The Year I Started Meditating Was the Year I Started Painting. Coincidence?
How Mindfulness Quieted My Inner Critic and Freed My Creativity
I didn’t realize it until recently, but the year I first began my yoga + meditation practice (about 10 years ago, wow!) was also the year I started painting.
At that point, I’d already been a creative professional for years working as a graphic designer and photographer. I was creative for a living. But everything I made was digital and for clients. I didn’t see myself as someone who could create with my hands as like a “real artist”. That kind of making — tactile, messy, raw — felt out of reach.
I’d been telling myself a story for a long time: I’m terrible at making things with my hands. That’s just not my thing.
Underneath that story was fear. I was afraid of being bad at something. I was afraid of embarrassing myself. I was afraid of being a beginner again, especially after I had already built a creative career.
I also felt this pressure that everything I made had to match the level of my professional work. It felt like there was no space to start something new, no room to stumble through learning something from scratch.
So I didn’t try.
But something began to shift the year I stepped onto a yoga mat for the first time. That same year I closed my eyes and consciously sat in meditation for the first time.
Little by little, the voice of my inner critic started to quiet down. Not completely, but enough for me to hear something else underneath. I started feeling a pull to make things. I wanted to work with my hands, just for me.
I think my body was asking for it. I had been spending long hours at the computer, getting migraines, working a design job during the day, and editing photos at night. I was burned out from screens. I needed something different.
That is when I signed up for a holiday weaving workshop at a local boutique. I told myself it was just for fun, but something powerful happened that night. I made something with my hands, and it was beautiful which surprised me.
It wasn’t just the woven piece I left with. It was a quiet realization. If I can do this, what else could I try?
That small moment opened a door. I started exploring more. After weaving I then tried Shibori fabric dying then macramé and eventually painting.
At some point along my path I found myself teaching macramé workshops. I noticed the same story showing up in my students. Almost every class, someone would say, “Oh, I’m not creative at all. I’m just here with my friend.” And every time, they would leave holding something beautiful they had made. I could see the wheels turning in their minds, the realization blooming. If I could make this, what else might be possible?
That first weaving workshop planted a seed in me. Meditation gave me the mental space to let it grow.
Because here is the thing. Before I started practicing meditation, my mind felt cluttered, loud, and critical. My inner critic wasn’t whispering doubts, she had a megaphone. Meditation taught me how to notice those thoughts without clinging to them. It helped me create a little distance. It allowed me to say, “thank you for your input,” and keep going anyway.
And here is something I’ve been reflecting on lately. The year I started meditating and painting wasn’t an easy year for me. In fact, there was a a lot of chaos in my personal life. Looking back, it was definitely not the right time to start something new.
And yet, I created more than I ever had before.
I even committed to a 100-day project. One hundred paintings in one hundred days. I painted every single day, even while everything around me felt wildly unstable. Now I see that painting I was doing itself was meditation. It was how I stayed grounded through it all.
That is what meditation taught me. You do not have to wait for everything to be calm and perfect before you begin. You can begin right in the middle of the mess.
Science shows that meditation literally rewires the brain. Studies of long-term meditators show a shrinking of the amygdala, the part of the brain responsible for fear and anxiety. When that fear center quiets down, we become less reactive and less trapped in spirals of doubt and worry.
At the same time, meditation strengthens the prefrontal cortex, the part involved in focus, self-awareness, and decision-making. It increases activity in the areas of the brain linked to imagination and insight.
In other words, meditation makes it easier to clear mental clutter and reconnect with creativity.
Beyond the science, meditation taught me how to be present. How to let go of attachment to the outcome. How to stop measuring every creative act by its success.
When I first started painting, my work wasn’t “good.” By that I mean it didn’t match the vision in my head of what I was trying to create and I didn’t know what I was doing technically. But meditation had already taught me that things do not need to be perfect. The practice itself matters.
Looking back, I see how deeply connected it all was. Yoga, meditation, weaving, painting. Each one created a little more space inside me. Each one softened the voice that said I should stay in my lane. Each one reminded me that it is okay, even beautiful, to be a beginner.
And that is why I created Meditate Like an Artist.
It is a course for artists, writers, makers, and anyone who feels that quiet or not-so-quiet pull to create. You do not have to call yourself an artist. You do not have feel like you are “good” or “talented”. You do not even have to know where to begin.
Maybe you have been holding yourself back. Maybe you have been doubting, hesitating, or waiting until it feels safe.
This is especially for you.
Inside the course, I share meditation practices that helped me quiet the inner critic, clear space for inspiration, and reconnect to creative flow. We explore breath awareness practices, a variety of moving meditation practices, and art-making as meditation. These are practices to help you make space for what wants to come through you.
Because creativity doesn’t thrive under pressure. It thrives in presence.
Sometimes, the most radical thing you can do for your creativity is to slow down, breathe, and let yourself begin again.
If you are curious to explore meditation as a companion to your creative process, I would love to share this journey with you!
