Ep #46: Untaming Your Creativity

“You were wild once; don’t let them tame you,” creative genius and mother of modern dance, Isadora Duncan. In today’s episode, I want to talk to you about a phenomenon of taming and what the ramifications are for the taming of our creativity and of the great huge big divine energy of your potential.

You are listening to The Art School Podcast; a show for artists and creatives who want to become the next greatest version of themselves. Learn how to cultivate an extraordinary way of being and take the mystery out of making money, and the struggle out of making art. Here is your host, master certified life coach, artist, and former lawyer, Leah Badertscher.

Hello, everyone, and thank you for joining me today. Welcome back. It is a beautiful fall day here in Southwest Michigan. The days are getting shorter, which makes my heart ache a little bit. But we are, for sure, taking advantage of it. The light this time of year is so beautiful, where the sun is in the sky, and the corn is turning golden.

So, after dinner lately, we’ve been taking in those last golden hours of sunlight. My oldest son, Elijah, is in love with playing flag football right now, so he always wants to have a family flag football game. And I love it. I love all the five of us being out there running around in the back yard. My daughter Blaize usually departs to go jump on the trampoline for a while.

She has just recently taught herself how to do flips to the point where she can land on her feet. And there’s that smell of the corn, you know, we’re coming into harvest time here and that also just gets me squarely in the heart because it takes me – I’m going to cry – right back to my childhood.

So I just remember this time of year, getting off the bus and the light through the apple orchard trees and the sound of the dryer bins going. My mom and dad are farmers and so almost this time, he’d be harvesting, combining corn or soybeans. And then you have the drier bins running, these big grain bins, and you have to dry the corn out before you take it to sell.

And so the smells of this time of year, the smell of the corn reaching that point, even the smell – we have a farmer across the road and every once in a while, the smell of oil and grease kind of wafts over if he’s been working on his equipment or machinery, and I think my nose is particularly attuned. And it just takes me back to so many memories as a child.

And also growing up, my siblings and I and my parents would play games out in the yard like I do with my husband and our children now. And these are the good days. Those were the good old days. Those were the golden days. And these are the good days too.

And it’s a little bit of my life right now that I wanted to share with you, and it also happens to be related to what I want to talk to you about today. I want to talk to you about the real living of your life, the embodiment of the kind of life, the good life you want to lead, the movement that that involves, the being in your body and being present and loving being in your life and in your body, and that so much of that has nothing to do with staying up in your head, you know, above your neck.

This is a part of the work that I really am going to be speaking to much more explicitly. It’s always been a central feature in my own work. I’ve always known how important movement is to me and that one of the ways that I connect to the divine and to myself and to others and to this world is through movement, that there is something just sublime and also immediately available about your body and moving it and what that lines you up with and how that can pull you into alignment.

I think it’s one of the reasons too that I have so loved my years, almost 20 years, of teaching Pilates and yoga, and longer than that, being a student of Pilates and yoga. And while I would grow frustrated being strictly a Pilates and yoga teacher, because I would see the other areas of life in which I was not able to help my clients shift in the ways I knew they were desiring to shift because it was too focused on the physical and it wasn’t connecting everything.

I also now am bringing back that body of work and knowledge into all the work that I do because increasingly what I see is a population that we are so much in our heads when we are meant to be – it’s that way of being, being in your body, and that energy, embodying the energy.

So I began the intro today with that quote from Isadora Duncan, “You were wild once; don’t let them tame you,” because so often, what I see – and I’ve seen it in myself as well and I’ll share a story about that in an instant – is that I believe we came into this world with such big energy, big souls, connected to it all. And then, in order to make our way in the world, we’re taught, you know, socially appropriate ways of channeling that energy.

And many of those things are good for us, but we are also, I think, overly taught to tame, that we are taught to be afraid of this big energy and then we put labels on it, you know, whether that’s from, that’s just not socially appropriate, or whether that is mental illness, we make a pathology out of big energy because we just haven’t evolved our understanding enough about how to connect to it and channel it in constructive and healthy ways.

So I wanted to share today a very personal story about a revelation that I had. And this is one of many revelations I’ve had and keep having about the story of my own un-taming and coming more fully into the fullness of who I am.

So, a couple of years ago, the Notre Dame Lady Irish, the women’s basketball team, were in the final four for the basketball championships. They have been for the last couple of years. But this particular story takes place two years ago. They were in the final four, and then they were in the championship game. And, oh my goodness, the games were so good.

Let me back up a little bit and just say that I grew up playing basketball. It was a family thing. It was a North Iowa thing. It was a community thing. And I just loved the game and I loved the way, even when I was such a little runt, and was not good. And my dad would work with me and work with me, and finally, by the time I got to high school, I had grown some and I had been working out and I had been practicing and I had been playing a lot. And so I actually played quite a bit and was a pretty decent player by that time.

But I loved the game and I loved that it was this place where you could have an energy that you just didn’t really have the opportunity to have other places, and you had the opportunity to have an energy around others girls and then young women that was fierce and strong and you could go all out. And I think I have always had something in me that has just been like these wild horses inside my chest that have just always wanted to go all out. And basketball was one of those places where I felt that I could do that. And it was a feeling of being so alive.

So, back to watching the Notre Dame women play and they are so good and the games were incredible and I was with my family back at my parents’ house on their farm in Iowa visiting when these games were on. So we were all watching the games together and I was into it because, man, they were so good. Like, both teams were so good.

And I was jumping up and down and I was yelling and I was, like, moment to moment moving with the players on the TV across the room. And then I was on my parents’ couch like arms in the air waving all around. And then they won and I lost it even more, you know, huge body movements, exuberance, dancing around, yelling, like high-fiving my family and my kids.

And my kids too, at the same time, you should have seen the looks on their faces, kind of like amazed and that this is awesome, and then also a little bit shocked and their eyes were huge. And then, you know, they all had some form of this to say, “Momma, you are so excited. Momma, we’ve never seen you this excited.”

And that made me just full stop, and I said, “Well yeah, I get this excited quite a bit.” And they were like, “No, no, not like this. This is excited.” And I was like, oh, from the mouth of babes, right?  And I thought about that because my heart hurt in the moment and it was like a good wakeup though too because I realized, while there was, is, so much in my life to be excited about, you know, including them, these three precious amazing miraculous beings in my life, I don’t embody that. I wasn’t embodying that on a regular basis.

I had tamed my energy so that excitement was more a thought in my head but not so much in my body because they were right, like, that kind of excitement, that kind of exuberance, that kind of being in the moment, how often was I doing that? Clearly not around them, and those are the people I would want to model that for more than anything.

So this was a realization that had happened on top of other realizations because this was not something new to me, that I felt I had become tamed in my life and had been spending years figuring out how to peel off layers and just be more me in the world, more natural in the world, more comfortable in my skin, more just transparent so that who I am on the outside is what I am on the inside but without having to pass through these many filters of, is this appropriate here, is this professional, is this what a mother of three and a wife does?

Is that what, first, a lawyer does, is this what a coach does, is this what an artist does? Having to pass through all those filters of am I doing me right, rather than just being in my body inhabiting my life, loving it, and living from that place, more of a dropped down into my body place and not up in my head, experiencing what I tell my clients it feels like, this helmet head, where you’re thinking so hard about how to do life and how to do you in life rather than being you and embodying that.

And so like I said, that’s something that even at that point in the basketball game, I had been actively working on this. And I had been a yoga and Pilates teacher for many years before that and an athlete. But it was then realizing, I want to be this way in all of my life, liberated. And this big energy that I feel to not have to squeeze it out through these small acceptable channels, but to let it rip and let those wild horses that want to run, let them run.

And I know sometimes, when I share this with friends or acquaintances or colleagues who have also received training or have been very successful, sometimes the response is, “Oh, are you sure you want to do that? I mean, editing is always a good thing.” Like there’s a certain way of doing things, right, there’s a certain way of communicating. Even with a podcast, there are probably certain things that I should, would – I don’t know about would – be doing differently.

But more and more and more, I just keep looking for ways to be the real me in the world. And the thing is, I know for many of us, at first it feels like we’re faking it, even though this is more true and more us than we’ve ever been, or we’re more really us, and then the next day we have a shame storm, like oh my god, I can’t believe I did that, I can’t believe I said that.

So that’s why, again, I really believe in coming from this place of commitment to yourself, of your standard for yourself is love, is great fierce love. And I know that’s the place from which I would want my children to live and to lead their lives. And so that’s the standard I want for myself too, that these filters, they did help me to get to certain places in my life and I don’t want to demonize or villainize those. I’m certainly not the victim of any of that wonderful education and training I have received.

And I am an adult who has had a few awakenings. And I just really want to let it rip. So if it seems messy and unprofessional, I come back and tell myself, this is the process of loving you into the realness of yourself. Like, I love that story of the Velveteen Rabbit, that wonderful endearing classic children’s story where, you know, it’s the conversation between the stuffed animals is what makes a person real, and it’s love. So it’s loving yourself and loving that big energy and being on the lookout for the places where you’re trying to squeeze your big energy into small channels, or your big energy has been labeled a problem by other people, or a problem by society.

I think I’ve mentioned this on this podcast before. If not here, I know I say it all the time to my clients – clients who have this big beautiful energy and they experience a lot of anxiety. What I see so often is that anxiety is too small a label for their huge energy and they’ve got this backup and backlog of creativity wanting to get out into the world, but it’s kind of constipated because it’s trying to get squeezed out through channels of, is this good enough, will the market like this, have I put in my time enough yet to be able to be called this, to be called a creative, to be called a healer, to be called a leader, a visionary, whatever it is, all of those tiny narrow labels that keep us too small.

I’ll share with you an image that I got for a client when she was talking about something recently. She’s incredibly talented and brilliant and has worked hard to come up through her industry and career. And she’s also wanting to make a leap into being this creative powerhouse who is the most in-demand in the solar system.

And I can totally feel it for her. She’s built for this, man. The stars are aligning. So I was asking her though, because she had asked me, what do you do when the model for your destiny includes having to get other people on board or like what you’re doing and to know that you have arrived. I’m like, well tell me how you know you have arrived?

And one way she described it was, well I’d be mentioned and have articles written about me in these certain really big publications, you know, or similar, other kind of public recognition and media response. So I was thinking about her and before our session, I had this image that came to me.

So you know the way – if you’ve seen the ocean on a like on a sunny day and you see the way the sunlight hits the water and then it refracts into all of those tiny millions of sparkling diamond-like dancing glittering on the water. So what I told her is that all of that response is like those diamonds dancing on the water, but you have to be the sun. if you start off mistaking what your destiny is, to be that refracted sunlight on the water, you’ll be trying to squeeze this huge solar expansive cosmic energy into a tiny reflection of who you really are and what you’re really meant to be.

But be the sun. Give light. Give sun. And that reflection on the water, that happens. It’s beautiful. It’s breathtaking. And it only happens because the sun shines and the water dances. The water is the water and the sun is the sun. So you be you. Give your light shine. And I also have some very specific recommendations for you, because again, I don’t want this to happen all in your head. You are so much more than a walking brain. We need to reestablish that connection so there is not this sort of disconnect at the brain stem.

Doing physical movement, and I would see this even since my early days as a yoga and Pilates teacher – I would see people come to yoga or Pilates for the pure physical aspects and results that it would give. And that’s great because they are wonderful methodologies and modalities for that. And then what I would see happening over and over again is that the physical movement would be this gateway for creating other movement in their lives.

And I saw it happen in particular with Pilates and yoga, where the mind was reconnecting to the body. But then I would also see it in other areas where if I was training someone, let’s say even to run or in triathlon training, but I would train them a little differently. I would use my mind-body background connection and spiritual orientation, even if people were atheists and agnostics, no problem, to create the movement from a place, to create the training from a place of connecting the mind and body in this kind healthy loop, because I knew that had helped me incredibly in PR-ing and winning races.

And so that’s how I started training some of these personal training clients. And again, once they started this way of movement in their life, other movements would happen, relationships would change and heal. Anxiety would be alleviated. They’d have the job that was driving them crazy. Now, all of a sudden, they felt they could relax and have a deeper appreciation for it. Or, magically, so it seemed, the people at work that used to bother them and drive them crazy no longer did. Or, interestingly too because this has also been my story, the movement connected them to something in them that had been wanting to happen, a creative potential.

I know for sure that those hours that I spent training for triathlons, especially on my bike, like out in the middle of Iowa, big beautiful open highway and horizon and that meditative movement and my mind in a clear space, not the monkey mind but a beautiful mind space, those hours were essential for me getting in touch with the creative energy inside of me. I think I mentioned it in my conversation with Dr. Deganit Nuur, that I started to feel my paintings in a more powerful and visceral way.

I’d always felt that, as an artist, I felt the work inside of me, like it wanted to be danced out. And I’ve always loved the dance too. But there is a particular expression in me where I also want to use color and imagery and that feeling was so strong when I was on my bike. It was like it was already done, but I hadn’t made the paintings yet. But that feeling was so real, I couldn’t un-feel it and I couldn’t forget it.

I was in relationship with that already and it was such a strong and true feeling that I couldn’t deny it, the way I could maybe deny it if I’d just continued to do nothing else but sit in my law school cubicle and study and be in my head all of the time. And it was also through movement that I’ve been able to touch the stories that I want to tell and write, which was a revelation too because thought, in my head, that the way to do that, to create books, stories, was to sit butt-in-chair and write.

And clearly, that’s a part of it to get the words on the page, but I had never been taught the part that was essential for me, that I needed to feel these living beings inside of me. And that movement, for sure, was a way that helped me quiet the over-thinking forcing part of my mind, put my mind in a pure space where this other kind of wisdom, knowing, intelligence, what wants to happen could arise and move through my mind. And it also happened in a way that felt much more like flow, like the flow state I experienced so often in sports. And so it made me really reevaluate everything I’d been taught about how you are to create things in the world.

Because I’d always had this feeling too that I was meant to be a writer and an author and so I’d go to things at the University of Iowa, that internationally famous and with good reason, writers workshop there. But I would hear people talk. And most of the time, I didn’t feel a resonance with the way they were talking about their work.

It was so cerebral, so intellectual, and wonderful for them and I loved many of the works they created, but hearing them talk, I was like, oh then maybe this way that I am feeling my work first means that I’m not a real writer. And I had a similar experience hearing some artists speak. So I wanted to share those stories in case this resonates with you, in case you have this knowing that there is work to come through you and whether you are currently making the work but it feels so hard and forced and like you have to think so hard, or whether you’re not making the work, even though you’re trying so hard and doing all the cerebral intellectual things, I want you to explore using your whole being to embody creative energy, to embody all kinds of energy.

This is a topic that even just in this podcast episode, I know I’m just scratching the surface with what I would like to share with you, but this is a start. And we’re going to keep this conversation going. And this is work that I am going into more overtly and in a bigger way with my private clients and in The Art School. And if you are not currently in either two of those groups, that’s okay because you’re here too in my community here, so I want to make sure that you are also part of this conversation.

This leads me to the part of the podcast where I want you to do more than just listen. And today, I’m going to say too, I want you to do more than just listen and think. I want you to take this information and take it into your life.  Embody this information so that you are embodying that big energy, that creativity, that potential that is the real you in big ways.

It will make your life work. It will create magic in your life in ways that astonish you that the brain can’t quite figure out because oftentimes, you know what, the mind is the last to know. So it’s okay for you to look at all areas of your life and be like, you know what, I’m being called to work on this embodiment piece. I don’t know why, I thought I was writing a novel, and now, all of a sudden, I also want to train for a 10K.

Trust that kind of instinct over and over again. In my own life and in my clients’ lives, that whisper of all the ways you can create movement in your life, that whisper leads to gold. That whisper is right where the treasure is. So follow that and follow through with that.

There are many different ways you can do this embodiment. I really love Kundalini yoga. I think there is so much wisdom to that approach and my experiences in Kundalini yoga were very much also have been a part of this awakening and empowerment for me. And also things like our family having a trampoline.

I know all you doctors – please, do message me, but don’t message me about my trampoline because we’ve had one fractured wrist, I know, and I don’t mean to be reckless, but I’m not being reckless because, holy smokes, the joy and the laughter that that trampoline has brought our family, the hours and hours of joy and laughter of being together – like my son Sammy said one time this summer, like mid-jump, mid all these giggles, “I can’t imagine a world without trampolines.” And I think that too is such a testament for finding ways to embody joy and enthusiasm and excitement.

And to remember this, I really want you to remember this – emotion is not a thought in your head. Emotion is not an idea. It’s so much bigger than that. You are so much bigger than a thought and an idea. Your brain is beautiful. It is marvelous, miraculous, one of the most powerful magnificent tools in all of the universe. And so yes, let’s use it.

And there’s also your body. Your body, as the poet John O’Donohue said, is your one clay home in all the universe. It’s your creature. Love on it and love being in it. So, trampoline, Kundalini, dance was one of the things that whispered to me. I used to choreograph and come up with dances and plays and musical theatre-like things when we were children out at recess, you know, kindergarten through sixth grade. I loved doing that.

And then, a few years ago, I started to hear this voice of, like, dance, dance. And I’m like, well, that was okay when I was in college and I was totally, surprisingly, known for dancing on tables and things like that, and no alcohol required for that, no excuse required for that. And then I kind of like toned that down, sadly, once I graduated. So I’ve been looking for more and more ways to dance. So I will dance by myself in my house but I also sing along, loud voice, because another thing I’ve found is that your voice is a physical part of you.

Your voice is part of embodying this energy. I’m doing that practice in part by doing this podcast, starting this podcast this past year and letting myself use the physical aspect of me that is my voice more. I had an incredible life-changing experience with a voice coach, which that seems like a too paltry and impoverished description for this man. His name was Frank Kane – a one-day workshop in London in 2016. And that blew doors open for me.

I mean, it blew my mind open, but it was more than my mind. That had a profound effect on me and has just added fuel to the fire to my desire to discover what these connections between the mind and the body are. I can talk about that experience on a different episode.

So, music, voice, music as an instrument, it’s why I’m with my children, I’m like, you know what, piano is not negotiable. It’s just like school. Because I want them to have that tool of music, that gift of music, for their whole life because it allows you to embody energy and a range of energy in many different ways.

There’s the movement with your body, playing the instrument, but then there’s also the connection to the vibration and the resonance, the keys and sound. It is a way of connecting to this invisible energy that’s out in the world and us and experiencing it physically, embodying it physically. So music is an important part of my life and I continue to find ways to make that part a bigger part of my life.

So I’m just giving many of these examples here because I don’t know what’s speaking to you, but I bet there is something. And you might have been writing it off as just, well yeah, I know I should get into shape. No, this is not about getting into shape. If I hear myself thinking things like, I’m doing this to stay in shape, I’m like, whoa, we’ve got to back up because that just takes my energy down about 10 notches. And it is important to take care of your body.

But I think, when you focus on this creating the ability for your body to channel greater energy and to have a suppleness and a dexterity and to develop your central nervous system to hold greater and greater currents, a healthy body flows from that. And it’s not about, again, taming yourself into some preconceived notion of what society thinks you should look like.

So I want to ask you, ask yourself, ask your body, what does it need in its journey of un-taming, the story that is the un-taming of you, the story that is the liberation of your creative genius, those wild horses in you that just want to run, what does that un-taming looks like for you, not only in your thinking, but in your body?

And I want you to take this from the cerebral level. So I’m asking you, what does that un-taming look like? And you might start with responses like, it looks like freedom, it looks like comfort in my skin, it looks like joyful – and that’s a great start, but don’t stop there because that’s still abstract and in your head. I want you to drill it down to some specific things that are physical.

Does it mean your arms thrown wide open and you just let your voice go like Adele? Does it mean jumping on the trampoline with your kids? Does it mean running a 10K? Does it mean taking a 90-minute walk around the lake just to enjoy being in the world and being in your body and being alive.

What is it for you? I would love to hear. I would love to hear too, once you follow this, how other things in your life just start to crack open or shift or click into place because that is the kind of magic that happens when you follow the call to embody that big beautiful wildness, that big beautiful wild raw energy that is the real you.

Thank you so much for listening to another episode of The Art School Podcast. If you enjoy this podcast, the best way to support it is to go to iTunes and write a review, and share. I would love this message to get out to more and more people and I believe the best way to make that happen is to make sure that I’m making content and offering content that’s really valuable to you and that resonates with you.

And I want it to be so valuable to you that you’re like, you know what, Leah is giving me all this goodness. I am going to practice paying it forward by passing it on, by sharing it, by letting others know that this work is out there, so that I can help more people in the un-taming of themselves, in the liberation of their great creative energy and learning to love themselves so deeply, and therefore really falling in love with themselves, their lives, their work, and the world again.

I do believe that’s in on this person by person basis, this basis of healing and empowering our creativity and empowering creatives that’s so essential to moving our world forward and to healing the world.

And if you’d like to learn more about the work that I’m doing, you can go to my website, www.leahcb.com and sign up to be on my newsletter to hear about some of the new projects I have coming out. You can also learn more about working with me as a private coach there.

I currently have one more opening for a private client in 2019 and that would begin the second part of October, and then I have a waitlist until 2020, but I would love to take your name and let you know when that next available opening is. And I also have The Art School, which is now in session, and I’m also working on taking that offering to the next level and meeting people where they are, with what they’re really wanting and how they’re wanting to take the work further, with some exciting new developments for The Art School in 2020. So, if you are on my newsletter list, you’ll also hear about that.

So, to close today, since I spoke to you about embodiment and also about Kundalini yoga, and music, I wanted to share two things in one with you today to close. There is this song they sing at the end of many Kundalini yoga classes called the Long Time Sun.  And this is way out of my comfort zone, y’all, singing for people. And I’m also going to walk my talk here and practice using my voice in the world by sharing this beautiful song with you.

You know, I sing this to my kids. I’ve sung it for children’s yoga classes that I’ve taught at my children’s school. And also, I have some clients who have voices of angels and are holding back because they don’t think their voice is good enough, so, you know who you are, ladies listening. If I can do this, you can do it.

“May the long time sunshine upon you. All love surround you and the pure light within you guide your way on, guide your way on, guide your way on.”

Have a beautiful week, everyone. I love you guys. You know it because I just sang for you publically. I’ll talk to you next time. Bye.