[This post is from the content for Grow Your Depth, Nurture Your Brilliance – a year-long class on deepening your practice?that?you get inside the Creative Dream Circle.]
Grow Your Depth, Nurture Your Brilliance is a support system for deepening your journaling/healing/magic-making practice, which deepens your relationship with yourself, your life and your dreams.
It is specially designed to help you develop your practice to the point where you can create a miracle for yourself when you need it, which is essentially about learning to trust your intuitive creative voice so deeply you allow it to lead you into the life you really want to be living.
What does this mean?
Well, the magic and miracles already live inside you, your practice is how you excavate them.
So, together, we’re going to practice digging deeper and building our capacity to hold more magic.
Depth work is a deep and wild thing, and not something we can control.
Our egos, or small selves, or conscious minds, can have a really hard time with this because this part of us wants to understand what’s going to happen.
You’re not always going to understand what’s going to happen.? And that’s ok.? It’s actually the only way to go into the depths.
I often have no clue what I’m doing.?
The secret is to show up anyway and you’ll quickly discover how amazing + magical this all is.
What is “practice”?
What I?m calling ?your practice? is essentially your creative + intuitive healing + transformation work/play, which happens in your journal. So to simplify I tend to call it ?your journaling practice? or ?your practice?.
But it’s more than just doing the work.? Approaching it as “a practice” is important.
The dictionary definition of practice is: ?repeated exercise in or performance of an activity or skill so as to acquire or maintain proficiency in it.?
In terms of your journaling practice, what it looks like is”sitting down with your journal and an intention to do a creative + intuitive healing + transformation process”.
(If you’re new to the Circle – don’t worry about not knowing what this means, soon you’ll have TONS of different processes to use for different purposes)
I would define practice as a container which holds your process of unfolding.
What, exactly, is unfolding, is different all the time.
This is where you work on healing and transformation and bringing dreams to life – essentially, becoming more of who you are. So, in that way, your practice is about practicing being you.
I experience my practice as a container and notice how the container gets sturdier the more I show up for it – it can hold more. It can hold me through the times when I don?t quite feel strong enough on my own.
And, of course, in the times when I?m not showing up as much, the container feels flimsier and my possibilities start to get dim.
What I bring to my practice impacts my practice. If I?m resisting something and only wanting to show up in superficial ways, my practice is only going to give me superficial benefits.
The deeper I go, the more magic exists.
Which is why I wanted to offer Grow Your Depth, Nurture Your Brilliance: because we all deserve to live from that deep magic.
Plus – Grow Your Depth is the class I wanted to take this year, this is really what I need right now.
The word practice also speaks to how this work is different from performance.
There is space here to explore and try new things and get it wrong. There is nothing to measure up to, this is space to meet yourself where you are. Ironically, the more you practice the better you perform, but practice needs to be a performance-free space.
The best practice is a living thing – growing and changing along with you.
My practices change with the seasons and with my dreams. There can be a lot of awkwardness in this, as you are growing and changing and your practice is growing and changing and sometimes you can get out of step with each other.
In fact, the act of creating (and re-creating!) and navigating your practice can be frustrating and uncomfortable but it is really, really important because it’s one of the ways that your practice will grow you.
Working on your relationship with your practice is a part of your practice.
The best practice fits you and your life as it is today while supporting you in growing into who you want to become.
Daily practice is important to me, but this work is my livelihood and so I have space for it. (See my videos on Daily Practice for more on this – making it fun, inspiring and deeply nourishing helps make it easier to show up more often.)
If you push yourself to practice more than you really have time for, then you are bringing that forceful energy into your practice. On the other hand, if you are practicing less than you really need, you are bringing that resistance into your practice.
This is a continual balancing act, again – working on your relationship with your practice is a part of your practice.
One of the gifts of practice is being able to spot these kinds of energy dynamics and work with them sooner – before they get bigger and start to mess things up in your life.
Your practice is this thing you do every day or every week but as you deepen it over time it becomes something that impacts your whole life, it gives you sturdier ground to stand on.
When you practice the piano every day – you get better at playing the piano.
When you practice creative + intuitive healing + transformation every day – you get better at everything.
As I talk about in the definition section – transformation happens after healing and it’s about holding the new way of being long enough that the roots can take hold.? Without this part, it’s too easy to fall back into old patterns.
So, underneath whatever else is happening in your practice, this is the ultimate intention: transformation.? Holding the new way of being.? Getting better at showing up for yourself and living in deeper alignment with your brightest gifts.
Your practice is something you do on your own, but you’re not going to be in this alone.
ALL of the classes in the classroom, plus the Un-Sticking Station and the Creative Genius Mojo-Dojo are FULL of? tools and processes you can use in your practice.
This means you don’t have to sit down and wonder what to do – you’ve got a smorgasbord of healing + transformation processes and you get to pick what you want to play with.
If you’re new to the Circle: your first step is to play with the classes and get to know the tools and processes for creative + intuitive healing + transformation.? You can start with whatever class feels right for you (but if you’re not sure – start with the Creative Dream Incubator) and working through that class will be how you practice.
Plus there is the entire Advanced Creative Badassery Resource Library filled with hours and hours and hours of videos and classes that cover every possible situation you could come across on your path to growing your magic and bringing your dreams to life.? (I’ve spent the last three years filling the library up with everything me and my clients have ever needed in the process of bringing our dreams to life.)
You’ll have whatever tools, resources or lessons you need to navigate your path.
If you’ve been in the Circle for a while already: Grow Your Depth is about the taking the next step – taking the tools and processes that you learn in the classes, and bringing deeper into your own practice.
So you play with them and experiment with different ways of approaching and guiding your own practice, all within the supportive + magical container of Grow Your Depth, Nurture Your Brilliance.
Miracles happen here all the time, and there are plenty to go around.
So let’s start!
First, remember that we have all year to work on this.
You may have too many ideas for what you want to do and not know where to start, or you may not have a clue what you want your practice to be. You may feel overwhelmed or freaked out and unsure that you can do this.
Just keep showing up and you’ll sort through this.? This is part of your practice.
You’ll start with The Starting Point prompts. This creates a record of where and how you are beginning this journey, helps you clarify what it is you want to get out of this and gives you some ideas for how to proceed.
Tracking your progress is important because when you can look back and clearly see how you?ve grown, that gives you confidence to keep going.
Plus, the process of tracking is very clarifying, and healing and transformation are often confusing so practices that generate clarity are always helpful.
So we’ll continue that tracking process every week in our sharing circle posts, but don’t worry about “having to” participate every single week – remember our guidelines about only participating in whatever way works for you.? I’ll start a new sharing circle post every Friday so there will always be a fresh one there for you when you choose to participate.
These posts are where you get to peek in on my process as I deepen my practice, which may give you clues when you feel stuck.? Also, reading what other people share is super inspiring plus you get that feeling of doing this work as a part of a supportive community, which is the best.
If you feel stuck or unsure in any way, use the Un-Sticking Station and see where that takes you. That?s the thing I use the most in my journaling practice.
(Please remember that getting stuck is a valid and needed part of the process.)
Check out my video where I share what I’ve been doing in my Grow Your Depth journal.? And you can read more about the process of Creative + Intuitive Healing + Transformation.
Mostly, trust that where you are now is the perfect place to start.
Your practice will grow you, and as it does, you will grow your practice.
So it can look shaky and unsure in the beginning, that doesn?t mean it won?t grow into a sturdy and magical container.
Remember: practice isn’t about knowing what you’re doing or being great at it! It’s about practicing.
I promise: there is a lot of magic for you here, if you give it some time and space to come to the surface.
And remember that you?re going to get tons of support.
Every week we have our sharing circle where I offer some questions for asking yourself that help you process and navigate your path.
And every week I?m adding new content to Grow Your Depth, Nurture Your Brilliance – thoughts, ideas and teachings that help light the way to deep and lasting healing and transformation which can spark ideas for your practice.
Every 6-8 weeks we’ll meet for a live call where I’ll do coaching and healing work with you.? These calls happen at different times each time, to give people a chance to participate from different time zones, and if you have questions but can’t be on a call live you can post your questions in the forum and I’ll answer them on the call.
All of this will gently nudge your practice more deeply into your own process of creative + intuitive healing + transformation.
This is the class I need for myself this year.? My heart is bursting with joy about being able to do this with you.
Thank you for being here.? Let’s dive in.
If you feel inspired to do so, I encourage you to share some of your answers to The Starting Point prompts in this thread.
