radical acceptance begins with you and a crayon.
Every scribbly mark an opportunity to…
start a scribble practice
One way you can practice listening to, and building trust with, your inner voice is by starting a scribble practice. Scribbling is the simplest thing in the world and anyone can do it. Three steps get you started:
Find a surface (paper, sidewalk, dirt, etc.) and something to make a mark with (paint, chalk, stick, etc.). These are my favourite tools, but you can truly use anything.
Take a breath and get quiet. Tune into the present moment, your inner voice and perhaps your intention for the session.
Listen to what colour and/or mark you’re being told to make. Slide the mark making tool over the surface to make a wild, intuitive mark in response to this tuning in. Let this mark arise from within you and action whatever arises.
Repeat steps two and three until there are no more marks to express.
That’s it!
Scribble practice is simple but it doesn’t always feel easy.
Some days marks will flow out of you like water in a stream. You’ll feel deeply connected to your inner voice and page after page of scribbly marks will flow out of you.
Other days big emotions may show up, your mind might tell you you can’t do it or it feels like the creative flow is all damned up. This is when this simple practice feels hard.
You’ll find a bit more ease when you release the habit of feeling like you need to create something beautiful.
Process over outcome, please!
What you create may be beautiful to you, it may not be. Doesn’t matter! Focus your scribbling on what feels most aligned each moment you create. Very often my mind will say, “You’re going to put those colours together?” and I’ll check in with my body again asking, “Are you sure about that?”. It almost always says yes and I oblige.
It doesn’t matter if the colours look hideous together. Scribbling is a practice of being in the present moment, listening to intuition, moving through discomfort, building courage, alchemizing, activating curiousity, expressing feelings and emotions… There are endlessly more captivating reasons to create than beauty. Focusing on each moment of the scribbling process leads me to deep truths and authentic transformation.
intentions
Each intention allows you to practice creating in the moment, manifesting courageous choices and exploring curiousities. Some intentions that show up often for me:
Expressing—allowing emotions, feelings and energy to express themselves outside the body.
Tuning in—to colour energy specifically but it could be any external energy. Trees, flowers, the moon… everyone has the ability to tune into the energetics of non-human entities. Humans are also gifted with the ability to share what these entities are communicating on the physical plane. We are given the opportunity to translate and manifest the information they share.
Play—I often get curious about different techniques or mediums and letting that curiousity guide me feels adventurous!
Integration—thoughts, ideas, mantras and quotes become more fully integrated in my body after sitting with them or repeating them while scribbling. Whenever I need a helping hand really understanding something scribbling helps.
Checkmark—I try to scribble daily. Some days it’s hard and all I can muster is checking it off my to-do list. These are the least inspiring feeling days.
scribble tools
You may feel like you need all the best art supplies to get your scribble practice started. You don’t. The pen in your purse and the back of a receipt will work just fine. If you’d like to build from there, start small and add slowly.
there’s a little voice inside you begging to be heard.
practice listening to and actioning what that voice says with these simple prompts.
watercolour circles.
get lost in the meditative process of painting (or drawing) circle after circle on a page.
repeating lines.
start with a base of five squiggly lines on a page and repeat them with different colours.
abstract self portrait.
let colours and shapes arise with the feeling of you in this abstract self portrait activity.
gibberish.
make up a scribbly written language.
draw a rainbow.
… with or without stars.
express big emotions.
connect in with big emotions like fear, anger and anxiety and move them through your body through scribbling.
random marks.
my most used scribble practice… loose marks added to a page as they arise.