The House of Flow ∞ Blog
On Meditation and Creativity
“Magic lies in the state of mind of the artist. This magic is wakeful magic. The Artist’s mind is able to tune in to a certain balance or wakefulness. We would call it Enlightenment, in fact.” – Chögyam Trungpa Meditation and Creativity For the record, I am not a buddha – just an average human with average intelligence who has been seeking answers to the riddles of life for much of...
The Health Benefits of Following Your Creative Impulse
Another Good Reason to Follow the Creative Urge - Your Health In a recent article in Psychology Today, Cathy Malchiody, PhD, states that there is now sufficient scientific evidence to prove that creativity is a well-being practice. Studies conducted over the last couple decades demonstrate that a having a creative practice, such as dance, music, writing, or visual arts, shows...
Creative Inspiration – A Capricious Cat or a Well-Trained Dog?
Inspiration is a complex and beguiling subject. As an Artist for many years, I have attempted to conjure up the timeless muse in innumerable ways, sometimes successfully and sometimes not. For many creative people I know, it seems to come and go when it pleases, and often when you least expect it. It’s like a cat that will stand in a doorway for long periods of time without coming inside the...
Sell Your Art – by NOT Becoming an Online Marketing Guru
To Become, or Not to Become, a Social Media Guru I am tired of seeing people spouting on about how you can sell your art by doing this marketing plan or doing that social media strategy, or making videos of yourself creating your art and posting them online, etc. etc. – in other words, by getting really really good with your online art presence. Generally speaking, this kind of approach...
The Artist as Pioneer of Culture – and the Importance of Following Your Creative Dreams
The Artist as Pioneer of Culture Perhaps more than any other profession at this time, the Artist (writer, dancer, painter, sculptor, etc.) helps a culture evolve by defining the cultural paradigm. That is to say, the Artist’s role, among other things, is to direct how a society views itself and its own possibilities for change and evolution. Historically, the job of pioneer of...
Creativity Coaches – Why we Need Them and How Art Schools Fail Us
What is a Creative Coach? What do Creative Coaches do? And why do we need them? “Support is often in terribly short supply in a creative person’s life. There is no one to talk to about the work. There is no one to talk to about the struggle. There is no one to talk to about the enormous gap between the dream the person had and the reality the person is living. Indeed, many creative people...
Unraveling Creative Resistance
Our whole civilization is based on the idea that rational knowledge is king. But rational, empirical knowing is only a small part of our human potential. Concepts, by their very nature, are limiting. And so, when we fill our heads with ideas about how things are, we invariably end up boxing ourselves into a corner. So What is Resistance, in Real Terms? Creative resistance is born from the...
Understanding and Directing Emotions with a Creative Practice
We are emotional beings – we have hundreds, even thousands of emotions every day, often without knowing it. Many of us are unaware that emotions are driving our decisions most of the time, and often not for the better. We often sabotage ourselves because we want to do something but are being held back by negative emotions and thought patterns that run just beneath our radar. The fact is that...
Kill Your Anxiety (with a Creative Practice)
Anxiety’s Many Causes and Manifestations According to the medical model, there are a multitude of known causes of anxiety, as well as numerous different manifestations of it. If you are reading this, you might have experienced problems with a phobia, or a panic disorder, or some kind of separation anxiety disorder. Maybe you've experienced an obsessive-compulsive disorder, or a...
Making a Living as an Artist
Making a Living as an Artist “As artists, we are often regarded as people who have problems paying the rent, and our belief in this myth only adds to its truth. It may actually be the case for many artists, but this does not have to be you. Money, as it turns out, is merely a form of energy that comes to us because we have created some kind of value for others. So the questions around money and...
Creativity and The Artist’s Dilemma, Part 1
Having been in the creativity coaching business over the years, I’ve noticed a lot of creative people tend to put their stock in a rational approach to success. They take all these marketing and art business classes and ultimately end up stressed out and unhappy because they have no time or energy left to do their creative work. A lot of people go to art school and learn techniques from masters,...
Creativity and The Artist’s Dilemma, Part 2
Following this topic of the Artist’s Dilemma from part 1 – in talking about beliefs that are limiting: another culture-born belief that seems to run rampant among creatives is the idea that we must try to obtain as much information as possible and then rationally figure out how to traverse our mountain of creative obstacles – which usually appear to come from a lack of support from the culture,...
Help with Depression – The Creative Solution
With our current COVID-19 situation and the rise of unrest in many parts of the world, it seems a good time to address our psychological maladies. History has it that human beings started as a hunter-gatherer species, often having confined ourselves within four walls. But since Winter/Spring of 2020 most of us have spent a lot of time in quarantine, and this has started to give rise to states of...