Lead & Follow Podcast — Season 5, Episode 6
Guest: Flora Bowley · August 19, 2026 · 33 min
Artist Flora Bowley joins Sharna Fabiano to talk through the design of her one-day Creative Revolution gatherings: how a few well-chosen prompts act as ‘banks of the river’, why too much freedom too soon makes a room tense, and how strangers move from a walking meditation to offering each other silent goodwill within the first forty-five minutes. Her test for a working collaboration: it makes things easier.
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Questions Covered in This Episode
How do you run a creative workshop when everyone has a different skill level?
Flora Bowley gets everyone from people who’ve never held a paintbrush to professional artists in the same room, and she says it doesn’t much matter. “It’s not my job to tell people how to do things,” she told Sharna Fabiano. “It’s actually my job to create an environment where they feel free enough to do it their way.” Often the first thing the group does is close their eyes, paint with their fingers to carefully chosen music, and not look at what they’re making.
Why do people freeze up when you give them too much creative freedom?
Flora says a blank page and a pile of supplies can be paralysing — she can feel the tension come into the room when she gives too much freedom too soon. She compares it to standing in the cereal aisle: “there’s just too many fricking cereals and you’re like, I don’t even know. Now I’m just going to walk away with no cereal.” Her fix is what she calls the banks of the river: enough of a container that people can flow freely inside it. Sharna adds the same trick works in a meeting — one focused question or decision point makes everything else fade back.
How can you help a room of strangers feel connected quickly?
Flora builds it in stages rather than throwing people at each other. First a slow walking meditation looking at the light and textures in the room, then attention inward to the body, then “find your way to a person.” She uses what she calls invitations without expectation — open your palms if you’re up for touch, keep your arms down if you’re not — and then a simple prompt to recognise the other person’s humanity and send them love before you “love them and leave them.” She says the whole energy of the room shifts, because “people know how to do that.”
How do you know if a collaboration is working?
Flora’s measure is energy and ease. Co-teaching a retreat with the right person leaves her uplifted and even a bit filled up, because she trusts everyone’s in good hands. “If the collaboration feels like this is making everything harder, that’s not working,” she says — it should take the load off each individual, not add to it.
How do you find more connection and community as an adult?
Flora’s advice is to stop waiting: “you can be the inviter.” If you want a casual monthly art night, invite people to one, because nobody’s going to knock on your door offering the exact thing you’re craving, and most people like being invited even when they say no. Sharna admits she gets stuck assuming the inviter has to do all the work — Flora’s answer is that you get to design it however you like, rotating hosts or leaders if you want. She also practises “intuitive wandering”: pausing at an intersection on a walk, hand on heart, and going whichever way she feels pulled.
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Read the full transcript
Welcome to lead and follow a podcast that explores how great collaboration actually happens. I’m your host, Sharna Fabiano, author of the book, lead and follow the dance of inspired teamwork. And I’m pleased to bring you the latest research insights and learning methods to help you work together better with the people around you. I help founders, solopreneurs and new leaders become great at collaborating because I’ve seen how much more becomes possible when people integrate their ideas, perspectives, and strengths in a practical way.
To learn more about coaching with me and for a one-time discount on your first session, go to Sharna Fabiano. com slash coaching and enter the promo code podcast. The link is in the show notes. And now here’s the episode.
Today, I’m speaking with Flora Boley. Flora is an artist, top-selling author and internationally recognized creative guide whose work has helped shape the modern intuitive art movement. For more than 15 years, she has inspired thousands of people around the world to embrace creativity, not simply as an artistic practice, but as a pathway to greater courage, resilience and aliveness. Through her books, retreats, online programs and global creative community, Flora blends painting, embodiment, personal growth and community building into experiences that help people free up, reconnect with their intuition and navigate life’s changes with more confidence.
She is the author of four books, including Brave Intuitive Painting and The Art of Aliveness, and her vibrant paintings have been exhibited and collected internationally. Flora lives in Portland, Oregon, and she happens to be my painting teacher. So I’m very honored to have her on the show today and to learn more from her about collaboration, leading and following in the creative process. Flora, welcome to the podcast.
Flora Boley Thank you so much for having me. Beth Dombkowski Flora, I was excited to learn that you’re about to launch a new project, an in-person tour of sorts, bringing your work around the country. Tell us a little about how you’re thinking about leadership and what that means to you as you prepare for this upcoming adventure. Flora Boley This whole idea to head out across the country and offer one-day workshops in seven different cities really came from sitting with the question of what is mine to do right now, watching the division and the isolation and just the instability that our country is in the middle of right now.
I think a lot of us are wondering like, well, what can I do? What is mine to do here? And so for me, it always comes back to community and creativity. And so typically my retreats that I lead are week-long adventures often in foreign countries and they’re really lovely, but they’re also not accessible for a lot of people.
And so I had the idea to do what feels like a really grassroots thing, which is to get in my car and to go to where the people are and to rent large rooms where people could come together in a way that is meaningful and uplifting and connected. And I understand what I’m good at at this point in my life. And I think one of my skills is to create an environment in a room where people feel comfortable and where they feel like they can let down some of the masking or the performance or the social anxiety that can so easily be there. And for me, using creative practices, so painting, drawing, movement, writing, vocalization, authentic relating, all of these things kind of create, I hope, an environment of not only just a real space to be human in, to put our phones down and to just get our hands dirty and to move our bodies, but also a space where people feel genuinely like they belong and that they can just be who they are because that’s really the business of creativity is connecting into our true expression and just getting to show up as is and that that is where the genius of it lies.
And so, yeah, so I’m trying something new. I’m going out, I’m doing shorter, much more affordable experiences. And my hope is that people really find their people in those rooms and also find their way back to their creative capacity, which we all have. Thank you.
I love that title, Creative Guide. I always enjoy finding more descriptive ways to describe the roles of leading and following because those terms themselves can be so abstract. So I’d love for you to speak a little more about your experience as a creative guide and what are some of the components you design for when you’re in that role, thinking about the people you’re going to be with? The people that come to my things, I always get a real spectrum of like people that have never picked up a paintbrush before and then professional artists and everyone in between.
And so I lead from or guide from that perspective of, it doesn’t matter how much experience you have. And what I really think about a lot is that it’s not my job to tell people how to do things. It’s actually my job to create an environment where they feel free enough to do it their way. And so it’s always this fine balance around how much to create, like how many prompts are there, how much instruction is there, and then how much just open field space there is.
And so I feel like over the years, I’ve figured out a nice balance because if you just give someone art supplies and a blank piece of paper, that can feel super overwhelming, right? It’s like, oh God, the pressure of a white page, right? And so oftentimes the very first thing we do is that we close our eyes. I use a lot of music, like very thoughtfully chosen music.
And I’ll say, okay, we’re going to paint with our fingers. We’re not going to look at what we’re doing and we’re just going to feel. And we’re going to create from that space, which is much different as you can imagine, as you know, as a painter yourself, than painting from a place of efforting and perfecting and trying and thinking there’s one right way to do it. And so yeah, just coming up with like playful ways in to the process that give people enough of a container.
I often call it the banks of the river. Like I’m going to give you some banks of the river so that you can flow really freely and honestly and authentically within those banks. And so that’s really the, that’s my goal is to create that kind of environment in the room. I myself have many memories of doing your asynchronous courses and hearing that one prompt that got me out of my own paralysis and suddenly made everything feel easier.
Like I just need to choose two colors or I just need to choose one tool. That’s all. So helpful. And I want to make a quick analogy here for listeners in non-artistic context.
So say you’re collaborating in a meeting of some kind and you’re leading that meeting. What’s the one question you could ask or what’s the one very specific topic or decision point you might put on the agenda to focus the group in a way that makes other things fade into the background for the moment and stimulates discussion. If you’re stuck making whatever it is simpler is often a really great strategy. Flora, I’m interested in the back and forth dynamic of collaboration.
So I’d like to ask what you notice in your participants when you’re giving these prompts. How do people respond? What are the shifts you see in them as they interact with the materials and the structure of the workshop? I see that people love a container.
They love what you were just saying. When I say, okay, we’re going to work with this song, with these tools, and we’re going to close our eyes or whatever the recipe is, I think of them as little creative recipes. They love that. And because it does, it just holds them.
And something I noticed, like it’s so obvious to me in a room if I give them too much freedom too soon, and then I just feel the tension kind of come into the room and people freeze up. And if there’s too many choices, it’s overwhelming. You know, it’s like when we go to the grocery store and there’s just too many fricking cereals and you’re like, I don’t even know. Now I’m just going to walk away with no cereal.
So I’m always paying attention to that energetic in the room. And if I feel that happening, sometimes I think it’s important to feel that. And so I use it as sort of a, I’ll bring awareness to it. Like, let’s talk about what happened in your body when you had all that freedom.
But then I’ll often go, okay, now we’re going to go back to something that creates that feeling of safety again. Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about this idea of like contraction and expansion and how, you know, this is how life moves. This is how most of us were born into the world was through this contraction and expansion and how that’s really how creativity flows is that we have these moments where we’re just like free and dancing and it’s really big and wild. And then at some point we actually have to kind of come back in and go, okay, I’m going to step back.
I’m going to make a choice. I’m going to make a detail. And so we’re moving in those spheres a lot. And I find when I’m working with groups, like presencing that energy of there’s going to be moments when we’re really expanded and maybe connecting with each other.
And then there’s also going to be moments when we come home to ourselves and we have a quieter, you know, maybe a breathing technique or something that just feels like, okay, I’m kind of regrouping here and then we’re going to go back out and we’re going to interact with other people. And so I’m working with that ebb and flow in a lot of different ways that are sort of happening in obvious ways, but also in ways that probably people don’t even realize. Beautiful. I love that metaphor.
Are there any specific examples that you’d like to share? As I’m creating the curriculum for this one day experience, one thing I’m doing a lot of is thinking about the moments where people are going to be moving around the room and really seeing each other and in the community space, like really feeling connected to we’re all humans. We’re all connected because of this. Like, let’s take a look.
Let’s take a look at who’s here, you know, and even those words can be like, you know, for some people. And then from that, we go into like, okay, now let’s come into our like internal landscape and what’s going on in your body and bringing your awareness there. So that’s just one example of kind of going out, expanding out, and then kind of coming back towards yourself. And that’s, you know, in a somatic therapy environment that’s called titration, right?
You kind of go, you go into things that are hard, you kind of, then you come back out or you go big and then you come small. And that to me is really nourishing and really regulating to the system. And so, yeah, even in the art supplies that we’re using, some of them are going to just be like little pens versus like big wild ink and things like that. So it’s, there’s a lot of contrast, which as you know, having worked with me, I love to talk about contrast and how that really is what makes things come alive.
And so there’s a lot that I think about when I’m considering how to lead a group in those ways. You mentioned connection and that’s something I’m also obviously obsessed with as a dance teacher. How do I make the right amount of connection, the right pacing? When is it time to connect?
When is it too much or not enough? Any thoughts on designing for how the people in the room connect with each other? Yeah, I mean, the very, very first thing that we typically do and what I’ll be doing to start these events is that we, you know, we’ll probably do one big circle and we kind of all get our voices heard and just a moment of sharing our names. But then from there, I go really quickly into movement and to getting people in their bodies.
And so that’ll look like a really slow, almost like walking meditation. And what we’re doing first is we’re just looking at the room. So it’s like, let’s look at the, where the light lands. Let’s look at the textures and the colors.
Let’s feel our feet on the ground. So it’s not about each other, right? And then we go kind of inward. Okay, what is going on inside of you?
Right? And then when it feels like the right moment, it’s like, okay, find your way to a person, you know? And I do a lot of invitations without expectation around, you know, if you’re open to receiving touch, you could open the palms of your hands. And if you’re not, just keep your arms at your side.
There’s no right way. And then sometimes that will be a moment where they touch. And then I’m not going to like make people eye gaze for minutes or anything like that. But I’ll say, I’ll say, just, just take a look at who’s in front of you.
Like just take them in, drink in their beauty and their magic for one moment with your eyes. And then, you know, either close your eyes or turn your gaze down. And then it’s just the invitation would be to just, to send this person love, you know? So accessing just our most human desire to love and to be loved.
It’s, it’s amazing to me when I give that simple prompt of what if all you had to do here in front of this stranger is to recognize their humanity and to offer compassion and love. And it’s like the entire energy in the room shifts when you say that, because people know how to do that. Actually, they actually know how to do that. And they, we want to do that.
We want to be generous with our love and our care and doing it in this way where we’re not using even words. We’re not having to look at them in the eyes. We’re just getting to bring our presence online and, and into that human. And then I say, you know, I remind them like, as you’re loving, can you stay open to receiving their love back?
And then they’re just creating this like love bubble and I get a little playful with that, you know? And then I usually say, okay, love them and leave them, you know? And it’s just like this idea of just, okay, we did that. Now we’re moving on, you know?
And, and then when we get to the next person, we do a different kind of thing. And so I think it’s really important, at least in my work, in the realm of creativity to keep things both human and meaningful, but also playful. And so those are some ingredients that I, that I work with a lot. And yeah, it’s, it’s just a gift to get to watch people connecting in these ways.
And by the, by the end of the first like 45 minutes of these exercises, people are like, I cannot believe how, like how much, how open I feel, how connected I feel. It can happen really quickly. Oh my goodness. I have tears in my eyes just imagining that scene.
I love how you said, we know how to do that. It’s such a natural thing to give love. And at the same time, there’s this weird taboo around it in public or semi-public spaces. And I’m really struck right now in the relief that I’m feeling in my own body, right?
Just imagining it to have permission to do that. And I’m wondering, why does it feel like such a relief, right? Why do I hold that in, in so much of my life? Right.
Exactly. Exactly. I want to ask you about your own collaborating. I know you’ve done a lot of that in your own artistic work.
Anything you’d like to share about past collaborations? Yeah, I think the, at the, the heart of creativity for me is this sense of generative collaboration. It’s like just the natural way of nature. And so I have done a lot of different collaborations over the years.
I’ve painted with, with people on the same canvas, which is so interesting because you’re just opening yourself up to a whole person’s creative expression and their colors and their marks and their ways of doing things. And so you have a friend that I’ve done a lot of painting with and I’ve written books with a couple of different people. I’ve co-led retreats. Right now, as I’m planning this tour, I put the call out a few weeks ago, like into my newsletter and social media and stuff.
And I just said, I want to collaborate. I don’t want this thing to be about me. It’s really not about me. I’m, I might be the reason that people know about it and show up to it.
But what’s most interesting to me is how we co-create this. I think that’s really the energy that the planet is needing these days is just how can we co-create and bring our gifts together in different ways. And so I’ve got musicians playing live music at different events. I’ve got an incredible portrait photographer who offered to do portraits of everybody at the end of one of the gatherings.
I’ve got amazing people that are making handmade goodies to go in our goodie bags and just a lot of different ways in which there’s a lot of hands involved with this. And I really think that to me is where the magic happens because I’m just one person with my ideas and my thing. But when you layer in more humans coming from a place of heart-centered service and this desire to create and connect, it’s like, Oh God, like anything can happen. For many years, I went to Burning Man every year.
And it was like, I think really out there in that environment that I got to experience the magic of what is possible when that many people come together in the spirit of generosity and gifting and participation, which are some of the tenets of that gathering. And it’s like, Oh, that’s when life happens. That’s when aliveness happens is when we get out of our little isolated habits and boxes and we come into a space of not just us. And then we see the alchemy that happens when my gifts meet your gifts.
And if we are open to trusting that, it can be edgy, right? Because that’s also a big unknown. Oh shit, what’s going to happen if it’s not just me in charge, right? But my experience by and large has been that it’s really where some of the most magical things in life happen is when we just trust and try.
You know, I have the same experience and I want to underline that word invitation that you’re using, which is of course the same word we use in partner dance. We invite a partner to dance. We don’t order them to dance with us or tell them. And I think that is really one of the keys to activating collaboration in any context.
I’ll just note here for listeners that this can be a powerful thing in a work environment. If you’re a manager or a supervisor or just leading a single meeting, if you think of what you’re doing as inviting people into an interaction, it changes everything even without saying it out loud. And of course you can’t say it out loud, but just from your own nonverbal communication attitude, thinking that way, it does make a huge difference. Try it out.
I find that people also just really love to be invited. And one of the things I often say at the end of my retreats when there’s these conversations around, oh my gosh, I feel so connected to you all and now I have to go home and I don’t have this kind of connection there, I like to give a little reminder that you can be the inviter. That most people, even if they say no, right, even if they’re not available for what you’re inviting them to, it’s nice to be invited. And so if you’re craving to have an art night with people that’s just casual and you’re all just making different things, for example, well, why don’t you invite people to do that with you and then see what happens because someone’s probably not going to come knocking on your door to invite you to the exact thing that you want.
And so I really try to empower people to create just in that spirit of creativity and making things out of nothing. It’s like, well, if you’re craving a certain kind of connection or experience, what happens when you just create that? And I love nothing more than the stories I get when people say, oh my God, Flora, I went home and I did it and I asked people and now we have this thing every month and it’s my favorite part of my life. Like I’ve heard that multiple times.
And yeah, I think we’re in a culture these days where there’s a lot of consuming going on with these little phones we have and all the screens and technology. It’s very easy to take in information and media and energy. And so I really think it’s so important right now to remember to balance that out with creativity and to be generative and to be in human connection. And I see it happening.
People are craving that so much already. We’re just like, can we just make something with our hands, please? And like, just be in the room together. And so I think the pendulum is going to swing back that way a bit.
Oh my goodness, Flora. I really hope so. I really hope you’re right. And maybe it starts with this other great tip that you just gave listeners.
Make your own invitation. I want to share that I notice in myself that I sometimes get stuck because I fall into this old trap of thinking that if I’m the leader or the inviter, then I need to do a whole bunch of work. And then I get overwhelmed and stressed before I even like get the words out of my mouth. So I encourage everyone listening to this, if you have any of that hesitation to just know that that’s a false assumption, right?
About the leading role, that the inviter is a co-creator, just like the participants. And look for that, right? How can whatever you’re inviting unfold together? Yeah.
And you get to create things however you want. So if you don’t want to have the responsibility, you make that clear from the beginning, you know, and you say, oh, every month a different person is going to be the leader, for example, or, you know, we’re going to go to different people’s houses. Or it’s like, that’s the beautiful thing about creativity is you get to choose. There’s like all these little micro decisions that go into how you want to do something and make it work for you, because that’s how you’ll keep doing it.
Okay. I’m curious, Flora, in your experience of collaborating, two-part question. First, how do you know when it’s working? And then what happens when it’s not working?
I think the biggest sign for is it working or not is does this bring energy and aliveness and make things actually feel easier? Like I’ve co-taught retreats where I just feel so uplifted and that I actually get a bit of a break because I believe to be everyone’s in such good hands with this person I’m collaborating with. And so I even get like a little bit of to get filled up in that experience. That’s like a win.
You know, if the collaboration feels like this is making everything harder, that’s not working. You know, a collaboration should make things easier and more dynamic. It should be two things or more than two things coming together to create something more amazing and easier, like taking the load off of everyone as an individual. That’s when you know it’s working.
And yeah, if it doesn’t feel that way, then that’s probably not the right person or people to be working with. Any other tips for listeners to bring a spirit of connection or collaboration into their lives if they’re not so lucky to attend one of your gatherings or don’t have an artistic practice right at hand? I always encourage people, even in like a retreat setting, it’s like if you see someone and you feel drawn to them for whatever reason, you like their outfit, you like their vibe, you like something they said, whatever it is. I always just say, I like to remind people how short life is and how these connections, like if there’s a spark that is drawing you to someone or to something, to really acknowledge that as information from a soul level, right?
It’s like there’s something there, but only you can actually follow through on it. It’s like the universe can give us all kinds of signs and symbols and nudges, but if we don’t follow them, nothing’s going to happen, right? So I always say, I don’t want you to leave at the end of this day or this week and have any regrets that you didn’t go sit by that person or you didn’t try that thing that you were like, oh, but I want to, but I’m afraid, but I want to. It’s like, oh my God, at the end of your life, like you’re not going to want to think back and think, shoot, I didn’t do it.
I didn’t talk to the person. I didn’t do the thing. I didn’t create the thing I wanted to create. Just go for it, you know?
And I think sometimes just again, that invitation and like the permission, if I can presence that in like a group of people, then we’re all in that energy. Then we all heard it, right? And so energy is what creates energy and connection is what creates connection. And so if we’re in our life and we’re just doing the same things we’re always doing, but hoping for a different outcome, you know, that’s the definition of insanity, right?
So it’s like, go out beyond what is the norm. If you are indeed craving something different, if you wish you had more connection, you might just need to make that happen for yourself. That reminds me of something I’ve been feeling more and more, which is when I act on those embodied feelings, those soul messages, it almost feels like it’s not me deciding I’m going to go out and make a connection. It’s more like life is doing the connecting.
The life force itself is moving me into the connection and into the collaborating. And I just have to follow that, be an active participant of the aliveness that’s moving in me. I have to trust it. It doesn’t so much feel like I’m doing it cognitively from a mental place.
And that makes it feel like much less pressure, actually. Yeah, it does. It takes the pressure off of having to figure everything out from our brains. And just if we can drop in our days into a little more of an embodied, intuitive kind of place, and that can happen.
You know, I have a practice that I call intuitive wandering, which is so simple. But the idea is that you go on a walk, for example, and when you get to an intersection, you just take a moment and you pause and you ask your body, or sometimes put my hand on my heart, which way am I feeling drawn? And you will feel drawn a certain way. Our bodies do have a sense of that.
And then you go that way. And you’re just kind of practicing this way of being in the world, which is not just I have a plan and I’m executing the plan. I always find the word executing just to be kind of fascinating. It’s like, okay, what else are you executing?
And the more we can leave some space, at least for the magic, for the intuition, for the flow, for the surprises, it’s like, to me, that’s what just brings life into this whole different way of interacting with it. It’s like I’m not just a little robot going through the motions. I’m here to be in the soup of this universal, way greater than myself experience. And sometimes just that reminder, even if I bring that reminder into the grocery store, I’m like, what magic can happen in here for me?
Whose eye am I going to catch? What little interaction am I going to have? What article am I going to see on the front of that magazine while I’m standing in the checkout? Whatever it is, it’s like, can we just play with life a little bit more?
And can we be open to two things, having a bit more sparkle and serendipity connected to them? And yeah, it’s like, I don’t live that way every day by any means. I’m just getting through like a lot of us in many ways. And I really try to make an effort to stay connected to the magic of it all, because to me, that’s what makes life worth living ultimately.
Kaitlin Luna, PhD, PhD Well, I think that is a beautiful note to end on. Tell us a little more about the tour and where you’ll be traveling. Jessica Vinas-Nelson Yeah. Thank you.
I’m starting in Portland, Oregon on September 19th. So just in a little over a month. And then we’re heading to Denver, Colorado, and then Minneapolis. And then these are all one-day events.
And then when we get to the East Coast, I’ll be at the Omega Institute for five days. So that’s a bit of a deeper dive. Same principles and lots of the same kind of energy, but for five days. And then we go down to Arkansas, a little town called Hot Springs, over the Santa Fe, and we’re ending in Santa Barbara, California.
So it’s a big two-month loop, 7,500 miles. It’s really, like I said, it’s for anyone. You don’t have to have any experience with art or any of this stuff. If just this idea of connecting and creating sounds like it’s pulling you in any way, I would love for you to join.
And we’re offering tons of scholarships for people. If the price point is too high, just let us know. I want whoever feels drawn to come, because I really trust in what’s going to happen in those rooms. I have a real strong feeling.
It’s really just an intuitive feeling that some real beautiful things are going to transpire in these gatherings. So that’s what we’re doing. The Creative Revolution Tour is what I’m calling it. I support this creative revolution for the record.
Listeners, you can get all the details about the tour and Flora’s online programs at florabolate. com. And on Instagram, we’ll put those in the show notes. Flora, thank you so much.
It’s been a great pleasure. Thank you. And thank you. You are a part of the Creative Revolution.
This conversation came from this. So I love getting to connect with you in this way. Thank you so much for having me. You have been listening to the Lead & Follow podcast.
Special thanks to Glover Gill for composing our music. And a huge thank you to all of you who support the show. It really means a lot. If you enjoyed this episode, please share it with a friend, or consider joining the Lead & Follow fan club for as little as $3 a month.
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