In the Flow: A Journey into Creative Readiness

When I prepare for a workshop or a group session, I love spending time alone with myself, my imagination, and my vision. I take these pauses from time to time, allowing myself to dive into the creative process, connecting the already known and familiar details that I plan to weave into a potential scenario. I always read something extra and build a structure. Then I observe that structure, and thankfully, I have a rich imagination and the ability to visualize the process. I tune into listening and seeing, and the space begins to speak to me through other people, through nature, or through a sign on a shop window. My attention picks up and captures the needed details, the puzzle pieces, and the bits that bring wholeness and beauty into the process.

I remember, with such joy, reading Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi's book Flow many years ago, and feeling delighted that someone had found the exact words to describe what I had always known but couldn't articulate. I love that state when I enter the flow. Everything falls into place in my life, and everything gains meaning in relation to what I'm doing in that state.

It's as if you're walking and watching a beautiful landscape, revealing, step by step, new treasures, and you're not even surprised. You simply keep walking with gratitude and curiosity, watching and growing richer from this magical sensation, from the state that is born through your journey. It's like plugging into a source of creative power and vision, and in that state, life is at its most beautiful.

I've noticed that entering this state requires a few things: sincere interest in the subject of your exploration, trust in yourself, an open heart, and your response to the call, which means openness to ideas that might at first seem strange or silly or insignificant. But often, these ideas are the doorway you're being invited to walk through. It is an invitation into a fairytale, a world of wonders where the colours shine more vividly and everything feels alive and full.

What helps me respond to these sometimes-strange ideas? My curiosity and my enthusiasm for research and creative adventures.

Let me describe one such example.

It was March, and the spring equinox was near.

Two events were especially important to me at the time, representing ideas I had been nurturing. I was thinking about two women's groups I was working with then. For one of the groups—and I can't say much about it now—I was preparing a final art therapy session. I had worked with this group for a full year, with regular meetings once a week or every two weeks. It's hard to describe our shared work in just a few sentences. That's a story of its own.

But I am deeply grateful to the women in this group for all I learned while facilitating sessions for them. Throughout the year, I often wanted to quit because many of my beliefs about the world and about who I am in it were seriously challenged. It was made harder by the fact that they were all native English speakers, and my self-esteem would sometimes fall below the floor. I had to scrape it off and lift it back up. Slowly, that began to change, and by the end, it was hard to say goodbye.

But this was the final session, and I was reviewing in my mind everything we had worked through together over the year. I knew what our meeting would be about. The theme and scenario were already set.

The second group I was working with was in my native language, with a theme I had chosen, and a program I had joyfully created. In this group, we worked with dolls, narratives, and archetypes. We met and shared our time together, and each time it felt as though we parted, renewed and uplifted.

Both groups were incredibly important to me.

The following week, I had two final sessions scheduled, with one for each group. I felt fully prepared, and yet the creative spirit and the field didn't let me go. I was living in that field. I sensed that there was still something more that I could offer, something waiting to emerge.

On March 22nd, early in the morning, I woke up and knew I needed to go to the ocean. I was shown exactly where, to which beach, because something was calling me there. It was a gentle call, and I gladly responded, got in the car, and drove.

The moment you take the first step, new pages begin to open.

While I drove, my thoughts wandered around the theme of time. I thought about eternity, about moments, minutes, and years. I thought about what we do with our own time, whether we keep playing public games or try to catch the beauty of the moment, and what is truly valuable in that moment.

I realized that I wanted to gather pebbles on the shore of the ocean. It was an incredibly important activity, and I love doing it. My home country has no access to the ocean, but it has the Black and Azov seas, where my parents often took me as a child. Later, I would take my own children there when they were small. I loved collecting stones and shells and bringing them home. I also brought pebbles and shells from the Adriatic Sea. These stones and shells are still in my apartment in Kyiv, where I dream of returning one day.

I arrived, and the ocean greeted me warmly. As I walked along the shore, I tried to connect to my center, looking for the meaning of what was happening there on that early morning beach. The waves were already low, and the ocean kept retreating from the shore. Thoughts and feelings filled me, acting as if a portal to something important had opened.

"Hidden treasures!" The ocean was revealing to me the treasures hidden beneath the water in the form of beautiful, smoothly polished pebbles. In my mind, I asked it to show me only those I was allowed to take. The ocean had been polishing them for thousands, maybe millions of years. It had gathered them right there, at that time, and brought them to me so I could, in some way, touch eternity. This is something that comes closest to eternity in terms of age. The ocean had collected and gifted me those pebbles, which may have once flown from different planets to Earth, and gathered them at this exact point where I could touch them. I gathered them with love and care, listening to them, so I could take them with me and share them with the women I would soon meet in my groups.

I also saw that the stones symbolize our core, representing something eternal and resilient within us. We, too, were all born in different parts of the Earth and had gathered here together to celebrate the moments of life in these warm circles. Our earthly lives are very short compared to the lives of stones and rocks, but that doesn't stop us from finding life within life itself.

I asked each participant to choose a pebble as a reminder of her inner strength, serving as a symbol that, like these stones, we come together for a reason.

I also wanted to thank the ocean for the power of renewal and flourishing that it shared with us at the beginning of spring, when daylight begins to grow longer than night. This shift symbolizes the rebirth of our hopes, dreams, and belief in a better path and a better destiny for all of us, and for humankind.