Creative Process as Path
Exploring Art-Making as a path of transformation
Course Dates: September 7 – October 5, 2025
When: Sundays 9:00am to 11:00am Pacific (5:00pm to 7:00pm UK)
(if you can’t do this time and would like a meeting time in the evening for the U.S. please let me know, I may run a second session concurrently)
Where: Online
Cost: Offered on a Dāna / Donation basis.
Registration: https://forms.gle/u2XsyDw1ykbkiq4E9
This five week course offers a chance to explore in community the ways in which our art-making process can meet us a path through which we explore and expand our sense of existence. This course is open to people who enjoy creating in any medium (drawing, painting, writing, movement, craft or any other ways you express yourself artistically or creatively). Each week will offer opportunities to explore the ways our inspiration reveals itself through guided meditations, contemplations, and time spent working directly with your creative process in the medium(s) of your choice.
Who is this course for?
This course is ideal for those who have taken either the “Opening What is Closed” or “Creative Refuge” courses that I have offered in the past, who wish to delve further into the mystical and wisdom aspects of art making.
If you haven’t taken those courses, but feel called to explore in this direction you will be asked to learn a little bit about the way I teach “Creative Process” sessions. I will schedule a short teaching session prior to the start of the course to go over this.
Generally, if you are a meditator or spiritual practitioner looking to find more connection between your art-making/creative exploration and your spiritual path, this course may be of interest to you. If you are an artist seeking to explore the side of creative exploration that is just only for you (it’s capacity to bring different kinds of healing and to open up our sense of what life is about) it may be a good fit for you too – but know it’s being offered from a spiritual practice perspective, and not at all about the business side of art etc. You can always reach out to me with questions using the contact link above.
This course is not a Soulmaking Dharma course – if you are interested in studying and exploring Soulmaking Dharma, I strongly recommend you check out the course offered by Catherine and Yahel each Fall.
Elements of the Course
Guided Meditations and Contemplations: Each week there will be a guided meditation or contemplation with the intention to increase our sensitivity to the body/being as a way to open more fully to our creative process. There will also be guided contemplations offering space to encounter the themes, motifs, and images that inspire us outside of the mediums we work in.
Teaching: Each week will have a short talk about the themes of this course (see below).
Participant Sharing: There will be time each week to hear from others about their explorations and discoveries.
Group creative process sessions: There will be time set aside in each weekly meeting for a creative process session. You can learn more about creative process sessions here. Within these we will work independently in our medium of choice while others are doing the same (in the shared zoom room). I will offer simple guidelines or prompts to set the context, but mainly its a time to engage creatively while being held by collectively shared intentions to explore beyond our habits and into the wilds of creative possibility. There is time to check in about how it went after each period of working.
Course Details
Sample Main Meeting Schedule
- 20 minute meditation
- 25 minute talk
- 20 minutes sharing/questions
- 5 minute break
- 40 minute group creative process session
- 10 minutes check-in about process session
Outside of class
- Optional one-hour creative process sessions (will be scheduled based on participant availability, 1 or 2 times each week) if there is participant interest.
- Additional recorded guided meditations relevant to the course (optional).
Some Teaching Topics
- Making connections between our art-making path and spiritual practice
- Exploring the the ways our art extends beyond the boundaries of our medium (the meanings and images that are larger than the impressions we capture)
- Relating to our creative process as a means to open freedom (as a wisdom path)
- Exploring the particular ways creative engagement supports healing.
- Coming into relationship with mystery/the unknowable.
- Cultivating trust in what is authentic for us.
About Susy
Official Bio: Susy has practiced Buddhist meditation since 2001, and began practicing insight meditation five years later. In 2015 she began studying and training with Rob Burbea, and completed her teacher-training with him in 2020. She teaches meditation in Los Angeles, California, and is an artist and a parent.
Some particular biographical details related to this offering: I consider my first spiritual root to be art-making, and painted throughout my teens and early twenties. I studied painting at the Rhode Island School of Design, and Film Directing at UCLA. The one thing I did not learn at school (or maybe more accurate to say, I learned to forget) was how to keep my creative process alive and vibrant and fascinating. In time, through years of meditation practice and spiritually-oriented art making practice, I found my way to keeping those doors open – at times working as an artist and at times making art for no good reason at all…
About Dāna / Donation based offerings
It is common for Buddhist teachings to be offered freely – the teachings themselves are said to be beyond price, and the teachers give and students offer within a shared spirit of generosity. This course is not a Buddhist course, but I am still offering it in the same spirit. I feel a profound gratitude in receiving the teachings and approaches I received from my own teachers about creative process work as well as Dharma practice – these things were life changing for me. Based on this there is no fixed price.
You will be given information on how to offer dāna/pay close to the start of. the course.