Expressions of Creativity Workshop Testimonials

Gwen's Expressions of Creativity program was a huge revelation for me. I have held myself to be a creative musician, but before attending Gwen's program, the extent of my prowess in art was to draw reasonable looking stick people.

Gwen's unique approach allowed me to connect with the energy in my body at many levels, and to forget about the self talk of "I can't draw or paint." In doing this, I let my body do the talking and I was truly amazed at what was coming out of my brush.

After I had finished several acrylic paintings, after looking at them, I had to remind myself that they were really my creations. The other participants voiced the same experience about their creations.

The huge awakening for me through Gwen's program was that I realized my creativity in music, and other areas of my life, comes from staying out of my intellect and just letting my spontaneity of feeling the moment take over. A music teacher shared his motto with me "If you let the ego go, the notes will flow." Gwen's creativity program woke me up to what I knew instinctively about creating music can work in any other area of my life as well. I found the Creativity program experience so compelling that I participated in it a second time and it was another fabulous experience of reveling in my own creativity in art.
G.L., Ottawa. Mid-50's male.

Throughout my life I held a set of beliefs that "play", or "playing" in the form of drawing, painting or pursuing musical dreams were ephemeral pursuits that I should only practice as last resort time fillers, if at the end of my "serious" day of working and relating I had any energy left to do so. As an adult if anything I did equated to a waste of time that would not result in additional income as a provider for my own family, it had to be put aside and forgotten. After all, I had more adult ways to play now and those things like art and music were better left to children anyway!

The cost of that set of beliefs was that I completely put aside any artistic and creative expression, other than learning guitar and playing a few popular songs by other artists that I would eventually grow bored of playing.

As I discovered the WEL-Systems® perspective just before turning 40, I was well aware that I had spent my whole life to that point pursuing someone else's ideals for who a young man should be, and what he should strive for in today's society. I had not noticed the value of honoring, and acknowledging the great rumblings in my body that told me loud and clear that these creative interests were, in fact, of great importance to me. Indeed, they were inseparable from who I was!

The discovery of easy flowing acrylic paint, compared to the scratchy, dry markers and coloured pencils I had used to that point, along with the unlimited time frame for expression of any thing, allowed me to connect with what was true, easy, and real to me in that moment. The result was amazing! The picture I produced seemed to be of somewhere else, by some other entity that was expressing through my animated body; yet, it was fully recognizable as a deeper part of my Self in the moments it was unfolding onto the canvas.

Ever since that moment of discovery and permission to "play", I have allowed myself to "go with the flow" of what feels true and important for me from moment to moment. I have rediscovered the immense creativity with which I move through my world on a daily basis, whether I am being artistic or not! I now spend more time "at play" than ever, being creative by painting, writing my own songs and poetry, and enriching my life with those things that I now know as full expressions of who I am.

I have let go of the limiting belief that only financially advantageous activities matter to me as an adult. In fact, it is in finding the personal value in all activities that truly matter to me that I have enhanced my capacity to manifest what it is that I want in my life."
R.L. Sudbury, ON. Mid-40's male.

"What an experience!

I've always held myself to be an artist and a creative person. As a young child my parents exposed me to many opportunities to "be creative." Up to the end of high school I always took any art classes that were offered at school. That ended with university as the intellect took over. And it's not to say that I wasn't creative then. I was. But there was, over the subsequent years, a growing sense inside me that a state I label "creative" was lacking in my life. WEL-Systems courses and experiences re-ignited the "creative Allister Hain" and so a weekend of getting in touch with this emerging identity made a lot of sense.

During the Expressions of Creativity weekend I worked with oil pastels, something which proved to be more than I had bargained for. My choice not to change into another, possibly more user-friendly medium, offered a chance for a deeper understanding of where else in life I choose to make it difficult for me to achieve an end or outcome.

We did a series of eight drawings based on The CODE Model™, one for each chakra and an eighth centering on "connection."

My first drawing was very sparse and light, possibly highlighting my lack of experience with the medium, but I think, reflective of a tentativeness to connect my Self with the process. The next drawings were different. Much more flowing. Much heavier. Much easier. All were completely abstract reflecting what was brought into consciousness from each induction. I think they were also reflective of my choice to not worry about what got produced, how it looked, whether it was "good" or "bad". Each painting, even the first one, was useful because it reflected what was going on in my universe at that very moment in time.

After each painting we all got an opportunity to sense and verbalize what our work meant. As always, in any WEL-Systems experience, the painting was a prompt to delve deeper to see where else in our lives we find instances similar to what we drew. The painting becomes secondary to the experience of inquiry.

What I take away from the Expressions of Creativity weekend is increased awareness: awareness of my personal beliefs around my creativity, awareness of who I am and who I can be when I am creative. And underlying all this is the awareness of me as a creative being, every second of the day and night. Just think how creative a single breath is.

I'm also very aware now of how I approach creative activities. Immediately before writing this I finished an 11 x14” landscape in acrylics. This was the third attempt at creating this particular scene. My first and second attempts saw me worrying about getting the perspective right, ensuring colours went down in the proper order, and spending an enormous amount of time future pacing problems (how will I get the water looking like water? are the clouds going to look like they belong in the sky), etc. I became aware that that was painting using the intellect and it didn't work.

In this third attempt I just went in with the idea that I wasn't going to be afraid about laying down a thick layer of colour, or what order they went down on canvas, or even what the outcome would be. I would just experiment. My concentration was central and focused on the work. And the painting flowed right out of my body. It was finished in about 30 minutes. In the end I created, what is, in my world, a masterpiece. And I know I can do it again and again and again."
Allister Hain, Ottawa, early 40's male