Feeding Our Creative Fire (even when – and because – times are hard!)
A contemplative approach to continuing education and vocational formation for arts-based therapists, LMHC’s, and spiritual directors.
Facilitated by Liza Hyatt, LMHC, ATR-BC, ATCS
2025 Cohort forming – spaces open – starting this June!
AWE Circles provide a unique, much needed, approach to art-based learning through sustained nourishment and intentional practice supported by community. Through a combination of virtual webinars, self-paced art-as-meditation practice, self-paced reading and journaling, individual mentoring sessions, and group sharing sessions, AWE Circle participants will nourish personal creative vitality. We will also explore how to keep that fire strong while also drawing upon it as we serve humanity and the world. This training provides a long, deep, and supportive learning process to guide arts-based practitioners in increasing their fluency in the expressive arts as a therapeutic process. This training also supports our growth as contemplative artists who need well-fed creative fires to act as effective healers in the complex and challenging times our world now faces.
Topics covered include:
- Why and how the creative process brings healing, insight, and change
- What contemplative art-based practice is and how it can enliven us and help increase our courage in hard times
- the essential role of the body in our creative lives
- how cultivating kithship relationships with natural places is essential for authentic creativity and rooted strength for the work we are called to do
- how to creatively respond to personal and collective grief as a recurring presence
- the importance of keeping imagination alive and at the heart of our vocation
- the wounds to creativity affecting our clients, ourselves, and the world
- practices to build community, share rituals of mourning, and awaken collective awe through intermodal arts engagement
Virtual webinars meet bimonthly, followed by self-paced creative meditation, individual mentoring sessions and virtual group sharing gatherings in alternate months. Live participation in webinars and group sharing sessions is needed. (Recordings of virtual group program content can be provided for those with occasional schedule conflicts.)
Proposed calendar for training dates and detailed format is provided below and also on my “2025 New Programs and Events” Page. (Dates may change depending on time needed to recruit cohort participants)
Learn through Sustained, Nurtured Growth Instead of Information Overload
The work and ongoing learning-needs of expressive arts therapists and contemplative artist spiritual companions is complex. Our vocation as artist-healers requires a lifelong commitment to feeding the creative fire and living within its transformational energy. Yet, how to sustain this creative fire is rarely taught. Over the course of nearly 40 years as an art-therapist in clinical and spiritual companionship settings, I have often felt the need for deeper, more carefully sustained learning opportunities designed to help healing artists nurture both the long-term wellbeing of soulful creativity and our capacity to be led by its wisdom. I developed Art-Wisdom Explorer (AWE) Circles as a way to respond to this unmet need (while also providing CEU hours!) Through these AWE Circles, I future generations within our vocation who seek a learning community committed to keeping alive the creative heart of our vocation.
Program Facilitator: See my Bio page on this website
2025 Calendar, Program Format and Fees
- Virtual group sessions occur as 1.5 hour gatherings one Monday evening each month, 7:30-9:00 pm ET, June 2025 through January 2026. (8 sessions – 12 CEUs)
- Cohort members also schedule 3 Individual 1-hour mentoring sessions with the course facilitator to support learning and creative process. (3 CEUs)
- Self-paced study and engagement in art-meditation is sustained throughout the 8 month training period through learning modules provided monthly. (about 2 hours per week)
Total CEU’s 15
Program cost: $550 (about $36 per CEU)
Payment schedule: $275 to enroll
$275 by June 1st
(please reach out if you have other needs regarding payments)
June 23, 2025 (7:30-9 pm ET) Webinar 1
Learning Module A – Self-paced art-meditation and study and Individual mentoring session
July 21, 2025 (7:30-9 pm ET) Group Creative Process Sharing 1
Learning Module B – Self-paced art-meditation and study and Individual mentoring session
August 18, 2025 (7:30-9 pm ET) Webinar 2
Learning Module C – Self-paced art-meditation and study and Individual mentoring session
September 15, 2025 (7:30-9 pm ET) Group Creative Process Sharing 2
Learning Module D – Self-paced art-meditation and study and Individual Mentoring Session
October 20, 2025 (7:30-9 pm ET)Webinar 3
Learning Module E – Self-paced art-meditation and study and Individual mentoring session
November 17, 2025 (7:30-9 pm ET) Group Creative Process Sharing 3
Learning Module F – Self-paced art-meditation and study and individual mentoring session
December 15, 2025, (7:30-9 pm ET) Webinar 4
Learning Module G – Self-paced art-meditation and study and Individual mentoring session
Final reflection and creative response
January 19, 2026, (7:30-9 pm ET) Graduation Sharing and Celebration
Not ready to join the 2025 AWE circle cohort, yet craving more nourishment of your creative life and healing-arts vocation? Please reach out for individual art-based mentoring/spiritual companionship sessions as a way to begin.
To register or for further information, contact Liza Hyatt at: elizahyatt@moredeeplyreal.com
More Deeply Real 