Facilitating The Creative Awakening Series: Defining the Self in Art

Hello, 2025! Dra. García on the keyboard. I'm a speaker, writer, coach – in a state of creative recovery. I've spent the last several years digging into what my purpose is and how to live it in everything. Writing about the experiences I'm cultivating in the community around self-expression is one extension of that.

This blog is the first in a series I'm writing reporting out on my facilitation of Creative Awakening: Integrating Art and Spirituality at the Creative Arts Center in Dallas.

For 2025, I will be focused on more of this experiential writing as a way of sharing with my community at large the conversations I'm navigating in my work to help humans become their most expansive selves.

Back Story 

I was a graduate teaching assistant back in graduate school, teaching 5 classes on psychology of women and social psychology and over 500 students in that time. My teaching changed forms when I went corporate, turning into workshop facilitations instead, but I've been longing for years to teach at large again.

This is a workshop series I'm teaching for the first time, and the first time this has been hosted at the CAC. Inspired by my reading of The Artist's Way and my own creative recovery journey, I used ChatGPT in the fall of 2024 to initially pitch this description and outcomes to the Executive Director:

Summary: Experience a transformative journey as you explore the powerful connection between art and spirituality in this series of workshops. Drawing on the wisdom of The Artist's Way, you'll delve into practices and rituals that awaken your creative spirit and foster a deeper sense of self-discovery.

Expected Outcomes:

• Ignite your creative spark
• Develop a meaningful relationship with your artistic self
• Practical tools & techniques for integrating spirituality into your creative process
• Engage in self-reflective exercises that inspire growth and personal insight
• Connect with a supportive community of individuals who share a passion for creativity and spirituality

The class didn't make the first time (only 1 student signed up), but this time I had 5 signups and we went live. I gotta be honest: I wasn't sure exactly what this class would be about. But, fortunately the Executive Director gave me total creative freedom to teach this class as I saw fit.

With my extensive and incredibly diverse expertise in leadership, non-religious spiritual mindsets and applications, astrophysics and quantum physics, self-care, femininity, creativity, and more, I knew my students would up for a treat. I figured the students attracted to this class would be open-minded and in search of redefining their sense of creative selves, and I was pleasantly surprised to find this to be true.

The Setup

Our class is cozy, with a total of 5 students. Four of those students showed up at the first class, all with a state of hesitant curiosity about what this workshop series would entail. The creative freedom was dope to me, and I was overjoyed to learn that aside from the pay, I would be compensated with a class of my choosing at the CAC (I chose watercoloring!).

I spent some time introducing myself and my background, my own creative recovery journey from being solely an intellectual to becoming a Renaissance Woman, and the varied perspectives I would be speaking from. I wanted the class to know this wasn't a sectarian class, but an open-ended exploration.

The class has a variety of backgrounds ranging from healthcare, tech, and entrepreneurship. Although they had different exposures to creating art, whether it was paint by the numbers or self-led pottery, what they all had in common was a thirst to become more Creative with a capital C and more aligned Spiritually.

Focus Point

After hearing everyone's stories, I introduced the Wheel of Life, a visual tool that can be used to assess and improve different areas of your life. Not only is it one of the tools Julia Cameron uses in her facilitation of The Artist's Way, but it is also a tool I use extensively in my own personal and coaching practice. I had the class rate themselves + creativity and share their reactions on where they were spending time in their lives.

If I were to ask you why you're not creating more or making more art, I'm sure you can find a million reasons. Your roles as a parent (or not), caregiver, employee, entrepreneur, and just "there aren't enough hours in the day" mentality leads to a sense of scarcity on one of the most abundant resources in the world: time.

The Wheel of Life is helpful and confronting because it allows you to see where you are spending your time, and determine whether putting your attention there is the best use of your time and energy.

For the rest of our time, we focused our attention on three things: defining the self, defining the kind of art we wanted to create, and making commitments to make more space for ourselves.

The Discussion

Topic #1: What is Self?

First, we had to determine that part of defining the self is leadership, and that leading is just but one aspect of leadership. The other? Following. It is following the musings we receive that allow us to create... more.

Other Definitions of the Self:

• Soul / Being who wants to create
• Goodness in self (akin to the Holy Spirit)
• Discovery and expansion
• Stillness
• Essense of "Who" I am
• Stillness
• Love, balance, peace
• Flow with a Higher purpose
• Darkness (I added)

 Topic #2: What do you want to create?

I was most surprised by the answers to this question. I thought the class would list the types of art they wanted to create, but instead, they described the kind of feelings they wanted to create.

We spent some time delving into the way emotions work (biochemical signals in our brains), feelings (stories our brains create based on the sensations of the emotions), and how these two, if left unchecked, lead to rigid moods and personalities based on the feelings we crystallized. Understanding the stories we tell ourselves would be key, then, to create new patterns of creative awakening.

Desires for creation:

• Beauty
• Color
• Movement
• Experience
• Bliss
• Energy
• Coherence
• Balance
• Space
• Hyperreality
• Freedom
• Connection
• Details
• Impeccability
• Unearth/unravel
• Chaos
• Emotion
• Ecstacy
• Curiosity
• Uncertainty
• Inspiration
• Serenity
• Awe

Artistic Growth Challenge

I was pretty hype by the end of class. For it to be an unscripted discussion, the ideas flowing were awesome, and I was excited to create a custom curriculum through the Queen Mindset Leadership 👑 lens so they could not just make art in the traditional sense, but create art in the way they live their lives.

For our closing commitments, I invited the class to consider the following:

• Add an element of mindfulness to their schedules (1 hour / week)
• Start the habit of 3 morning pages daily (stream-of-consciousness pages from The Artist's Way)
• Audit and rate all life areas
• Set boundaries and reclaim time for Self

What's Next?

With the class's permission and participation, I proposed using the chakra system to explore their creative and spiritual wishes for the rest of the workshop series:

Root - Creativity - Confidence - Compassion - Voice - Vision - Unity

This will be the sequence I'll follow in my blogs as well.

<3 Thank you for tuning in. And shout out to one of my closest and dearest friends, Erica Howard, for gifting me The Artist's Way and thus facilitating the portal to my creative liberation. I love you, ohmie!

Till next time!

Dra. CarolLaine G