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I did not recognize how deeply I longed to integrate my systemic change practice with creative practice until I joined the visual presencing course w/ @kelvy_bird. As a “recovering” artist, I was out of practice and committed myself to reconnecting with this abandoned muscle
Over three mornings, I practiced embodied listening through visual presencing. It was awkward the first time — resisting the instinct to record everything down was difficult. I was dissatisfied with my attempt, but took a vital learning from failure: I needed to let go.
By letting go, I chose to surrender to *image*. Surrendering was entering a receptive state of trusting my embodied wisdom — the mysterious connection between words that enter my ears and the strokes of my hand. My control blinders dissolved away and my perspective widened.
By round three, I felt a sense of liberation by letting go. It wasn’t about *me* any more — my fears, my judgements. Drawing was a channel to something greater. Drawing was tapping into a kind of creative magic — a kind I hadn't experienced since I was a teenager in art school.
Fear shows up when facing a blank canvas, but committing ink to paper is a leap of faith. I had more to learn about humility: Art is powerful process to help *me* sense-make, but how do I channel it for others? How do I create in service to collective reimagining?
Maybe the answer is to keep drawing. Awareness-based systems change stems from deep inner change, with a frequency so powerful that it vibrates through the roots of where we're all interconnected. Scale through resonance is felt and fractal, it makes your heart sing.
Why did I separate creative expression from my systemic design practice for so long? I held a deep limiting belief that art was egoic and self-serving, that real impact can only be achieved through design: "courses of action aimed at changing existing into preferred situations"
This has deepened my inner truth that art and design practice are flip sides of the same coin. Art is the receptor site for the future not yet known. Design bridges the ever-changing pathways there. Together, they co-create the container for emergence. Now to keep on practising!
