Imaginative Intelligence Resources

TEDx talks by Imaginative Storm co-founders

Allegra Huston

Imaginative Intelligence: Your creativity, your insight, your self

James Navé

From the Imaginative Storm to the Creative Form

Creativity Workshops and Retreats

Sarah Gillespie

Sarah Gillespie: songwriting courses and mentoring

Highly acclaimed singer-songwriter Sarah Gillespie isrenowned for mixing elements of blues, folk and jazz with her distinctive streetwise lyricism. Sarah offers workshops and personal mentoring at various levels. With Sarah’s guidance, you will write lyrics, set them to music, and record your songs. She will even produce your album and release it on her label.

Daniel Barber

SoundYourSelf Piano Improvisation

With acclaimed musician Daniel Barber. Courses, private classes, coaching, and community to make your own music medicine.

Sketch of a curled-up nude woman lying on her side with her head resting on her arm, by Alex Alford

Just Draw the Boots: Figure Drawing

With acclaimed artist Alex Alford, on Zoom and in person in Asheville, Atlanta, New York, and elsewhere in the US and Europe. An important practice for artists and non-artists alike, the practice of drawing the human figure from life builds empathy, patience, tolerance, and appreciation for human diversity. And it changes your view of yourself and your potential. Read blog post

Mirabai Starr

Mirabai Starr: Spiritual Retreats & Workshops

Award-winning author, contemporary translator of sacred literature, international speaker, and world-renowned teacher of contemplative practice and inter-spiritual dialog. A certified bereavement counselor, Mirabai helps mourners harness the transformational power of loss. Her book, WILD MERCY: Living the Fierce & Tender Wisdom of the Women Mystics, continues to sell widely and has been translated into multiple languages.

Mirabai’s most recent book, Ordinary Mysticism (2024), celebrates the imagination, not-knowing, amazement, and the surprises of everyday experience: just as we do in the Imaginative Storm.

Books by Other Thinkers

Psychology

Carl Jung, Selected Writings

Bruno Bettelheim, The Uses of Enchantment

R. D. Laing, The Divided SelfMihaly Csikszentmihalyi, Flow

Daniel Kahneman, Thinking, Fast and Slow

Howard Gardner, Frames of Mind

Daniel Goleman, Emotional Intelligence

Erik Erikson, Childhood and Society and Gandhi's Truth

Bessel van der Kolk, The Body Keeps the Score

Carl Rogers, On Becoming a Person

Theory of mind

Iain McGilchrist, The Master and His Emissary

Daniel Dennett, From Bacteria to Bach and Back

Peter Godfrey-Smith, Other Minds

Douglas Hofstadter, I Am a Strange Loop

Julian Jaynes, The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind

Arthur Koestler, The Act of Creation

Aspects of imaginative intelligence

Dacher Keltner, Awe

David Abram, The Spell of the Sensuous

Stuart Brown, Play

Arthur Koestler, The Act of Creation

Walter Isaacson, Einstein

Robert Pirsig, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

Ruth Zaporah, Improvisation on the Edge

Susie Hodge, How Art Can Change Your Life

Ken Jennings, Planet Funny: How Comedy Ruined Everything

Neuroscience

Candace Pert, Molecules of Emotion

Moheb Costandi, Neuroplasticity

Antonio Damasio, The Feeling of What Happens and Descartes' Error

Jill Bolte Taylor, My Stroke of Insight

Scott Barry Kaufman and Carolyn Gregoire, Wired to Create

Christopher J. Wertz, Muhammad O. Chohan, Rance A. Flores, and Rex E. Jung, "Neuroanatomy of Creative Achievement"

Ronald W. Dworkin, "When I Lost My Intuition," from Medical Catastrophe: Confessions of an Anesthesiologist

F. R. Van der Weel and Audrey L. H. Van der Meer, "Handwriting but not typewriting leads to widespread brain connectivity: a high-density EEG study with implications for the classroom," Frontiers in Psychology