The creative flow

Claire Falconer (43), Fermanagh woman living at Tully, Ballintra, Co Donegal.

Claire has lived in Donegal for seven years. She returned from 10 years in the big cities – Rome and L.A. – where she was involved in Indie film making. “As my energy crashed I felt the pull back to nature, and came back home to Fermanagh. My family booked me two nights in the Sandhouse hotel Rossnowlagh. I walked across the beach and up to the Smugglers Creek and met a bunch of new friends all on the one night that remain friends to this day.

I loved the wider horizons, the wild open sea, different from the lakes of Donegal. A place to spend time outdoors.”

Why Donegal? Divine intervention, cousins passion rubbed off on me. Family close by. Donegal is such an easy place to be alive. I moved to an oldie world cottage Dingly Dell for five years. For the first year I slept a healing sleep, which helped me come home to my voice and creative flow. My feet grew half a size bigger from walking barefoot summer and winter.

Lights up a vast variety of landscape, most beautiful county, so wild and so peaceful. Organise healing gatherings connecting with wild peaceful free and connect with wide skies and the sea and swimming in the lakes up by Pettigo.”

What do you do that connects you to your flow?
“Being in nature – living a close connection with nature – with the changes in the seasons. With the arrival of each new flower blooming. I’ve often thought as I fully sense the smell of each wild flower in turn blooming – is there not undoubtedly perfect medicine for each season in this alone.

Learning about all the plant medicines around us, here for us, calling to us.
Immersion in wild nature – wim hof breathing wild.
Cold swims. Forest being. Barefoot walking. 
Another fundamental of mine. Hands in the soil. Muck under the fingernails, between the toes.
If I go too long without my bare feet on the earth I feel the buzz of the modern world seeping into me. It needs to be discharged. We have our own vibrations and they do not benefit from technology overload.
In my body I want to be. Fully.
Movement. Skeleton shakes, imitating my cat Mena in her stretches.
Singing freely – learning to overtone sing.
Feeling the vibrations echo through and open up my body. 
Morning pages, mapping my dreams.
Breathwork.
Not breathing deeply is like a plant ignoring its tap root, not tapping into its roots.
Real food for real energy and real healing.
Sound – singing – toning – voice – the greatest instrument.
Working alongside nature, witnessing her glow.

‘Creative splurges’ – working with my friend Rob has encouraged creative splurges – 5, 10 minute sketches on a theme with no expectations to revisit or ‘finish’. It has allowed me to put less expectation on what comes and to value the potential to create something great in a very short time frame too – when in the flow.

I’ve found books, like the artist’s way (and quotes from them), immensely helpful in recent years as I recognise more and more that we must ‘learn to be ourselves and allow our natural channel to open’. ‘We need to be willing to let our intuition guide us, and then be willing to follow that guidance directly and fearlessly’ Shakti Gawain.

In essence, connecting all the dots – finding balance, practicing lots of different arts and disciplines, all of which come from and feed back into the same well. Painting is something I’ve done especially a lot of and so it is a honed language for me. I can express myself as I wish to, usually. But sometimes singing channels the energy better, or writing, or cooking.”

Did you always love it, or how did you first get connected to your flow in this way?
“I did always love art and painting, creating. 

I was always a nature child and would get lost among the trees beside my childhood home for hours. I then got distracted, went to study law and spent 15 years in the big cities of Belfast, Rome and L.A. on a filmmaking journey. 

It was when I returned home to Ireland, heeding the call back to nature, that I began doing inner work, healing and reconnecting with my flow.

Painting has been my passionate life’s work for 23 years now. I was taught while still studying law at Queen’s in Belfast, by the kindest soul Ken Hamilton, who was and is a master of his craft. He taught me that it is possible to dream outside the boxes in life – that you can draw your own path.

For years then I strove to emulate his mastery, it was a beautiful path for he valued beauty so highly but I sought perfection and it isn’t something you can chase. So I would judge myself and feel that paintings were never quite finished.

Then life took me into the cave. Stripping away the layers to connect with the real me. The inner child. The most challenging work and the most powerful healing. Shamanic work. My art has evolved with my own journey and finally become connected to me, aligned with my heart’s work in this lifetime.

Awarding myself the freedom to set my own goals, steer my own ship. I work with the intention to inspire and heal.

Visionary – embracing my childhood knowing that I was a dreamer and a seer of beautiful things. I understood balance. Balance is key and alignment is all.

Allowing myself to dream – plan – goals – step by step and breath by breath.”