Following What Feels Right

I’ve been reflecting a lot lately on what it really means to follow inner guidance… not because it makes sense, but because it feels right.

When I look back over my life, the most significant decisions I’ve made have never come from careful planning or rational thinking. They’ve come from something much deeper… an inner knowing, and the willingness to trust it.

Leaving my role as a principal to step into teaching mindfulness was one of those moments. It didn’t make sense to many people at the time, (or in fact even to me!), and yet it became one of the most important and defining shifts in my life.

Moving to India — first for two years, and now again for this long stay — is another. These are not small decisions. They’re not comfortable or predictable. And yet they come from that same place… a deep knowing, and the courage to follow it.

What I’m noticing now is that this same feeling is happening again — I can feel it in the core of my being… this time through my art.

It might not look significant from the outside. I’m not making a dramatic life change or turning everything upside down. But internally, it feels just as important.

For a long time, I’ve been exploring, searching, trying to find an artistic expression that really feels like me. There’s been a lot of play over the years, but when I look back, much of it has been quite directed… led by the mind, by ideas of what I should try or what I wanted to create.

This feels different. This feels like being guided. And there’s an excitement in that. A lightness. A sense that something is unfolding rather than being forced.

Part of what has helped me recognise and trust this more deeply is a book I recently read — The Surrender Experiment by Michael Singer. If you haven’t read it, I would highly recommend it. At its heart, it’s about living in the flow of life and being open to the guidance that comes to us through everyday moments. Not through big, dramatic signs… but through simple interactions, conversations, opportunities that appear unexpectedly.

And I’ve started to notice just how much that is happening. It’s not a loud voice telling me what to do. It’s something internal that gets prompted… from an interaction or a message from someone saying, “Hey… Have you tried using these blocks with clay?” And suddenly, there’s a new doorway.

That’s exactly what happened last week.

Someone reached out after seeing my video of the Australian block designs being carved by the Indian Block artisan, and asked whether I had used them with clay. They were a ceramic artist and were interested in using these blocks in their own work.

And my response was simply… curiosity.

I haven’t worked with clay before. It wasn’t something I had planned to explore. But something about the idea felt interesting enough to follow. So I bought some air-dry clay.

And this morning, I just played.

There’s something incredibly beautiful about working with clay. The feeling of kneading it, rolling it out, the softness and responsiveness of it in your hands… it’s completely different to working on paper or fabric.

And then the moment of pressing the blocks into it… Feeling the clay shift and give under the pressure. Noticing what happens when you press firmly… and when you don’t press enough.
Watching the patterns emerge in a completely new way.

It was less about creating something “finished” and more about simply experiencing the process. Most of what I made today was what you’d call ephemeral — just rolling the clay out, printing into it, then gathering it back up and starting again. Over and over. No attachment. Just exploration.

Right at the end, I printed three blocks together on a large flat roll out… and I loved it. So, I decided to keep one.

I don’t know if I’ve done it “properly.” (In fact, I’m sure I haven’t :)
And anyone experienced in clay or ceramics would see all sorts of things I could have done differently.

It might crack.
It might not dry the way I expect. But that doesn’t really matter. I’m just following it to see what happens. And I’ll share what unfolds next. Because if there’s one thing I’m learning again and again, it’s this:

The path doesn’t always come from knowing what you’re doing.

It comes from being willing to follow what feels alive… even when you don’t yet understand where it’s leading.

With gratitude, Jan

🌿🌿🌿

A few snaps below of my playing today :)