Birding: An Unexpected Pathway to Creativity
Birds can be messengers of new ideas.
The connection between bird-watching i.e. birding as an avocation and one’s creative process might not be obvious at first glance. But in fact, the process one must go through to become an accomplished birder closely parallels the creative process!
Becoming a birder and engaging in your creative process both require learning to be in the present moment, to still your mind, and to observe quietly and carefully what’s going on in that moment. With birding, you’re observing and listening to the world around you. With the creative process, you’re observing and listening to your inner as well as your outer world. The most direct way to open to your process in either case is not by using your mind and thoughts, but by allowing yourself to be immersed in the experience of the moment. Only then can you begin to make sense of what you’re experiencing. You see the bird by its movement, its colors, you hear its song, or you feel yourself open to a creative impulse, a sense, a feeling, and then perhaps an idea.
Come experience and enjoy the magical interconnections between birding and the creative process!
What:
What 3 things might your participants learn or experience as a result of your workshop?
- You will learn the basic steps for becoming a birder, developing a birder’s sensibility, and how that directly parallels and could inspire your creative process.
- Through a guided birding-related exercise, you will experience accessing a quiet, focused state of present-moment awareness, which will help you open to your creative process.
- You will explore how creative birding can be and experience how it can help open you to levels of your own creativity you didn’t know were there.
So What:
What might be 3 ways that the content of your workshop changes your attendees’ perceptions, habits, ways of working, or view of the world?
- By learning about how to enter the amazing world of birding, you will dramatically shift your perceptions of the creative process and how to open to your own creativity.
- You will learn a new and different way to access your own creative process using the first steps of learning basic birding as a guideline.
- You will learn enough about the magical experience of birding to know if you, too, might feel inspired to make birding a part of your creative world.
Now What:
What are 3 ways your attendees might apply what they learn in your workshop?
- After having learned the similarities between learning to bird and learning to open to your creative process, you will be able to use what you have learned to help inspire your own creative process.
- You will be able to use what you learned about how to go quiet, be in the moment, and sense and observe what’s happening around you or inside you to move through any blocks to your creativity.
- You will be able to use the colors, the songs, and the movements in flight of birds you notice in your everyday life to remind you of the magic and wonder of these amazing creatures… and of your own creativity as well!