About Us

“We do not have a body in a world of things. We are a body in a web of beings, entangled, open, weaving.”

Creative States is a research studio exploring creativity that focuses beyond ‘Form and Function’ on our Felt Sense and Feeling States. We believe if we learn to experience our world as relational and embodied, we can open ourselves to more life-giving ways of connecting, belonging to and designing it. Join us as we share research, curate conversations, and publish tools to help creative practitioners shape a new culture of relational flourishing.

An Invitation…

Can we design modern life as more than a machine? Almost every aspect of our economic and daily lives derives from a Rationalistic conception of the world. From the Enlightenment to the Industrial and Technological Revolution, we have effectively quantified, mechanized and digitized our existence and perfected our ability to commodify the things around us, even ourselves. While the world we built has enriched many and enabled incredible progress, it comes at great cost: disconnection.

From a Rational to Relational Worldview

A Rational Worldview reduces everyone and everything to their Form and Function with an ascribed utility value, to be exploited for gain. We dismantle our natural world into expendable parts, objectify others by their external status and worth, and dominate one another in a dysregulating dynamic of competition over collaboration. Ever focused on the individual, it is no wonder we feel caught in an epidemic of hostility and isolation — we’ve become numb to the innate interconnection of our feeling bodies, our fellow humans and our fuller ecosystems.

Attuning to Embodied Interconnection

We can learn to relate differently. Creative States offers a framework to help creative practitioners shape a Relational Worldview. A relational conception of the world treats us not as independent actors separated above or below, but as a part of relational systems. Over the course of millennia, our species evolved a sophisticated Felt Sense and Feeling States to interact through embodied interconnection. When we re-attune to our social and living systems as interdependently sensing and alive, we feel how our bodies co-regulate, and our well-being is intertwined.

Our Felt Sense

“Most of us see ourselves as thinking creatures that feel, but we are actually feeling creatures that think.” – Jill Bolte Taylor

We now know there is a strong neurophysiological basis for our ability to communicate, attach and interact with other beings. Our very nervous systems are constantly sending and receiving information through neuroception, our Felt Sense. Originally developed as a means of survival, our bodies scan and process cues in our surroundings to alert the brain of danger or symbiosis. We in fact feel the world before we think about it.

Our Felt Sense combines:
Physical Senses – sensory receptors that process what is present before and around us
Intuitive Senses – attunement to energies, signals and flows that nurture or protect us

These visceral sensory experiences become imprinted in our bodies from an early age and may be far more important than conscious thought when it comes to feeling safe. When we design ways to ground people in Felt Sense perception, we invite them to see themselves as participants of a living world tuning to the ebb and flow of feeling safe.

Our Feeling States

“All things change according to the state we are in.” – Robert Henri

When our Felt Sense prompts us to feel threatened, our nervous system protects us by closing off, retreating and shutting down connection. When we feel safe, we open ourselves to feeling the aliveness of interconnection. Flourishing Feeling States are expansive emotions known to release neurochemicals in our bodies that foster generous integration with others and the world around us.

Our seven flourishing Feeling States are:
Wonder – cultivating reverence for the ephemerality of presence and for our wild, imperfect and precious existence
Play – encouraging us to explore in a light-hearted, child-spirited and invitational manner
Joy – uplifting one another with expansive moments of warmth, beauty and delight
Compassion – extending past judgement and artifice to create space for courage, acceptance and vulnerability
Humility – communing from a place of steadfast dignity, with respect for all backgrounds and experiences
Curiosity – exploring the uniqueness of local cultures, past histories, and spirits of people and places
Sensuality – honoring our yearning for safe, intimate and grounding connection with ourselves and our world

By designing for flourishing Feeling States, we orient people away from defensive positions of division, distrust and self protection and hold space for mutual abundance, collaboration and care. We attend to all life forms and value what others bring. Species, disciplines, perspectives and belief systems commingle to open imaginative new possibilities.

Toward Relational Flourishing

Creative practitioners who create for our Felt Sense and Feeling States help us recall embodied interconnection. We learn to reunite our rational and relational intelligence. We reintegrate the whole of our experience, ourselves and our world. Above all, we renew our collective Creative States to design beyond the narrow aim of self-serving toward what is truly life-giving – a new culture of relational flourishing.