WHAT IS INTUITIVE COLLAGE?
When it comes to healing and growth, our favorite tool here at Healing Creativity is Intuitive Collage.
Intuitive Collage is a creative process that provides you with an amazing opportunity to rediscover and connect to your own unique creativity as well as your innermost self.
By calming your everyday mind with all its racing thoughts and worries, and inviting images to speak instead, you’re given the opportunity for a deeper insight into your inner world and to recieve messages from all of that within you that yearns to be seen, heard, healed and nurtured to grow.
Creating Intuitive Collage is a simple proecess that does not require any previous art experience or talent. It is NOT about creating beautiful or provocative art (though that might be a sideeffect at times).
Instead it's about noticing what the creative process and your creative expression awakens with in you, be it a sense of joy and peace, anxiety or frustration, a creative block such as perfectionism, or pride that you were able to move past it.
HOW TO CREATE
AN INTUITIVE COLLAGE?
Start by centering yourself with a few breaths before choosing 2-3 magazines.
Tear out images, textures and colors that you’re drawn to, preferably without giving it too much thought.
Once you feel “done”, tear or cut out the images further and play around with them on a piece of paper until it feels as if they’re in the “right” place. Finish off with some glue.
Now center yourself again with a few more breaths and gaze at your incredible piece of self expression. Be curious! What is it trying to tell you? Your collage is a mirror to whatever is going on inside you, and as such it offers valuable glimpses into your innermost self.
HOW TO GO DEEP
WITH INTUITIVE COLLAGE?
To go deep with your collage you can use reflective journaling questions such as:
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What words come up when I look at my Collage? (free association)
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What do I feel when I look at my Collage? Where do I feel it?
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What do I love about my Collage?
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If my Collage could speak; What would it say to me?
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What would I name my Collage?
A great way to go even deeper with your collage is to share it and your thoughts around it with someone you trust. We are still blown away about the insights and the connection we feel with our collage when we, Laura and Mari, share our collages with each other or when our participants share them in the groups. There's something about getting another pair of eyes that make you see things in your collage and have insights you may never have had on your own.
If you feel interested in what sharing can give you, you can book a 1-2-1 Coaching session where we reflect on your collage together, or you can join a Workshop or one of our Group Journeys.
COMMON CRITICAL THOUGHTS
My Collage isn't pretty/ creative/ meaningful or [insert whatever your inner critic tells you] enough!
Breathe! Intuitive Collage is a form of self-expression, and as such it can NEVER be “not enough". Whatever Collage appears, it’s exactly the Collage that your innermost self needs to express right now.
I feel a resistance. I'm not creative/good at this!
We’re all creative beings, but our creativity may prefer to express itself in different ways.
Don't let your judgement of the final product decide wheather you're creative or not. Instead, look at the process; If you release all thoughts of performing, how does collaging/painting/singing/etc. make you feel? Does it spark something within you? Do you enjoy it?
Many of us also carry a wounded creativity and the feelings of resistance are often a strategy to keep ourselves safe from possible criticism. Perhaps your early creative expressions were criticized by a parent or a teacher, or you received so much praise that you were afraid that someday you would not be able to live up to it.
Intuitive Collage is an all-allowing and non-judgmental process, in that way that whatever comes up is exactly what is meant to come up. It's not always the collage itself that will give you insights. Sometimes it’s the thoughts, feelings and patterns blocking your creativity that your innermost self needs you to see and heal. So instead of saying "I'm not creative" or "I'm not good at this", gently and kindly observe what comes up, put it into words and see what happens. Maybe you realize that this is a pattern that exists in other areas of your life as well, and that it's not really an indicator of how creative you are.
Are the critical thoughts keeping you from expressing your creativity? We're always here for a 1-2-1 Exploration Session.