7-Week || Unblocked:
Working through creative blockages with a strong self-consent practice
with Mia (they/them)
VIRTUAL: DATES TBD. Sign up for the newsletter for updates.
All classes will be recorded for students (only the students who signed up before the class start date) to view after.
“I can’t summon connection down from the ether and expect it to land in my lap. But I can do everything in my power to create a welcoming environment for it when it does decide to show up.”
When I started this work back in 2019, I felt my life rapidly changing. Learning about consent drastically altered my relationship with myself and others, and deepened my relationship with my body. This all made sense to me. What did surprise me, though, was my relationship with my creativity.
As I sat with friends over a potluck dinner this past week, at the home of my dog’s puppy’s human (my dog had puppies before I adopted her and I serendipitously found one of the puppies at the dog park last year), we all talked about our relationships to creativity and flow.
“For me, it’s been about consent. Letting my current self to say no to a past self that gave me a todo list. If I trust that the desire will come and stay open to feeling the creative impulse, then if it’s not there, I allow myself to say no,” I said.
In order to play, explore, and create, we have to feel safe. Having a personal consent practice has given me a more compassionate relationship with my creativity that has made it easier to find flow because I don’t force it. I travel with my sense of safety, knowing that I can feel my desires and needs, ask for them—from myself, from my creative force, from a divine source—and handle whatever answer I get.
That said, I value ritual which I define as—and I may be absorbing some of Brooke Herr’s definition as well (if you don’t know their work I highly recommend checking them out)—routine with meaning. Ritual brings discipline, which is distinct from punishment. For example, I write in my journal every morning. This means that even on days when I don’t do any other form of writing, I’m still ‘a writer.’ I’m not suggesting that if someone doesn’t write everyday, they’re not a writer; I’m saying that for me, this practice has helped me maintain that particular sense of my self.
Beyond this, there’s also the issue of wanting-to-want to do something, or wanting to be at the end of a process but not wanting the process. For example, I want to be good at guitar but I don’t always want to practice. I want to have the ceramics that I imagine in my mind, but I don’t want to get my hands wet and cold. I’ve written pretty extensively on that here.
The reason everyone listening to this should sign up for Unblocked right fucking now is because that broken narrative and the idea that there’s something that will fix me or save me and once I figure it out I’ll be set—it’s the one way we're ready to believe we’re exceptional: Like, I am the only artist in the world who struggles to make work for long periods of time. And Unblocked puts you in a room with 20 other people saying that same thing. So naturally, it's absolutely fucks over the idea that any one of us is alone in this. Just that, in and of itself, is so freeing. Being in this class brought me back to my belief in the inevitability of my art practice. I can trust my practice and myself so much more now.
—Sam
Some consent practices for creativity:
Only allow yourself 5 minutes to create/write/play music and then teach your body that you can hold that boundary by actually stopping.
Pick up the guitar. Hold it. Feel what it feels like. / Open the document and just look at it. / Pick up the paintbrush and notice what it feels like in your hand. Do nothing else.
Instead of asking yourself, “Is it good?” ask, “Do I like it?”
Make dumb shit. Make something for no reason that is totally stupid. I wrote a song about it.
I now make music and sing (!!!) which two years ago was the scariest thing I could possibly imagine doing. You can check out my latest EP called Costumes. You can see my ceramics and read about my approach to it all on my art site. You can hear my conversation about consent and creativity with Serena Caffrey on the Share the Load Podcast.
Is this program for you?
This program is for artists, musicians, creatives, writers. It’s for people looking to deepen or return to their creative practice and for those looking to embark on one for the first time.
If you:
struggle with people-pleasing tendencies in your work
feel a codependent relationship with your art (“People need this from me so I will give and give and give”)
feel guilt or shame about making money with your art
struggle to find motivation to create
don’t know where to start or when to stop
want to make more money from your art
want to find a sacred relationship with play
want to find a more easeful relationship with your authenticity and creative self-expression
grapple with your ego as an artist and want to believe what you have is worth sharing with the world without feeling like an arrogant shithead
This is a trauma-informed, neurodiversity-aware course that takes into account the reality of the Capitalist system we live and create within.
“Craft is the thing you develop while you’re waiting for connection to show up.”
What will we be doing?
VIRTUAL: Wednesdays, May 15 - June 26, 5-7pm PST / 8-10pm EST. If and only if I have to be on set and need to reschedule, makeup classes will be on Sundays noon-2pm PST / 3-5pm EST.
This program will give you practice tools to access your creativity, work through perfectionism, mythbust the idea that making money off your work makes you a baaaaaaad evil Capitalist, and help you find or reconnect with your voice.
This is a hybrid live & recorded class. You’ll receive recordings of my Practice Saying No class and my Nonverbals class (a $150 value) before we begin. We will be working from my workbook Boundaries + Consent for People Pleasers in conjunction with the Unblocked workbook, which I built out of this class.
Class 1: Perfectionism
Class 2: People Pleasing
Class 3: Inner Critic
Class 4: Imposter Syndrome
Class 5: Your Voice
Class 6: Asking for What You Want
Class 7: Share your work!!! Invite your friends!
There is an optional and open to the public imposter syndrome practice class session hosted by Josie Alexandra on June 18 at 11am PST / 2pm EST.
**Please note: some of the attendees of this course are enrolled in my Consent-Based Teaching Artist Program, which includes this course.
Consent and boundary knowledge can help you find evermore nuance and subtlety in your communication. It gives more options, expands structure, and opens up space for creativity.
What you can expect from this course:
a deep dive into your blockages
a magnifying glass up to the ways you may keep yourself small. Perfectionism, anyone?
a thorough examination of your self-sabotaging strategies
exercises to help create the environment in which creativity can flourish
a concrete, structured approach to your creative practice centered around consent with yourself
Read what people are saying about these classes.
“A creative connection brings a person closer to themselves when they have started to drift. ”
Wrestling with My Ego
In 2017 I did a ceramics residency in Japan. I was staying in an idyllic town, surrounded by cherry blossoms that bloomed and died in a warm snow storm-esque flurry of petals everywhere, and all I had to do was make ceramics. But I was more stressed than I’ve ever been in my life.
I chewed up my lip and the inside of my cheek until it bled. I couldn’t stop. I had brought a book on Jewish meditation with me and was journaling and meditating everyday, but all I could think about was my ego as an artist. How could I possibly believe that what I had to say and make was worth anyone else’s time, and yet, if I didn’t, who would? I had to kill my ego so I could believe in myself.
I’m proud to say that now I am my biggest cheerleader, my biggest champion. I am on my own team. I believe what I’m making is important and needs to be put out into the world. I rarely feel my guilt flare, and I have tools to move through it. I recognize that sure, I could create art in my closet and never share it with anyone, but who would that benefit? I no longer believe that by sharing my work, I take any space, time, or energy from anyone else; I believe that by sharing my art, I may give permission to others to share theirs.
Are other people judging you, or is it past versions of you?
Payment + Pricing
This course is $850. Payment plans are available to pay half twice 3 weeks apart.
Sliding scale options starting at $450 are available to those who:
“Learning about consent has given me a lot of structure to work with. And in that way, has made a lot of my interactions more restful, and less anxious because I have some kind of framework to lean on where I can build a request, and I’m not inventing the language, and I’m not inventing the structure....I think the thing that’s most exciting thing that I’ve gotten from this work was something that I didn’t anticipate at all, which is food for creativity.”
are S€x Workers
have been incarcerated
have excessive medical costs
have debilitating student loans
have ancestors who experienced slavery
live somewhere where the exchange rate makes this course cost-prohibitive
have ancestors who experienced, or have themselves experienced, land theft
need to use it.
Wondering if this scale is for you? It is. Still not sure? It is. Still not sure?? Email me.
Prices are set at a rate such that even at the lowest rate, I feel good providing the work, as in, not depleted or taken advantage of. If you feel uneasy using the lower tier but it makes it possible for you to join a program, use it! The ways you can pay it forward include inviting your friends to join with you, forwarding the program and other CW programs to friends, family, and colleagues, and spreading the word any way you can. You can sign up for the newsletter and forward it, send your boss our Professional Wellness Consulting page, subscribe, rate, and review the podcast, subscribe on Instagram, and any other way you can think of to help get the word out.
You can read more testimonials here. Inquire for group rates.
You can read about why my prices are what they are on my Business + Financial Transparency page.
If this is cost-prohibitive, you are always welcome to make me an offer, especially if you are in a country where the exchange rate makes this class financially inaccessible.
I have a responsibility to create the conditions in which my creativity can flow. This requires money.
I am not speaking to the very real socio-economic and structural barriers to accessing money; I am speaking to the ways that I get in my own way through unresolved money trauma that shows up as guilt and shame about having, receiving, and asking for money.
As an artist, no one is going to create the conditions in which my creativity can thrive for me. I have to do this. It's an uphill battle as it is with the structures set up so that the already-wealthy continue to get wealthier. What I can do is get out of my own way, get on my own team. I can find people who support me, encourage me, and lift me up when they're able, not put me down, guilt trip me, or are stuck in scarcity mindset such that my success threatens them or is perceived to take something away from them.
Money is a strategy, not a value. Within the system as it is currently, we have to have a certain amount of money to live in integrity with our values. In order to fight the current system, we have to live in it and have the means to rest, play, and innovate so that we can keep fighting it and build a new structures as we go.
“Mia is a patient and generous educator. The way they conceptualize consent is so rich and nuanced that, once you’ve encountered it, going back to a binary or reductive approach is inconceivable. It’s nothing short of a revelation. In this course, I found myself connecting with others around obstacles to creativity, and in so doing, I experienced increased lightness and ease around being creative. My expectations were met and exceeded as I found discussions on people pleasing, the inner critic, and perfectionism facilitated more comfort and confidence in my own creative aspirations and projects. The exercises, journalling prompts, and discussions enriched my creative practices and sparked self-reflection. For me, there is immense value in engaging with this approach to consent—for creativity and beyond—and I enthusiastically recommend it to anyone.”