Celebrating 20 Years of Using Creativity to Fight Cancer

A journey of art, hope, and healing with Tibetan Buddhist monks. Healing Icons' 20th anniversary exhibition and celebration.…

We are basing Living Legacies on that old fashioned concept, linking cancer survivors from different cities, states and countries. We are using visual arts and creative writing to begin an ex…

Forced Out of My Comfort Zone: Incidental Findings

Nothing like a health scare to yank you out of your comfort zone. Uncomfortably, I trusted some incidental findings & discovered where I needed to go next.…

The Art and Healing of Heidi Darr-Hope

Art and Healing. How an artist's illness allowed her to forger a deeper relationship with her art-making and her art and healing teaching practices.…

The Art and Healing of Heidi Darr-Hope

Art and Healing. How an artist's illness allowed her to forger a deeper relationship with her art-making and her art and healing teaching practices.…

Creating Brave Retreat at 1440 Multiversity

Retreat to the CA Redwoods. Step outside your life. Rest, Renew & Reinvigorate. Bring 2017 to a close by gifting yourself the time for Creating Brave.…

Starting a Mindful Creativity Practice

Developing a mindful creativity practice assists us in navigating through life's unexpected twists and turns, ushering us toward mindful discernment.…

Unity in Sharing Art: Amulets and Talismans

Sharing art, including amulets and talismans, demonstrates the value we place on creative language and the importance it holds for each and everyone of us.…

Finding Inspiration in Troubling Times

Finding inspiration in troubling times feels hopelessly overwhelming.This is a completely different than experiencing creative block.…

Harvest Despacho Giveaway Contest

What is a harvest despacho? Despacho is an Andean amulet-making ceremony, in which the despacho-maker brings various elements into an object and then ritually sends it off. They are traditionally ma…

Despacho Ceremony: Sacred Creations

A despacho ceremony is an ancient indigenous ritual of the Andean people of Peru, where a sacred amulet like "bundle" is created as a visual prayer.…

Creative Block: My Frozen Pile

My Creative Block, My Fierce Inner Critic usually shows up when I'm wearing too many hats, squeezing in studio time between the demands of life.…

October's Nature Mandala Giveaway Winner

  Congratulations to Twitter follower @LoveSoulShine from California for winning our Nature Mandala Giveaway competition! Her beautiful floral mandala (pictured left) was inspired by the belief…

Honoring Death: Dia de los Muertos

Dia de los Muertos honors death. Pondering death teaches me about living. I have learned that to honor life, I must also honor death.…

Mindful Nature Mandalas: A Restorative Practice

Creating mindful nature mandalas, is a simple restorative practice that can be done by one's self or within community. It's restfully invigorating.…

Creating Brave's Nature Mandala Giveaway Contest

A nature mandala is created with natural elements from our environments to convey the feelings, moods and ideas within us.…

Mindful Mandalas: A Self-Paced eCourse

The online series, Mindful Mandalas, is a calming creative practice that anchors you into a quiet stillness. Your stress and worries will melt away.…

Creating Brave eCourses: Survivorship

Our eCourses address survivorship issues by introducing art-making as a healing practice that reduces stress and anxiety.…

Art as Healing eCourse: Behind the Scenes

Creating an art as healing eCourse was an overwhelmingly daunting experience but with the help of some talented people, the process was invigorating.…

Amulets and Talismans: Mindful Healing

Creating amulets and talismans have the power to lead us into a fun, innovative approach to mindful healing.…

Art as Healing vs. Art Therapy

Art Therapy addresses personal psychological ailments whereas our Art as Healing focuses on spiritual self-discovery…

College Interns & Volunteers: Paved the Way for 2016

Remarkable Interns, 3 young women dedicated their talents and energy to our cause and Healing Icons became more visible.…

A Different Kind of Portrait: SCETV's Original SC

Creating a 5 minute video portrait that sums up an artist's work is not an easy task!   The SCETV series Original SC does an extraordinary job of it.…

SCETV: Original SC - Portrait of an Artist

Creating video portrait that sums up an artist's work is not an easy task!   The creator of the SCETV series Original SC, Tabitha Safdi, does it well.…

Art as Healing: Beginning an eCourse

After serving our local area for 20 years, we have a Solid Mission but now we needed a Global Vision.  We needed our very own eCourse.…

Making Room for Art: Thank You Vista Studios

Creating within the Vista Studios environment where, the art spirit lives has been nurturing, inspiring and encouraging.…

Community Healing: The Monks Are Coming!

A Tibetan Sand Mandala of Healing.  For our cancer survivors. For the devastation from the "100-year" flood. For our entire community. We are grateful.…

Tibetan Inspired Community Art: Mandalas, Talismans and Prayer Flags

For our 20th anniversary exhibition, I wanted to pay tribute to the Tibetan Culture, as they had influenced the design of my creativity practices.…

Art as Healing Communities of Hope - A 20th Anniversary Exhibit

To mark our 20th art as healing anniversary, I wanted to create something significant, something filled with celebratory hope. …

Travel Inspiration: Stumbling Upon the Tibetan Sacred Arts in India

Finding inspiration in traveling outside my comfort zone brought me into a closer understanding of how art heals.  I stumbled upon the Tibetan Sacred Arts…

Make Art: Creativity is Our Birthright

Creativity is our birthright, and Healing Icons is dedicated to reviving this soulful human language, to demystifying it and making it accessible to all.…

Creative Musings: Shoes for O'Keeffe

2015 marks the year! 100 years ago Georgia O’Keeffe was a professor of art at Columbia College.  She was a focused and self-supporting twenty-eight year old when she arrived in Columbia, SC.  It is he…

Our Creativity Manifesto: Rules to Live By

At Healing Icons, we delve deep into our souls through sacred art-making. To help guide us in this process, I've written the following creativity manifesto.…

Fear No Art: Trust & Blind Contour Drawing

When you're feeling dull, numb, filled with fear or unknowing, blind contour drawing offers fun, fierce nudges and insights into seeing ourselves anew.…

Tranquility Practice: Creating Radiant Mandalas

Studies suggest that taking part in a creative activity is good for your health. Tranquility is a by-product of all of Healing Icons’ practices.…

Finding a New Whole: Self-Portraits

Through self-portraits, we can find a new whole and see ourselves anew.…

Cultivating Optimism During Difficult Times

The nest-building ritual of the bowerbird has inspired Healing Icons' upcoming Saturday retreat, Cultivating Optimism During Difficult Times.…

Calming Practice: Creating Mandalas

Creating mandalas is a simple, calming practice that can lead us into a peaceful state of being.…

Set Your Monkey Mind Free

Take a walk and soak in your surroundings to free your monkey mind from stress and anxiety.…

Perpetually Stressed?

Perpetually stressed? At Healing Icons, we encourage quiet creative practices that allow open spaces where stresses can soften and begin to disappear.…

Arts and Medicine. Do It.

The connection between arts and medicine? "If art affects our emotions, and emotions affect our health, then art affects our health!"…

Speaking from the Heart: On Mourning

Mourning is painful, but it is also healthy and the only way to regain that sense of peace and joy that was lost.…

Don't be Afraid of Drawing

Gather a couple of pals or family members, and don't worry about drawing the face -- simply cut and paste an image and start drawing.…

Mandalas for Restoring Balance

Last month's explorations took us into the complicated realm of Balance. What does it really mean? What role does balance play in our lives?…

Gratitude in Difficult Times

Gratitude is an antidote to the dark voice of illness that whispers to us, that insists that all we have become is our disease.…

Partnering with Center for Colon Cancer Research of USC

Healing Icons® is partnering with The Center for Colon Cancer Research of USC to provide a series of arts and healing workshops for colon cancer survivors.…

Mandalas for Harvesting Gratitude

In turbulent times, creating mandalas to harvest gratitude can have a transformative, healing effect on your mind, heart and body.…

Releasing Anxieties to Gather Inner Strength

What does inner strength mean to you? Draw a mandala for centering strength to discover what gives you inner strength and what matters most in your life.…

The Art of Survival: Insights into the Arts and Healing | 2013 Classes

Stretch into your mind and body, heart and soul. Join us for our arts and healing workshops.…

Mandalas for Centering Strength

Learn to let go of anxiety through the process of intuitive mandala drawing and create an intentional mandala for centering strength with Healing Icons.…

Our Inner Lives

It takes time to reach into our inner lives and unlock all of the implications of a cancer diagnosis. Learn how with Healing Icons.…

Your Springtime Creative Muse

As spring begins to unfold, there is such magnificence right under our noses. Let it awaken your creative muse.…

Spring Oncology Art and Healing Workshop

This spring, stretch into your mind-body-soul connection and join us for our spring oncology art and healing workshop.…

In El Espinal, Oaxaca, Mexico, nature inspired this mandala. What would you title it?…

A collage is a unique form of artistic expression that creates meaning from otherwise unconnected images. Discover meaning through the images you love.…

Tuesday Tributes - The Pause Between

If we listen to the tide of our breath, we begin to become more present, more attuned to our essential selves. These exquisite pauses hold vast potential.…

Thursday Travels

When we travel, we open our vision and hearts towards learning that the most valuable things in life are not our possessions but our experiences.…

Experience the warm watercolor paintings of Healing Icons founder Heidi Darr-Hope.…

In this Year 2011, Make Time to Travel

We need to travel. If we don't offer ourselves to the unknown, our senses dull. Consider traveling with Healing Icons.…

Grant Awarded to Healing Icons Traveling Art Exhibitions

Healing Icons received a grant of $5,000 to fund our traveling art exhibition project, collectively titled Sometimes Words Art Not Enough.…

Finding Our Inner Phosphorescence: Creative Insights

We at Healing Icons are continually amazed at how the creative process forges deep bonds with others and gives us creative insights into ourselves.…

Why We Travel

Taking a break from our usual lives to spread our wings and travel can give us new experiences and opportunities to grow.…

Become a Collector of Words, A Creator of Images...

Become a collector of words and images. Who knows where they might lead you?…

Finding Your Inner Phosphorescence

This Saturday, we will explore the idea of moving our voices forward in the workshop Finding Your Inner Phosphorescence. What fuels your creativity?…

Today is Day of the Dead

Day of the Dead is a Mexican holiday centered on celebrating loved ones who have passed on. Come honor your loved ones with Healing Icons!…

Thoughts on the Upcoming Day of the Dead

At this time of year, Mexico celebrates a week-long, vibrantly colorful festival called The Day of the Dead. Stop by to honor your dead with Healing Icons.…

Welcome to the Healing Icons Blog

Join Healing Icons as we explore the transformative, healing power of art.…