You do not need to have experience or “talent” in art to have a satisfying creative process. Remember, no one is looking over your shoulder. The process of making a gratitude wheel is for your pleasure, and yours alone. At any time you can stop and start again.

  1. Clear your space, prepare some paper and colors and put them aside— I recommend crayons or pastels, but this is, of course, up to you.
  2. Sit or lie quietly for at least a few minutes. Turn your attention to your sensations. If you’d like help with this, try any of my free audio recordings. Most are 1 hour long Feldenkrais lessons, but the meditation is only 10 minutes. Or, plan on doing your drawing after one of my classes.
  3. When you feel grounded, curious, and maybe even a little playful, put your paper in view. Is it the color you’d like to see? If not, color your paper to make a new background color.
  4. Create a shape of any kind in the center of your page. Take time with this. Choose your colors for what pleases you, or what solves the problem, “What colors need to be in the center?” Same thing with the shape. What pleases you? What seems to be needed? Make as many or as few strokes that lead to your satisfaction. There is no way to get this wrong.
  5. Make any kind of mark leading away from your center shape toward any edge of the page. Do you make a line or shape? Direct or meandering? Heavy or light? What colors feel good for this?
  6. Repeat this several times. How many times is right for you?
  7. Feel if the strokes give you pleasure. If not, change what you are doing until you can feel yourself moving as you draw. Don’t worry about what it looks like. Can you find a way of moving yourself to move the color across the page? Can you find a way of making that movement pleasant?
  8. When you have the number of “spokes on your wheel” or “petals on your flower” or “arms on your octopus”—whatever the thing looks like to you now—that is somewhere between good enough and exactly what is needed, pause and gaze at your drawing. Are there any additions or subtractions you want to make?
  9. Place words around your drawing of things you are grateful for. Don’t think too hard about it. Place the words where you want to place them, in the spaces, on the “spokes/petals/arms,” or anywhere you chose. Is the color of the words important to you? You can use your crayons or colored pens. You can pencil in the words and color them later.
  10. Finally, reflect on your creation. When you see your drawing and words, what do you feel in your body? Does resonance of the gratitude wheel have a measure of sensation—a feeling of large or small, light or heavy, spacious or dense— anywhere in yourself? Give yourself time to be with any feelings that emerge.

If you’d like to see my Gratitude Wheel, click here, but, remember, yours will be different from mine, and that is as it should be.

DIY Gratitude Wheel