The Story of Inner Forest Intuitive Arts

The idea for Inner Forest Intuitive Arts arose for me, Lindsy, in 2025, as a piece of the healing process while working through the aftermath of a painful life event. For some time, I had been looking for a more intuitive pathway into my own writing and artistic work as well as continuing to grow in understanding of myself. While processing my grief and adjusting to the new normal of my life, it became clear to me that intutition, creativity, curiousity, connection with nature, healing work with self and others, and energy/sound work were all extremely entwined. Inner Forest Intuitive Arts is my way of bringing all these pieces together in a cohesive way to share with people who are looking to settle more deeply into themselves and their experience of life.

The image to the right is my start to an intuitive drawing of a tree that comes to mind often in my own meditations. I began this drawing on a trip to Ireland in August of 2025, and I like this mid-process capture. I see each of us as a tree. A tree seems so stable and steady and complete, yet it is constantly growing, changing, rooting more deeply, spreading its branches, and transmuting air-earth-water-light. Like we humans, trees also depend on the community network around them of like-species trees, other plant and animal life, and even the fungi networks in the soil. The stronger the community, the stronger the tree. Even within the individual cells and atoms of the tree, there is an entire world of interdependence.

We are each simultaneously a growing tree within a forest of the support network we've landed into and cultivated--and we also carry a forest of support and interconnectedness inside of us. The work I do with Inner Forest Intuitive Arts is meant to help others root deeper into that inner forest where each of us carries what we need inside of us.

Email Lindsy

Connect with Lindsy to learn more.

Email Lindsy

Events and Workshops Hosted

Upcoming Events and Activities:

Workshop: Intuitive Creativity through Writing and Art: Duluth Folk School, February 22, 2026 5-7pm. Register here! All proceeds from tuition go to the Duluth Folk School
Panel Presentation: Bringing Mindfulness Into the Writing Classroom: Practices for Whole-Student Wellbeing: Lindsy O'Brien and Bri Ditzler, Lake Superior Summit for Teaching of Writing and ESL, February 27, 2026
Workshop: Writing Through Stress and Healing, Cloquet Public Libary, March 2, 2026 5-7. Registration Required: call Cloquet Public Library at 218-879-1531.
Arrowhead Native Plant Explorers event TBD spring 2026 (check back).

Past and Ongoing Events and Activities:

Workshop: Writing Through Stress and Healing, Duluth Folk School August 2025
Workshop: Creative Writing: Outdoors-- 4 day summer camp for 14-18 year olds, Lake Superior College, June 2025
Conference Session: Writing Through Stress (presented at Lake Superior College Student Success Day recurring since 2019)
Conference Presentation: Creativity Theory in the Writing Classroom: A Discussion. Lake Superior Summit on the Teaching of Writing and ESL, February 2024
Imagine Your Future: Make a Vision Board or Collage (presented at Lake Superior College Student Success Day 2023, 2022, 2021)

Trainings and Credentials: Lindsy O'Brien

College Creative Writing Instructor (2018-Present) including Creative Writing Outdoors (Fall 2023; Fall 2025: Lake Superior College)
Reiki Master Practitioner certification (January 2026); Advanced Reiki Practitioner certified (August 2025); Reiki I and II Energy Healing certified (April 2025): Conscious Living, Duluth MN
St. Croix Hospice Volunteer (2025-present)
11+ graduate level credits in mental health counseling and social work through MinnState Colleges (2025-present)
12 College level art credits in painting and drawing through Lake Superior College (2024-present)
Sound Healing Mentorship with Echo North Wellness (2025-present)
English Faculty, MinnState College System (2014-present); MinnState BOT Educator of the Year 2022
Recipient of 2024 Arrowhead Arts Board Equity Grant for Novel Project
Published writer (6 childrens books; poetry, creative nonfiction, and fiction published nationally and regionally)
Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing, Minneosta State University Mankato, (2014)
Ordained through Universal Life Church Ministry (2007)--have performed serveral weddings.
Freelance editor: Lake Superior Writers (2011-2014)
Owner of Red Step Press, publisher of Overburden: Life on the Iron Range by Aaron J. Brown (winner of 2008 Northeastern Minnesota Book Award) and Brown Sugar Syrup and Jackpine Sand by Dennis Hershbach (winner of 2019 Northeastern Minneosta Book Award).

Lindsy's Creative Gallery

tabby cat and eyeball drawing in charcoal

We all have our own uniquie pathways into creativity and healing. Feel free to explore some visual examples of my process.

I consider myself a writer and have since I was very young (see below a "published" sample of a poem I wrote when I was 9 for a school project that got printed in the school district paper). I've come to artwork later in life, and in exploring on my own and taking college level coursework in drawing and painting, I've been able to find new powerful ways to access my creativity and intuition. I do not believe we need to label ourselves as "artist" or "writer" to write or do art (transfer that to any activity, really, whether it be creative or not i.e. "runner," etc). At the same time, I think we can take on those labels whenever we feel like they belong to us. Nobody will ever bestow a creative title on us. It isn't like a job title or a degree. You get to decide how you define yourself within your own creative world. And that's pretty fantastic.

The samples below come from all levels of my creative process. I've shared some of my current favorite pen and ink intuitive drawings (top left) as well as work from the college level art courses I've taken over the past few years. Although I don't consider anything I've shared to be "high art" (and some of it, such as the bottom left "creative doodle" pencil sketches that were homework for my first day of Drawing I at Lake Superior College, is very much just playing around), I am proud of all of this work because I pushed myself to try new things and follow my own intuitive impulses to learn and grow. I am very much a student when it comes to art, and I feel what I can offer to others is support in developing an artistic practice that grows out of meditative processes, curiosity, flow, inner awareness, and a sense of playfulness.

My goal, always, is to work with each individual to connect deeper with your inner intuitive self in whatever ways feel most natural, whether it be through art, writing, energy work, sound healing, or engaging with nature (or all of the above).

With my college-level writing students, I always emphasize process over product. In considering myself a "Writer with a captial W", I tend to struggle to follow that advice myself in the writing world. My inner critic has a lot to say the second I pick up a pen or flip open my laptop. Art has helped me learn to take my creative process less seriously so that I can push myself to dig deeper in my writing as well. Creativity in one area produces creativity in other areas: I've come to see this as a fact of life.