Falling Into Mindfulness — An Autumn Oriented Rest Series
An Art Practice To Guide You Through Falling Into Mindfulness
Welcome to our Autumn Falling Into Mindfulness Series
If you’ve missed the updates in our last email and on our instagram, I’ll remind you that this autumn to wind down towards the darkest months of the year I’ll be posting weekly mindfulness practices to help us locate, re-calibrate, and lean into our rest this autumn.
Before we launch into a series around mindfulness, meditation, and rest—I wanted to offer a very simple, yet powerful art practice that might pair well with slowing down for the season. Art is an important tool that not only helps us explore our inner world, but it can also act as an external reminder to the heart and body to ease into more restful nervous system states.1
An Invitation for Restful Art
Some of the people reading this may consider themselves artists of one, very specific medium. If that’s you—that’s great. If you know your craft (or the craft you’d like to lean into for this autumn mindfulness series) then please, by all means, use this as an invitation to become more intimate with what you already know.
If you don’t know what type of art you’re interested in picking for this autumn mindfulness series (or you don’t consider yourself an artist)—that’s okay! I’ll be giving some suggestions found in the captions of the pictures that can be started anywhere, anytime.
However, before we launch into how this gentle art invitation will be structured, I first wanted to talk a little bit about the nature of repetitive art projects and why they are an important tool for reflection (especially if we’re diving into a more intentional mindfulness practice).
Repetitive Art Projets As A Practice
What constitutes as a repetitive art project?
Well according to some very interesting science on creativity, we are learning that some of our most creative output happens when we have very strict creative constraints on what we are supposed to be doing. This happens for several reasons. The first of which, is that creative constraints help our brains overcome the barrier of not knowing where to start. If we know every time we are going to sit down to our art project and that the art project will always include the same set of 12 crayons, one sheet of newspaper sized blank paper, and one giant black marker—our brain can rest into the knowledge it won’t have to make any decisions before we begin, which leaves leftover brain-calories for the creativity itself.
In addition to this, the brain loves a good puzzle! So although it might initially sound drab to think about using the same 3 art supplies every time we sit down for a mindfulness practice, our brain is fueled from this boredom to begin to think outside of the box.2
When I say repetitive art projects, I don’t necessarily mean that you’re going to be producing the same art over and over again (although you could!). What I mean is that you come up with 1-5 very clear parameters of what you’re going to be doing for your art.
Personally, the simpler the better for me.
As a recovering perfectionist, if I give myself more than 3 constraints I’m likely to hit a wall where if I’m “not doing it perfectly, I shouldn’t even get started.” This is the type of narrative we’d like to try to avoid3. These mindful art practices should be—above all—easeful, restful, enjoyable.
Ideas To Get Started
This month I have been tenderly wanting to get back into the habit of drawing a mandala every few days. Back when I first started going to silent retreats, instead of journaling, I would simply draw one mandala a day and let it take up most of the free time during those retreat settings.
On days I used big, fat, thick, scribbly lines— I could tell I had a little more agitated energy rolling around in my body.
On days my lines were delicate and neatly placed—I noticed I was feeling significantly more at ease.
Neither one of these were right or wrong, but it was a fun way to practice being with what was present in my body and my emotions that day without trying to change it. When I was done with those series of retreats, I had some beautiful art to commemorate and reflect on.
On that note…
Some Nitty Gritty
To set yourself up for success, I would recommend:
Setting up time constraints
This can be loose or tight, depending on your personality, you know you best
Here are a few examples of ways I’ve done it in the past:
Every new moon and full moon I’m going to pull some tarot cards and draw what comes up for me
Every morning I’m going to draw my coffee mug for 4-6 minutes but never longer than 10
Every Friday for a month, I’m going to stay in and take all the time I need to finish painting one whole canvas with my hands
Setting up constraints of art supplies
This can be flexible, but I recommend starting simple so your brain doesn’t have to decide what to gather every single time.
Pro tip here would be to leave them out where you will see them every day
Example: The art supplies I’ll use for my mandalas are:
One new, unlined notebook of multimedia paper
Black and blue pens from my backpack
I give myself permission to use any other art supplies I feel inspired to use that day if they are easily accessible
Setting up expectations and boundaries for self/other
I’m going to be nice to myself no matter what kind of art I produce
I am going to be gentle with whatever my art reflects about my internal world
I am not going to share this art with anyone until I am finished with the experiment OR I’m going to give my mini-art practices away every day I create them as a random act of kindness OR to make sure I make the art I want to make without judgement, I’m going to burn everything I make in a bonfire at the end of the month
Why Mindful Art?
When our external season slows down, or we intentionally decide to turn towards a mindful practice, we are inevitably going to bump up against discomfort (more on that in next week’s article). This discomfort is not always a bad thing. Sometimes discomfort is the body and mind’s way of signaling “hey, this is different,” but it doesn’t necessarily mean that we should feel alarmed or need to change anything.
Having an externalizing practice when we’re slowing down helps us appreciate the various textures of our internal world and helps remind us that we’re deeply creative beings4 and can also help us soften to the idea that our emotions (regardless of if they are pleasant or unpleasant) can create beautiful things.
Be Witnessed
Part of a mindful art practice for some people is the opportunity to be witnessed and celebrated by more than just ourselves. I know that in the past, there is something quite transformative about showing someone what I produced over a series of days, weeks, or years and hearing myself talk about that process out loud.
It’s as if saying it out loud, and having that story witnessed by another person, makes it more real to me too.
To really create the opportunity for this restful art series as we fall into mindfulness this autumn, I wanted to extend the invitation to share your art with me. Throughout the weeks, please feel free to “reply” if this goes to your inbox proper and attach a photo (or audio) of what you’ve been working on. At the end of the mindfulness series I will also be writing a check-in post to do a final call on people sharing their autumn’s worth of art practice if you’d rather wait towards the end.
If the idea of having your art practice shared more broadly feels exciting, healing, edgy, or like a nice challenge—please let me know you’re interested in me sharing your art practice on my instagram anonymously (or non anonymously!) and I’ll be sure to spread the love.
If you have an artist in your life that you’d love to share this with, and practice some restful art together this fall, please don’t forget to share.
And as per usual, thank you for being here. I’m so grateful.
This sub-section of The Art of Rest, is all about—you guessed it—The Art!
Here we explore the creative practices in our lives. Whether we are creating for the pure joy of it, finding ways to have our art help make our lives better, or intentionally honing in on our creative practices, “The Art” is going to regularly touch into our creative pulse5.
Looking For A Place to Practice More Presence?
In August 2025 the Art of Rest is teaming up with Hughes River Expeditions6 to host our week-long, wellness river trip—Conscious in the Current. Spending a full week in a remote wilderness setting, with a gently-held, all-inclusive container is the perfect environment to practice gentle presence. If you’re interested to learn more and are interested in booking please don’t hesitate to reach out: dagnyrose@theartofrest.me.
This is where our cute-sy little tagline for our business arises from—When you live your life creatively, the art will take care of the rest!
This doesn’t always happen right away. Many times we’ll initially be perfectly content with whatever our setup of art/craft/etc is for many iterations….until we aren’t! The magic of the brain and nervous system is that when we are feeling fully safe and secure, our body can sometimes experience this as boredom. When we are in need of this sense of safety (or boredom) we might hang out here for a time to “refill” our cup. Once we are done refilling, our body starts to crave being in a more activated state (closer to fight or flight) and if we cannot find that stimulation from the external world, our brain will start to problem-solve to figure out how to create that stimulation interally…Voilà! Creative juices flowing!
In fact, if you start an art project practice and then find yourself avoiding it more than you find yourself participating in it, the challenge here would be to make it EVEN MORE SIMPLE. How can you make the ticket-to-entry smoother?
And for me personally, helps me remember that I sometimes make my coolest art when I’m the most uncomfortable/agitated/angry/frustrated
Here at The Art of Rest, we love building regenerative community and believe in learning from artists and creatives of all types. If you have an artist or creative in your life you’d like to see featured, please email me at dagnyrose@theartofrest.me to connect us.
A Bit About Our Partner...Hughes River Expeditions
Hughes River Expeditions, Inc. is an equal opportunity employer in accordance with the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) and the United States Department of the Interior. HRE is permitted by the following agencies to outfit on the respective National Forests and National Public Lands: Salmon-Challis National Forest – Middle Fork of the Salmon and Main Salmon rivers. Cottonwood Field Office, Bureau of Land Management – Lower Salmon River. Bitterroot National Forest – Selway River.
HRE is an officially licensed outfitter by the Idaho Outfitters and Guides Licensing Board (3405 and 21104); State of Montana, Board of Outfitters (OUT-OUT- LIC-40799). 6400 Caras Lane, Lolo, MT 59847 (PO Box 218) - (406) 540-4450 - info@hughesriver.com