peace abounds.
My prayer is that the 80 women who attended will find stillness on a regular basis, that they will connect with their souls and create from that place ~ that the artwork they created on the day will remind them of the time we spent together.
