Creative Refuge

A six week workshop dedicated to renewing and deepening one’s creative process

Course Dates: March 9 – April 13, 2025
When: Sundays 9:00am to 11:00am Pacific (5:00pm to 7:00pm UK)
Where: Online
Cost: Offered on a Dāna / Donation basis (see below)
Registration: https://forms.gle/2KjkFomjNEk8Bd5Q7

This six week offering intends to support and nourish participants connection with their art-making/creative process. The course will provide a framework and community in which focusing on your experience within your creative process takes priority over all else, including what you produce. Even though we may know there is something blocking our freedom or joy as we create, or we may suspect there is more beauty and adventure to be found within making or creating, it can be hard to prioritize exploring and opening our creative process itself vs. focusing on what we are making. But taking the time to do this can open new and enlivening terrain within our work and process. Whether you feel stuck or blocked, disconnected from art-making, or you have an inkling that there is always more freedom and adventure on offer through creative exploration, this course might be of interest to you.

There are no specific projects, methods or sharing of work in this course. We will have structured time to work within our chosen medium within the container of the course, and time to share about our creative experience during the sessions. Working together but independently allows us to lean on community and feel supported as we explore our own blocks, habits, and deep inspiration.

Who is this course for?

Anyone who engages in making art or craft of any kind is welcome (painters, dancers, musicians, writers, textile artists, poets, crafters, digital artists, filmmakers, ceramicists and more). In this context, labels like professional vs. hobbyist don’t apply – if you are called to make any kind of art, then you have a creative process that can be opened and explored and loved more fully.

If you have taken previous creativity/dharma courses with me (“Opening what is Closed”) you will find some of the topics explored to be the same. But in this course there will be more emphasis on the particular qualities, joys (and frustrations) of the art-making process. The ideas and practices offered are intended to open your own creative process, wherever it’s at, presently – the terrain that opens for you will necessarily be different, and so I encourage any past participants to join and hold the space together. Unlike previous courses, a creative process session will be part of the main meeting vs. optional. As is most often the case, the best part of this course will most likely be the chance to explore this way with a group of kindred spirits.

Elements of the Course

Guided Meditations: There will be some short guided meditations offered within the main meetings (a few simple practices I think are useful to supporting anyone’s art making), but you do not need to be an experienced meditator to join.

Teaching: I will offer short talks each week to provoke reflection on your own creative life + time for sharing and questions.

Group creative work sessions: The primary practice modality offered in this course will be the “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 a 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

Outside of class

Some Teaching Topics

Is this a spiritual course?

The approaches that will be offered have the primary intention of opening possibility that is hidden by our habits and conditioning – which is certainly a goal of contemplative practice. As well, when we work directly with our creative process, there is the chance to encounter an ineffable domain of our experience, and to see and feel in ways that transcend the mundane. There is also a way that we experience our lives in less fixated, limiting, or harmful ways when we are in harmony with our creative process. From my perspective, that’s all spiritual stuff, and related to why we might practice in a contemplative or meditative tradition. But it’s not necessary to have any particular spiritual perspective – if you have a connection to exploring creatively or artistically, and you have interest in seeing if more freedom, dynamism, or harmony is on offer through that exploration, that’s all that’s necessary. As mentioned above, any meditations will be suitable to those without experience.

My approach to creative process work (and my own art-making process) is heavily informed by concepts found within Buddhist practice (a body of teachings where there is a tremendous amount of wisdom regarding transcending limited habits of mind) – so if you are a Dharma practitioner, some obvious connections will be likely be made.

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. For those familiar with the buddhist Dāna system, you know what to do. For those new to it, I can suggest you consider the time I put in preparing, organizing and leading the course. You can think of similar online courses you’ve taken, or even the cost of a good Yoga class where you live. It’s reasonable to think of your own earning capacity and give accordingly. It is also really okay to take the course if you are unable to pay anything or to pay very little for this course – that’s part of what makes the Dāna system beautiful. Showing up for others each week, and seeing the exploration through is worth a lot.