Creativity is the alchemy that transmutes suffering into expression, fear into inspiration, and loss into legacy. It enables us to tenderly hold life’s contradictions — the beauty amidst the destruction, the joy coexisting with the despair.

As a facilitator for Julia Cameron’s renowned book The Artist's Way, one of the most powerful tools I share with participants is the Creative Affirmations. These positive statements aim to counteract the negative self-talk and doubts that can hold back artists and creatives.

The Basic Principles of Julia Cameron’s book The Artist’s Way provide a philosophical foundation for awakening one’s creative potential and nurturing one’s inner artist.

This is the twelfth post in a series on The Artist’s Way: A Spiritual Path to Higher Creativity, a book and a self-study program by writer Julia Cameron. I’m looking back on Week 12: Recovering a Sense of Faith.

In the Basic Tools, Cameron describes morning pages — ‘three pages of longhand writing, strictly stream-of-consciousness.’ She clarifies, ‘There is no wrong way to do the morning pages.’

Have you ever stopped yourself short from fully throwing yourself into making something, worried it will get messy Maybe you keep thinking about the thing you want to make, or say, or do, but you never get started.

When we receive a creative impulse, it can come through quickly. When it arrives, it doesn’t always make sense in that neat kind of way. And when we spend time with our ideas, developing them through the creative process, meaning can be fluid. We’ll start one place and end up someplace radically different.

Some of you may know that I became a hypnotherapist and coach alongside my practice as an artist. Some people ask me if I am an art therapist. It would be more accurate to say that I am often a therapist for artists.

Have you ever felt it was challenging to feel truly free to create and express yourself? Maybe you hesitate to spend time doing the things that you enjoy — painting, singing, drawing, writing, playing the guitar, taking photos — worried that you should be doing something more practical, concerned what you make won't be good enough?

It's springtime in London and the season of renewal takes on an even greater resonance this year. Out in the hazy sunshine, I feel myself taking gentle and playful steps in the world.

This is the tenth post in a series on The Artist’s Way: A Spiritual Path to Higher Creativity, a book and a self-study program developed by Julia Cameron in the 1990s. I’m looking back on Week 10: Recovering a Sense of Self-Protection.

This is the ninth post in a series on The Artist’s Way: A Spiritual Path to Higher Creativity, a book and a self-study program developed by Julia Cameron in the 1990s. I’m looking back on Week 9: Recovering a Sense of Compassion.

Over the past few months, I’ve sensed a bit of stubbornness, a general disinterest in pretending things are fine with me when they are not. As I worked my way through week 4 of The Artist's Way, I was reminded of my childhood.

By the third week of doing The Artist’s Way, I had found a rhythm and was already starting to see some changes in the way I approached my creativity and expression. The book and process require a good amount of personal reflection and introspection. Writing the morning pages each day meant I was tapping into the feelings and thoughts of each day, and the weekly exercises meant a bit of digging around in the past to understand the present.