Intuitive Painting
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One-on-One
Presence + Intuition Sessions
A deeply held, trauma-informed container in which your body, mind, and spirit are welcomed home. Together we’ll breathe, move, and paint —unlocking fresh insights, creative flow, and embodied healing.
- 1 hour sessions
- In-person or Online
What’s included:
- Clear agreements for confidentiality, consent, and care
- Guided prompts to support flow when you feel stuck
- Optional somatic check-ins to help track body signals and self-regulate
- Resource list for continuing at home (materials, playlists, simple practices)
$150/session or purchase 3 sessions for $340 (save $110)
All sales are final and non-refundable. Please read our Terms & Conditions and Privacy Policy before proceeding to checkout.
Overview of Group Classes and Workshops
Creative Expression & Intuitive Grounding
Gather in circle for movement, poetry, meditation, and collective painting. Weaving intuitive art with poetry readings and nature-based rituals, these gatherings restore connection, spark joy, and nurture resilient communities. The classes are in-person or online.
What’s included:
- Clear agreements for confidentiality, consent, and care
- Guided prompts to support flow when you feel stuck
- Optional somatic check-ins to help track body signals and self-regulate
ROOTED- II: Poetry and Painting Under the Redwood
ROOTED II: Poetry and Painting Under the Redwoods
Sunday, July 19 | 12 noon–5 pm
Joaquin Miller Park, Oakland, CA
$150 | All painting materials included
What roots you when the world feels unsteady?
Perhaps you are longing to slow down. To reconnect with your creativity, your body, your ancestors, or a part of yourself that has gone quiet. Perhaps you carry more than one culture, are finding your way through change, or simply feel called to gather with others in a more meaningful way.
ROOTED is an invitation to spend a day beneath the redwoods—moving, reflecting, listening to poetry, painting intuitively, and remembering what nourishes and sustains us.
Over time, Painting the River’s gatherings beneath the redwoods have become some of our most cherished offerings—spaces where creativity, nature, and community come together in ways that many participants return to. ROOTED grows from this beloved practice of gathering beneath the trees.
As an Iranian-American artist and facilitator, I created ROOTED from my own experience of living between cultures, and from a deep trust in creativity, Persian poetry, ancestral wisdom, and the restorative presence of land and community. Persian poetry and themes will be woven throughout the day, alongside practices that invite each person to connect with their own roots, cultures, lineages, and inner sources of resilience.
Held beneath the shelter of the redwoods, we will slow down together and enter a creative and restorative space through guided meditation, music, gentle movement, reflective writing, poetry, and intuitive painting.
Together, we will explore:
• What roots us
• What nourishes and sustains us
• What we carry from our ancestors, cultures, and inner lives
• What wants to emerge through color, shape, words, movement, and intuition
No painting or writing experience is needed. This is not about artistic technique, performance, or creating a “good” painting. It is about presence, creative expression, listening inward, and reconnecting with ourselves and one another.
The workshop is open to people of all backgrounds. You may especially find resonance here if you carry more than one culture, are moving through a time of change or transition, feel disconnected from your creativity, or are longing for deeper connection, expression, and belonging.
Come as you are. Leave, perhaps, a little more rooted in yourself—and a little less alone.
Community Access
I believe spaces for creativity, belonging, and reconnection should remain as accessible as possible. A limited number of reduced-rate Community Access spots are available, with priority for BIPOC, immigrant, and diaspora community members. If the full fee is a barrier, please reach out. No explanation or proof of need is needed.
Come to breathe beneath the trees.
Come to listen inward.
Come to paint, write, move, and remember your roots.
Book here:
https://paintingtheriver.as.me/Rooted-II
Painting with Rumi, 4th Saturday of the Month, Online or In-Person, $70 /Class
Saturdays: June 27th, July 25th, Aug 22nd, Sep 26th, October 24th, November 28th
10 am - 12 noon PST
Rumi has always felt alive to me — not simply as a poet, but as a companion of the soul, a voice of love and intuition that continues to guide us beyond the limits of the rational mind. His poetry does not merely speak to us; it invites us into direct experience: into presence, longing, ecstasy, surrender, grief, beauty, and the mystery of being fully alive.
As an Iranian-American artist and facilitator, I carry Rumi as part of my ancestral inheritance — a wisdom tradition rooted not only in words, but in the heart, the body, music, movement, and the intoxication of love. In this gathering, I invite us to step into that river together.
We will meditate, ground, move gently with sacred music, and read Rumi in both Farsi and English, allowing the poetry to wash through us rather than simply be understood intellectually. From there, we will enter the intuitive painting process — painting from feeling, intuition, imagination, and flow.
Rumi often spoke of a kind of sacred drunkenness: the dissolving of the overly controlled, calculating mind so that a deeper knowing could emerge. A remembering. A return to the heart.
In the intuitive painting process, we practice touching that space gently — loosening the grip of perfectionism, productivity, self-judgment, and overthinking, and allowing creativity to arise from somewhere more ancient, instinctive, and true.
We listen, trust, and let the colors find their way.
Together, we create a space where intuition can breathe again — where the soul can play, grieve, soften, dance, remember, and create.
No painting experience is needed. Only a willingness to arrive as you are.
Book here:
https://paintingtheriver.as.me/SatRumi
Paint and Rejuvenate Classes, 3 Online Classes, $150
Tuesday evenings:
Tuesdays, June 23rd, July 7th, July 21st, 6:30- 8 pm PST
Book Tuesday Classes =>Here
https://paintingtheriver.as.me/RejuvenTues
Thursday mornings:
Thursdays, July 9th, July 23rd, Aug 6th, 10:30 am- 12 noon PST
Book Thursday Classes =>Here
https://paintingtheriver.as.me/RejuvenThurs
Want to unleash your creativity? Ready to reconnect with your intuition? Carrying the weight of the world and not sure how to release it? Is your body stuck in fight, flight, or freeze? Feeling emotionally overwhelmed, disconnected, or simply longing for a refuge — a space where you can breathe, soften, and return to yourself?
I have been there too. This practice has been a lifeline for me — a way back to presence, aliveness, creativity, and soul. Intuitive painting is not about technique, talent, or creating “good” art. It is about listening inward. It is about expression without judgment, allowing color, movement, feeling, and intuition to speak in ways words sometimes cannot.
These weekly classes are an invitation into a gentle creative practice of self-connection, nervous system regulation, play, and emotional release. Through intuitive painting, somatic and grounding exercises, movement, music, meditation, and guided facilitation, we create a safe and nourishing space to explore what is alive within us.
Each session offers a new doorway into the process — learning to quiet the inner critic, trust spontaneous expression, deepen presence, and access creativity as a healing force. Sometimes the painting becomes joyful and playful. Sometimes it becomes a space for grief, tenderness, or transformation. All of it is welcome.
No art experience is needed. You do not need to be “creative enough.” You simply need a willingness to show up as you are.
This is a space where:
We paint from feeling rather than performance
We practice listening to the wisdom of the body
We reconnect with imagination, intuition, and flow
We move gently between silence, music, color, and reflection
We witness ourselves and one another without critique or judgment
Over time, many participants discover that intuitive painting becomes more than a class — it becomes a practice. A ritual of returning. A conversation with the soul. A refuge in difficult times. A way of remembering aliveness, authenticity, and inner freedom.
Come experiment, play, release, and reconnect with the river within.
All sales are final and non-refundable. Please read our Terms & Conditions and Privacy Policy before proceeding to checkout.
Frequently asked questions
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Intuitive painting is a practice, not a product. It’s painting as a form of attention: breath, body, color, and presence working together. We learn to tell the difference between intuition and the judging mind, and we let the next stroke be guided by what’s true in the moment—not by a plan or an outcome.
Intuitive Painting is a process of self-discovery through opening up to your intuition. My role as a facilitator is to witness, hold the space, and help you stay by your "Intuition Spring." This presence is opening, meditative, transformative, and healing. You don't need any background in art or painting to immerse yourself in this process. All of us have an innate freedom to express ourselves with colors and images; however, it gets blocked by our critical minds, judgment, environmental conditioning, and, at times, the training we have. In this process, we will experience the freedom of expression, which will be a portal to a wholesome, intuitive presence.
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Intuitive painting welcomes everything—bold color or fine detail, abstract or imagery, beauty or mess, flow or stuckness. If it’s honest, it belongs.
It is not a technique class, a style to copy, or a results-based process. We’re not aiming to make something “pretty” or to perform. We’re practicing how to listen. -
Free the creative self. We loosen perfectionism, comparison, and the need for approval. We risk, play, and experiment.
Return to presence. When we drop “shoulds,” we create room for curiosity, compassion, and calm.
Build trust. We practice letting rhythm and timing lead—like a river finding its course.
“ Dance is not just
Getting up painlessly
Like a leaf
Blown on the wind;
Dancing is when you tear
Your heart out
And rise out of your body
To be free in the world
Between the worlds.” Rumi -
We primarily use water-based paints (acrylic or tempera), large-format paper, tape, and a range of brushes and tools. For in-person groups, materials are provided. For online sessions, you’ll receive a simple materials list and affordable options.
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This practice can surface grief, joy, memory, and power. We meet what arises with presence in a trauma-informed container. Intuitive painting can make the unconscious more conscious, strengthen your alliance with inner wisdom, and support a sense of wholeness.
How it differs from art therapy: feelings are welcomed and witnessed, but we don’t analyze the image. We honor the mystery; healing can happen without explanation. When it’s helpful, I’ll invite you to notice the somatic (body) experience of what wants expression. This work is not psychotherapy or a substitute for clinical care.
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No. All levels are welcome. There is no critique and no right way to do this. Your willingness to show up is the only prerequisite.
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We start with breath and gentle, 5Rhythms-inspired movement to loosen the body and settle the nervous system. A short sharing circle, a brief meditation, and sometimes a poem (Rumi, Hafez, or another day’s inspiration) help set the tone. At times, we include certain exercises to unfold the creativity or connect with a theme. Then we paint—one honest stroke at a time.
I hold a steady, respectful space, informed by trauma-sensitive training and nature-based practices. Breaks are available as needed. We usually paint in silence. As a facilitator, I do check-ins to help you reflect on your process or reconnect with the creative flow if stuck. Closing includes an optional reflection—verbally or in writing. -
A steadier presence and a softer nervous system
Courage to create without permission and feel what’s real, to say Yes to what belongs and to say No to what you need to reject, within yourself or in the world
A renewed sense of belonging to yourself, your body, your ancestors, and the living world, as we experience it
Trust in your own rhythm, timing, and voice
