Beyond the Body: What This Year Has Taught Me

This year I've been diving deeper into Body Impressions, seeking more insight and asking more questions to understand my own practice and bring more context to the women and couples that come and do this work with me.

What I have always felt is that it’s always been so much more than the art you take away with you.

1:1 Core Body Impression Experience

As an artist, I feel I have this deep sense of responsibility to ask myself lots of “why” questions, to express and reflect on what I am doing - because at my core, I believe art is like breadcrumbs leading me not just to help and understand myself, but others too.

The Impression process itself is so reflective and raw. It hurls you into the moment, into a space where you have no choice but to be with yourself. It’s also so different from anything most people have experienced... the paint on your body, and that deep compression feeling when pressing onto the paper. The noise of the world is cut out; the process brings you into now, and your life gets put on hold.

This year the workshops and one-to-one sessions have shown me that, despite the various reasons for showing up, every person shares something in common, they just want to feel better about themselves or their bodies, or a bit of both. They want to celebrate rather than tear down their bodies. To empower and love who they are and what they are.

Often a workshop or session can be the first step some people take on the self-development road, others are gathering more experiences to empower and inspire themselves into a new era. What I love is the eclectic variety of women in the workshop: different ages, stages, and reasons for turning up and trying something a little different.

Complete strangers gathered together sharing stories, connecting, laughing, creating, and cultivating more love for the bodies that carry them.

The Body Impression Workshop

The weird and wonderful thing is that it’s only been very recently that I’ve come to realise this work isn’t actually about the body. At its core, it’s about “the higher self”, our life force that is held in the body.

For most of us, the body has been a battleground ever since we can recall. From day dot we are conditioned to dislike ourselves. From the hair on our head to the toes on our feet, nothing is left unscrutinised. I remember the perfect Disney princesses as a child, absorbing the world: thick flowing hair, teenie feet, small waists, huge eyes, perfect skin. It’s my earliest memory of beauty. We grow and we are consistently judged on the outside, and what’s most upsetting is that we are often our biggest critic.

Bodies become projects. Beauty becomes currency. Worth becomes conditional.This creates a lifelong tension:“I must make this form acceptable so I can be accepted.”

The mind is another battlefield.

I have gone to huge lengths to wage war on my mind. In my late twenties I had a mental break and had to leave my work. Festering at home with my parents felt regressive, so I sought out an ashram high up in the Colorado mountains and checked myself in for six weeks. It was gruelling. 4am meditations, selfless service in the daytime (shovelling snow in blizzards, cleaning cabins) - the scenery was epic and the food was amazing, mind you.

The community gave me what I needed... they loved and accepted me. That was the main benefit I got from that place. I also got good at meditating, but it felt like another over-emphasis, another battle to dismantle the ego and fight with my thoughts. Surrender was a word used a lot by the community. I tried, I really fucking tried. It was hard.

We try to outthink shame, “fix” our thoughts, retrain the ego, calm anxiety, regulate emotions… The mind becomes another battleground, intellectualising the wound instead of addressing the wound.

Body Impression, Gold Metallic Paint

Two battlefields that get so much airtime in our lives, but are these the mountains we really need to conquer first? The older I get, the more I feel like we are beating on the wrong drum. So I started asking.. What about the soul? If you don’t like that word, here are some others:

• Essence

• Life force

• Core energy

• True self

• Higher self

• Aliveness

• Human spirit

Personally, I have spent most of my life beating “the mind and body drum” without addressing that inner self first, beating them half to death at times.

I grew up in a religious family. The distaste for it was induced by my grandmother who, on most visits, would put the fear of God in me (quite literally): “If you don’t believe you will be banished to hell!" This scared me, and it also wasn’t something that sat right intuitively, it just made me want to move away from religion of any kind.

I didn’t believe you were judged and damned to hell if you don’t believe there’s a sole “man” in the sky that made everything. I did not like “the rules” and restraints religions had intertwined in some of what I felt might be true. It felt too curated.

Personally, the words 'soul' or 'spirit' also carried religious constraints with them for me. The older I got, the more I blanked out that idea. It was easy to do mind, society focuses so much on our external bodies; it became the battlefield in the foreground. The focus to fight.

I feel for many of us the soul slips into the background, not because it’s less important, but because it’s the one thing society can’t standardise, monetise, or regulate. It’s the thing that makes you you, even if your body changes. It’s the thing that remains you no matter what your mind believes.

The soul is the quietest voice because it’s the only one that hasn’t been conditioned.

This year I have deep-dived into the group workshops and 1:1 sessions, and the shift in focus and outlook has been undeniable. Opening my practice to others has deepened my own sense of self. It’s made me look more inward and understand that this internal world is the one that truly matters. Yes, we need to nourish the body and keep ourselves healthy. We also need to calm and balance our thoughts, but in a way, this becomes far easier when we give more attention to our inner world first.

Limited Edition Print 'Ascend'

That intuitive nudge or knowing, it lays the breadcrumbs for us to follow; we just need to get quiet enough to notice. For me this intuition has not come through a rigorous meditation practice or yoga, it’s come from my art and asking questions with myself.

I feel we are all finding our way. Seeking truth and piecing together who we are and what our role to play in life is. I know that others can help open and widen that search, but you can also do this by yourself. It’s just about leaning into your intuition more and letting yourself be guided by something you can't quite prove to be real… a blind faith in something so much greater than you.

I honestly can’t wait to bring you more Workshops in 2026. It’s been a beautiful year, full of stories and experiences that make me feel so grateful to do this work.

Thank you all for being here on this trip, having your support is always so affirming and uplifting.

Let’s bring even more women and memories into 2026.

p.s - If you want to join the workshop happening on 11th December, I have a few spaces left and would love for you to come! I also now offer five different Body Impression experiences, so there’s something to fit every budget — giving you the chance to enjoy all the amazing benefits these sessions bring. Just click the button below and have a browse!

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Lots of love,

Beth