Tap Into Your Creativity

Date: November 13, 2009
Guest Speaker: Mary E. Knippel
Times: 11 am Pacific | 12 noon Mountain | 1 pm Central | 2 pm Eastern
Cost: Free for NAMW Members
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Would you like to learn how to boost your immune system and reduce your stress level without prescriptions or costly supplements? Get creative! Simple pleasures can be powerful stress busters. Scientific research has shown that when we are engaged in creative expression, the body’s physiology and brain wave patterns change. This affects every cell in the body, changing the immune system, even our blood flow, and helps to create healing.

Mary’s message is that we are all creative beings, and our creativity is a chameleon which takes many forms. Making time to play is engaging our creativity. The word “play” brings to mind sports and games, but it’s also an attitude. Opportunities to be creative surround us: trying a new recipe, taking a new route to work, watching the travel channel instead of a Mash rerun, taking a walk on the coastal trail, enjoying the sunset, arranging flowers in a vase for the dining table.

Mary E. Knippel, Writer, Creativity Mentor, Speaker and Workshop Facilitator, will discuss ways to de-stress and balance obligations with opportunities to play and have fun by tapping into our creativity. Often it is hard it is to find not only the time, but the permission to make our own needs a priority. Viewing her own breast cancer experience as a wake-up call, Mary urges everyone not to wait until they face a health crisis to create time for themselves in their busy lives. Gentle changes (such as taking 15 minutes out of the day to write in a journal) inspire major shifts (recognizing a pattern of behavior in your journal pages and deciding to change that behavior) towards embracing your hand-crafted life.

Mary will discuss various ways to tap into your creativity and the benefits to your mind, body and spirit including:

• writing in a journal
• collage (visual art made from an assemblage of different forms to create a new whole)
• scheduling regular dates on the calendar to spend time with a VIP (yourself!)
• learning guided visualization (a simple meditation technique to open your heart and mind) Mary will do a short (2 min) guided visualization to illustrate how easy and simple it is to relax—even on the phone.

Mary reminds everyone to P.L.A.Y. every day:

• Pause for 15 minutes daily to nurture yourself.
• Love yourself.
• Access the Artist in you.
• Yes – say yes to You!

Mary E. Knippel began writing in her journal at age 11. Since her first by-line appeared in the Adams High School Tiger Tales, her writing has appeared in Minnesota, Colorado and California. She has written over 300 articles for CoastViews Magazine, recently edited a book on wedding protocol, “It’s Your Wedding – Not Theirs,” written from the perspective of a seasoned preside. She is writing a memoir about motherhood and her breast cancer experience. As a Creativity Mentor and workshop facilitator, she conducts workshops on California’s beautiful San Mateo coast in which participants connect with their creativity, focus on fun and pursue play as a proven method to de-stress and cope with life’s challenges.

Mary’s blog offers ideas, tips and observations about tapping into creativity on an on-going basis, a monthly newsletter and sends a Coaxing Creativity Tuesday weekly tip to her subscribers. Throughout her writing and presentations, Mary delivers one consistent message: don’t wait until a health crisis to take care of yourself.