Creating personal mandalas can be such a powerful way to call upon our own creativity as ally. Mandalas have been used across time as sacred maps of the gods, maps of the self, a focussing, meditation tool to help bring attention inwards, to help us listen to the depths of our intuition and imagination.

I make this land-sea mandala to help me develop ideas for a new creative project. It’s a very alive, active, focussing research tool. Found objects, natural materials, sand and sea-water, all become part of this mandala, and end up externalising what’s hidden inside the creative unconscious.

Connecting to the senses, to nature, inside and out, this is a mysterious, profound process, full of synchronicity. It’s like a working within a giant sand tray, a much larger version that the one we so often use in arts psychotherapy. I made this land-sand-mandala deliberately close to the sea-shore… l’m fascinated by thresholds, the liminal spaces in between, where land meets sea.

Here is an excerpt from the mysterious Tagore poem, On the Sea Shore.

"On the seashore of endless worlds children meet. Tempest roams in the pathless sky, ships are wrecked in the trackless water, death is abroad and children play. On the seashore of endless worlds is the great meeting of children."

The transitory and impermanent nature of mandalas make them feel precious… just like life. Half an hour later all the separate elements of this mandala were carried away by the incoming tide of the sea, leaving no trace.

I’m trying out new ideas for monthly women’s groups, one based on arts, mindfulness, and creative writing. As women, our bodies are determined by monthly cycles… until we pass through menopause, and meet new rhythms. Something about the ebb and flow of our bodies, cycles and time. I’m interesting in creating dedicated spaces for female creativity and archetypal reflections, to help us connect to our own deeper inner nature.

And whenever I design creative retreats, it feels important to try out ideas on myself first, as creative experiments, to see how they work.