About the session
- How to use art making as a tangible anchor for inner exploration and emotional processing. Emma shares how holding physical materials like textiles and pens provides steadiness while navigating difficult emotions and tumultuous inner experiences.
- How the Buddhist eightfold path can serve as a flexible creative toolkit rather than rigid rules. These eight teachings—wise intention, view, concentration, effort, speech, action, mindfulness, and livelihood—offer gentle guidance for dissolving creative blocks and cultivating positive mental states.
- How to reconnect with authentic creative desires by releasing the need to impress others. Through guided journaling prompts, you'll discover what your heart truly wants to create when external validation is set aside.
- How focused, undistracted attention on your creativity creates magnetic pull and rich ongoing conversations with your materials. This concentrated presence transforms art practice from sporadic activity into a steady, nourishing companion.
- How to recognize and shift your inner dialogue about your creative work from harsh to compassionate. You'll explore whether you speak to yourself with sharpness or softness, and discover how gentle self-talk supports sustained creative practice.
Emma will guide you through eight rapid-fire journaling prompts based on the Buddhist eightfold path, each designed to unlock surprising insights about your creative practice—from discovering what your heart truly wants to make when no one's watching, to hearing what your hands would create if they trusted themselves completely. The exercise reveals unexpected answers that bubble up from your creative subconscious, often surprising participants with images, sensations, and desires they didn't know were there.
About the speaker
Emma Freeman loves to create contemplative art using old textiles, slow stitching, paint, collage, found nature, and poetry. She uses art-making as a mindfulness and healing practice for herself and has found it incredibly helpful for cultivating joy, processing emotions, working through difficult life experiences, and finding positive outlets for her deep sensitivity. Emma loves teaching what she learns through classes and retreats, both online and in person. Connecting with people through creativity, authenticity, and kindness brings her immense happiness. She is a Highly Sensitive Person, sober, Buddhist, and lives in Oconomowoc, Wisconsin.
