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Presented by Healing Icons

A community and eCourse hub for healing, growing and thriving through mindful art practices.

Heidi Darr Hope revamped an ancient practice for current times, our times. Creating a mandala is a restorative journey that trusts and supports a willingness to open into the playful intuitive mystery of the creative process. Here is where your intuition comes out to play, where you reconnect with your heart and gut instincts.

Free - Our Intro Course: Stepping into Creativity

Take the risk and jump in...

"This exceeded my expectations – the thought and detail that’s put into this e-course is incredible." -Andie


This eCourse is self-paced so if your life allows you to complete two lessons in a week, you can. If your life gets busy and you must skip a few weeks, no problem. You have lifetime access to Mindful Mandalas so you can complete the class in your own time.

Meet your guide, Heidi Darr-Hope

Study with Heidi Darr-Hope, a seasoned professional artist with over 40 years of art-making experience and 20 years of creating with cancer patients.

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"Stress is stress. When it comes to addressing it, the source doesn't really matter. What does matter is learning a creative practice that helps us acknowledge it and then let it go. Creating Brave's ‘Mindful Mandalas’ is one of those practices."

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Heidi Darr-Hope

Creating Brave is about ...

...Developing a creative practice

that assists in navigating life’s unexpected twists and turns.  It’s about knowing that some things are not quite speech ready, and sometimes words are not enough.

...Learning a visual language

A  powerful, soul-filled language of color and texture and pattern and form and line and shape.  It’s not about right or wrong but about trusting the creative process. Anyone can do it!

...Survivorship

It’s about enduring, living through and beyond adversity or hardship.

Embracing life’s mystery with wonder and curiosity.

It’s about developing a creative practice that ushers us forward into living life fully engaged.

Whether you're struggling with...

A need to reshape or fine-tune your life...

Any kind of life-disrupting event that fills you with doubt, grief or depression…

chronic illness – cardiovascular disease, dementia, cancer, diabetes, arthritis...

Our approach is unique and our methods are 100% evidence-based. You are in good hands.

Get Started with Mindful Mandalas

AN EIGHT WEEK, SELF-PACED ECOURSE

This eCourse is self-paced so if your life allows you to complete two lessons in a week, you can. If your life get busy and you have to skip a few weeks, no problem. You have lifetime access to Mindful Mandalas so you can complete the class in your own time.

Tap into the healing power of creative expression...

To freely create mandalas cultivates a skillful practice that calms and anchors us. Ask your gut instinct, your intuition to come out and play.

Within this course, there are 23 fantastic, informative videos for you to watch.

Each one presents a different theme. This information is synthesized into beautiful PDF’s that you are welcome to print out and place in your sketchbook journal.

Creating mandalas is an ancient practice we have revamped for new times, our time.

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Mandala, the Sanskrit word for circle, is an archetypal symbol of balance, wholeness and unity. They have been created for centuries as meditational symbols that when contemplated, lead to self-awareness, insight and peace.

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We will get into the art-making flow by simply using a white pencil and black paper.

Then we will invite colored pencils and watercolor to come out and play.  These playmates will become dear friends and we will create a series of drawn mandalas using a variety of techniques.  These mandalas will become doorways, entry points into the written word.  Your visual creations will inspire a flow of creative ponderings.  The two will inform each other.

"Heidi is an original & totally authentic. She epitomizes the 'Seeker' - not just as world traveler, but as explorer of her inner gifts and treasures. I unequivocally recommend Creating Brave’s Mindful Mandalas e-course!"  - Susan H.

Creating a mandala is a journey that trusts and supports a willingness to open into the playful intuitive mystery of the creative process. Here is where your intuition comes out to play, where you re-connect with your heart and gut instincts. This is where the healing begins.

Limited time offer

Access our premium eCourse for $95

Remember, you have lifetime access to Mindful Mandalas so you can complete the class in your own time
Some supplies required

Our four-step process makes learning fun & easy

Step 1

Watching

Each week a different focus will be presented and introduced to you through Watching some fantastic videos.

The videos are beautifully filmed in the places that inspire Heidi – her art studio, her home and the Congaree River, barely a mile from her studio. We were fortunate to have the talented Maggie Calton join our team as filmmaker in charge and she introduced us to Thomas Keim, a talented musician who wrote and performed the music.

Each week the information presented in the video will be synthesized into beautiful PDF’s that you are welcome to print out and place in your sketchbook journal.

Step 2

Practicing

Then you’ll be Practicing the presented ideas through our creative exercises.

We will create our Mandalas on small sheets of paper – 4” x 6”. By the end of Mindful Mandalas, you will have produced quite a few of these. You can preserve your mandalas by sealing them within acrylic laminate pockets.

Step 3

Responding

Next you will be Responding to what you’ve learned.

This is where your sketchbook journal will come into play. Each week, I will pose some questions for you to ponder. They will allow you to dig a bit deeper into the focus of the week. Your sketchbook/journal will be the keeper of your thoughts, the holder of the questions that will arise during the next ten weeks! It will also serve as an alternative place for you to create additional mandalas.

Along the way, we will be adding words and phrases to our mandalas. At the closing of our eight weeks together, you will have a “set’, a collection of Mindful Mandalas that will be a source of inspiration for you.

Step 4

Sharing

And finally, Sharing your thoughts and creations.

One of our hopes for Creating Brave is to develop a vibrant caring on-line community. We hope you will share your creations, your insights, your fears, your joys, your ups and downs, your frustrations, as well as your successes. We will show you how.

Our On-Line Gathering Place:
After each lesson you will have the opportunity to share your thoughts and your visual creations. This is of course optional, but we hope you will help us build our Creating Brave community of support.

Social Sharing:
Share your thoughts and progress on Facebook, Twitter or Instagram! Mention us @HealingIcons in your status, tweet and/or caption and include the hashtags #CreatingBrave and #artashealing.

Why enroll in Creating Brave?

Because from time to time, we all need a touch of time just for ourselves.

To re-center and connect with the still, small voice within.

Heidi has the gift of being able to open those doors to the heart for each person and empowers each and every one of them to stand, to be, and say “This is who I am now.”

Deirdre Young
Manager for Cancer Programs
Lexington Medical Center — Columbia, SC

Chronic Diseases

No one addresses the internal struggles, the emotional roller-coaster that goes hand in hand while living with a life threatening disease.

We all know that a cancer diagnosis, as well as any medical "scare," turns our world upside down and inside out. We assemble our medical team, make treatment plans and get started with healing our body.

All of this anxiety and uneasiness weighs us down and has the potential to weaken our immune system, one of our strongest weapons for the battle against disease. We need more than medicine.

Life Disrupting Events

Instead of pushing through and ignoring the natural side effects that come with change, creativity practices can help usher us through these difficult times with grace and calm.

The loss of a job, a divorce, a change in careers, the death of a loved one or any other life changing event has the potential to add layers of stress and worry into our lives.  

Join our Mindful Mandalas course and

Within the next 8 weeks, you will:

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Meet Heidi Darr-Hope and tour her art studio

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Understand what a mandala is and why we create them

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Experience over half a dozen ways to create mindful mandalas

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Learn how to create mandalas with others in the community

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Meet Healing Icons students and watch them create

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Quiet the thunderous roar of mind chatter

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Reconnect with your inner voice

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Learn there is no right or wrong way to create

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Cultivating time for art play = fun = rest

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Begin to "speak" the silent, powerful, healing language of art

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Appreciate the difference between "art-as-healing" and "art therapy"

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Discover a supportive, nurturing community

Create a collection of Mindful Mandalas that will serve as a testament to your own inner wisdom and guidance.

Going it alone, or with friends

It can be a thrilling experience to gift ourselves some reflective alone time.

Sometimes a bit of quiet solitude is what the soul longs for. All of our practices will support you while you begin to reconnect and deepen your relationship with yourself.  Creativity will become one of your best friends.

Other times, it might feel good to be supported by a trusted handful of friends, caregivers or family members.

You can gather a small tribe to register together and meet weekly to view and discuss the Mindful Mandala lessons.

You will know which approach is right for you. Whether you experience this by yourself or with others, you can always take advantage of our on-line community.

Take the risk and jump in...

23 lessons. Countless Ways to intermix all of these practices.

Limited time offer

Access our premium eCourse for $95

 

Remember, you have lifetime access to Mindful Mandalas so you can complete the class in your own time

Some supplies required

Still not sure? Give our Intro Course: Stepping Into Creativity a try, risk free, and see how you can start Creating Brave today — For Free