The Creative Sabbatical I Didn’t Know I Needed

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Words by Brooke Richardson | Images by Irushka Photography

The air was thick with humidity when I returned to Bali. Motorbikes hummed past small temple offerings placed intentionally along the sidewalk, and the scent of incense drifted through the morning air. Almost immediately, I felt my nervous system soften. Returning to the island felt like coming home. 

Bali has a way of holding you gently if you allow it—slowing you down, softening your edges, and inviting parts of yourself to surface that everyday life often keeps hidden. This time, I didn’t stay in the busier areas; instead, I moved between quieter places near the rice fields, letting my lodging change as I changed. Each place seemed to open something new in me: a new idea, a new layer of healing, sometimes even a new song.

I hadn’t come to Bali intending to take a creative sabbatical. The trip followed several intense years of personal healing, energy training, career shifts, relationship endings, and major life transitions. I had just completed a powerful VortexHealing® Divine Energy Healing course that stirred deep energetic shifts in my system.

After years of constant movement and inner work, I found myself standing at the edge of a quiet, but persistent question: what now? I was depleted and didn’t know what to do. So I did what I always do, I listened, followed a nudge, and trusted.

For the previous three years, I had been living nomadically, travelling to Ireland, Switzerland, Spain, the UK, Dubai, and even a trip to India, and visiting my family in the US. By the time I arrived in Bali again, something in me finally slowed down. I stepped away from seeing clients for a time to allow my system to settle after years of deep inner work.

For the first couple of months, it felt as though I was there simply to grieve earlier versions of myself and navigate the uncertainty of where this path was leading. I was exhausted from trying so hard, so I finally stopped trying altogether. What remained was the part that often feels the most uncomfortable: the void. The not knowing. 

Unlike an earlier version of myself, I didn’t rush to fill the space, but rather embraced it. I let my body lead. I cried when I needed to, rested when I was tired, treated my body to Balinese massages and delicious food, and allowed the days to unfold slowly as my body and system caught up with the energetic shifts happening beneath the surface.

Life in Bali supported that slowing down. I swam; I watched children running through open fields, flying kites against the fading sky; I smiled as locals warmly greeted me and admired how they laughed together as they prepared offerings for the temple, moving with a quiet devotion woven into daily life, reminding me of the sacredness of being.

Riding on the back of scooters under the moon and stars, feeling the warm night air on my face, I began to sense something inside me loosening.

Gradually, curiosity returned.

A practitioner I had met the previous year offered a womb healing session that unexpectedly opened another layer of creativity in me. After the session, a question surfaced almost automatically, and I asked her, “Do you also teach shamanic drumming?” Even I was surprised to hear myself ask. She said yes, and a new door opened, a door that felt like remembering. 

Over the following month, I learned how to journey through the drum, feeling myself return more fully into my body after so much internal transformation.

Soon, another idea surfaced: singing. I had recently begun experimenting with creating songs using AI tools, but my body still felt too tired to pursue it fully. Three months later, however, I joined a singing intensive in Bali and even recorded my first two songs using my own voice. I had never been sung before, so this was all entirely new territory. 

Other ideas followed. For some time, I had been imagining the possibility of turning my paintings into clothing, but I had never known how to move the idea forward. Somehow, through the gentle serendipity of Bali, I found myself meeting a tailor, visiting a small production site, and eventually transforming my paintings into signature dresses. There was no grand plan behind it. I pursued the idea simply because it brought me joy, and curiosity kept leading me forward.

The encounters continued. Through a chance meeting, I was introduced to a palm leaf reader and a Balinese healer. The only appointment they had available happened to fall on my 36th birthday. Travelling alone, having plans that day—especially ones that nourished my spiritual curiosity—felt like a gift.

The healing session opened another layer, and soon I found myself in a private week-long immersion learning kundalini practices and movements that resembled tai chi, exploring energy in an embodied way that complemented the work I was already doing as a certified energy practitioner.

Looking back now, Bali once again felt like medicine for my soul. Something about the island—the warmth of its people, the rhythm of temple life, sound baths, the vibrant fruit markets and afternoon nasi goreng shared in open-air cafés—invited a gentler way of living. It reminded me that growth doesn’t always have to come through pushing harder. Sometimes it arrives through listening.

What began as a period of grief gradually transformed into something else entirely: a creative sabbatical I hadn’t planned.

I never intended for the year to unfold this way. Then again, we rarely know how our journeys will truly take shape. What I do know is that the pause Bali offered me changed something fundamental. Through the experience, my self-trust deepened in ways I hadn’t expected.

Sometimes the most meaningful journeys begin not with a carefully made plan, but with the quiet courage to trust what is calling—even when we don’t yet know where it will lead.

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