Reclaiming Your Creativity: Returning to Your Innate Creative Nature

“I can't do that.”

“That moves me beyond my comfort zone.”

“My art teacher told me it's a good thing I'm smart.”

“I thought I had to wait until I was good enough to make art.”

These are just a handful of comments I've heard from participants in my creativity retreats and workshops at Kripalu. They are familiar words—words I've heard throughout my career as a museum educator, art teacher, artist, and mindfulness practitioner. Beneath them lives a common story: somewhere along the way, many of us stopped believing that creativity belongs to us.

Perhaps we received criticism at a young age. Perhaps we began comparing ourselves to others. Perhaps we absorbed the message that creativity is reserved for artists, musicians, dancers, or people with special talent. Whatever the reason, many adults arrive carrying a collection of assumptions that separate them from a natural part of themselves.

Before we can reclaim our creativity, we often need to unlearn.

We need to let go of the belief that creativity is something we earn rather than something we are born with. We need to release the notion that artistic expression must be productive, marketable, or "good." We need to loosen our attachment to perfection and become willing to be vulnerable, playful, and curious again.

In many ways, this process parallels the journey of yoga and meditation. Just as we practice observing thoughts without judgment, creativity invites us to notice and soften the inner critic. Just as meditation helps us connect to deeper awareness, creative expression offers access to parts of ourselves that words alone cannot reach.

When we create, we step into a state of inquiry. We become less concerned with outcomes and more interested in experience. We begin to trust intuition, sensation, and imagination. Creativity asks us to be present. It asks us to listen. It asks us to engage with uncertainty and discover what emerges.

I often remind participants that creativity is deeply woven into our history as a species.

If our nomadic ancestors found time to create cave paintings while navigating the challenges of survival, why do so many of us believe we are too busy to be creative? These early artists were developing language, culture, mythology, and identity. Their images helped communities make meaning of their experiences and pass stories from one generation to the next. Creativity was not viewed as separate from life—it was part of life.

We can also look to young children. Long before they master language, children instinctively draw, scribble, sing, move, and play. No one teaches them to make marks on paper. They do it naturally. Creativity emerges as an innate form of exploration and self-definition. It helps them discover who they are and how they relate to the world.

A child does not ask whether a drawing is good before making it. They create because the impulse to create is alive within them.

Somewhere along the way, many adults stop trusting this impulse.

Yet the desire to create never fully disappears.

Often it simply waits beneath layers of self-judgment, busyness, fear, and the pressure to perform. The creative spark remains present, waiting for an invitation.

In recent years, science has begun confirming what artists, healers, and contemplative traditions have long understood. Research highlighted in Your Brain on Art by Susan Magsamen and Ivy Ross found that making art for as little as 45 minutes can significantly reduce levels of cortisol, the body's primary stress hormone, regardless of artistic skill or experience. In The Arts Cure, Daisy Fancourt explores how engagement in the arts positively influences physical and emotional health, strengthens resilience, supports immune function, reduces loneliness, and fosters social connection.

The arts affect virtually every physiological system in the body. Singing can strengthen respiratory muscles. Dance can improve cardiovascular health and lower blood pressure. Creative engagement supports emotional regulation, builds resilience, and helps us navigate life's inevitable challenges with greater flexibility and self-awareness.

Creativity is not merely a luxury or pastime. It is a human need.

When we engage in creative practices, we strengthen our capacity for self-awareness, adaptability, joy, and connection. We create opportunities to listen inwardly and express outwardly. We remember parts of ourselves that may have been forgotten. We reconnect with wonder.

These understandings form the foundation of Reclaim Your Creativity at Kripalu.

On Campus

Kripalu Experience Program

Reclaim Your Creativity

August 14–16, 2026

On Campus

Kripalu Experience Program

Reclaim Your Creativity

August 14–16, 2026