Behind the Bluff
Uncover best practices to participate in life on your terms. Every week, hosts Jeff Ford and Kendra Till guide listeners with short conversations on trending wellness topics and share interviews with passionate wellness professionals, our private club leaders, and additional subject matter experts offering valuable tips. Each episode conclusion includes Healthy Momentum, five minutes of inspiration to help you reflect and live differently. Subscribe now and discover the keys to living your greatest active lifestyle.
Behind the Bluff
Is Artistic Expression the Key to Mindfulness? | Jessica Hooper
Experience the transformative power of meditative art with Jessica Hooper, a mindfulness instructor who integrates creativity with emotional well-being. She shares her personal journey through anxiety, motherhood, and grief, and how these elements shaped her practices in art as a tool for mindfulness.
• Introduction to mindfulness in creative practices
• Jessica's background and artistic journey
• The definition of meditation in practical terms
• How art can enhance mindfulness and emotional regulation
• Practical tips for engaging with meditative art
• Encouragement for beginners to embrace their creativity
Are you ready to live an active lifestyle? Welcome to Behind the Bluff, where we believe every moment of your life is an opportunity to pursue wellness on your terms. I'm your host, jeff Ford, and I am joined today with Jessica Hooper, the founder of Creative Current. Jessica's mission is to offer a supportive space where everyone can explore what mindfulness means to them. Through Jessica's journey of navigating anxiety, motherhood and grief, she has experienced firsthand the transformative power of mindfulness. Jessica is a 200-hour yoga teacher, 100-hour meditation instructor, and she completed her bachelor's degree in studio arts. What a combo. Her love of art and mindfulness led to the creation of unique workshops that inspire creativity and connection for all. Today, we're going to discuss how meditation and art flawlessly integrate and the benefits of experiencing this unique pairing, jessica welcome to the show.
Speaker 2:Thank you so much for having me. I'm really excited to be here.
Speaker 1:We are stoked to have you, and I did not mention you are also one of our yoga teachers here. I am, yeah, regularly teaching on Thursdays.
Speaker 2:Absolutely, yeah. Yeah, can't wait to get there. I know.
Speaker 1:I know we're going to make sure you're on time for class today and I'm so glad we could sit down and have this conversation because on the podcast we have not explored meditation and yoga enough. One of our pillars, what I would say one of our more so corners of our program, includes mindfulness, and I think we're going to dig into also the play aspect of this today too. So we're going to hit two of the four corners of the wellness program here at Palmetto Bluff.
Speaker 2:Yeah, definitely yeah.
Speaker 1:Before we get started, I'd love to explore your background a little bit more, so could you please share about your journey into meditative art?
Speaker 2:Absolutely. It's been kind of an ebb and flow. You know natural progression. So, yes, I was a studio art major in college and, like many college students, I struggled with some mental health issues and I became super curious about why, when I was in the art studio, everything got quiet and time would just fly by and I'd go into a state of flow.
Speaker 2:I would set up my paint, put on my headphones. Next thing I know, the whole studio period time was over and I was rushing off to the next class. So I was super intrigued by that Like why is it that these intrusive thoughts like disappear and all is just well for a little bit? So, with my natural curiosity for psychology in general, I took a ton of psych classes, like to the point where I was one credit shy of a psych minor and like didn't even pick up on that. I just loved learning about it and how you know, how we interact with each other and just all the going deeper within yourself. My final semester I took a positive psychology class with this professor, marcello Spinella, and he just changed my life in that class. I think if I had taken it my freshman year of college I probably would have dove headfirst into that like immediately.
Speaker 1:You would have became a psych major.
Speaker 2:Yeah, totally. But part of that class was learning about mindfulness and it wasn't just learning, it was implementing it into your daily life and doing that just completely opened my eyes to a whole other world and really helped me manage a lot of my mental health issues, just by adding some practices in that time. So fast forward a little while and I finished school. I, like a lot of art majors, didn't know what I was going to do with an art major.
Speaker 1:Where am I going? What are we going to do now?
Speaker 2:I drove into corporate world and worked in insurance for a long time and just like hit that corporate burnout and when I left that role in 2019, decided now I'm going to dive into yoga and meditation, I guess formally. So I took my 200 hour yoga teacher certification that summer. My timing was, you know, not great. I got my certificate, you know, the end of February 2020.
Speaker 1:And we all know what happened next, yeah, so I just kind of did my own independent study. At that point, my daughter, was.
Speaker 2:I got my certificate, you know, the end of February 2020. And we all know what happened next, yeah, so I just kind of did my own independent study. At that point, my daughter was my oldest, was three and just took care of, you know, making sure she was cared for through the whole pandemic and all that fun stuff, while just kind of like learning more as much as I could in that time. And then we moved down here to South Carolina three years ago, and this is when it really the practice part became really just implemental, just really truly helped my mental state. When we got here shortly beforehand, my mom was diagnosed with a very rare and aggressive form of cancer. So I was going through this anticipatory grief period. I was adjusting to being in a new state with no family. I also had a brand new baby. When we got here, too, I was in the thick of motherhood and also dealing with what was going on with my mother.
Speaker 2:By no means am I ever going to say that these practices are a cure for anything. They are a tool to help you. So, in conjunction with conventional therapy, this was my grounding tool. So I would have a watercolor station set up in the corner of my bedroom and, for just five minutes a day, used it as a way to reset my nervous system. So I would put down the baby, she'd go to bed and there would be this little window of time in between then and my older daughter's bedtime. And I would go to that corner and get the watercolors out and just slow my breathing with the movement of the paint on the paper, just slowly watching the colors interact with each other. My nervous system would calm, my heart rate would lower, my breathing rate would slow down.
Speaker 1:You felt these effects right away.
Speaker 2:Yes, so it would be in the sense that I could sit and feel. As soon as you sit down, you know when you're stressed your shoulders are hunched forward, your collarbone is crowded, your shoulders are up and by your ears, your core is a little bit tense. You just, you hold that tense, that everything within you, and by the time I would finish, it would at least let all of that subside.
Speaker 1:My collarbone would open, I would sit a little bit taller and I can just breathe a little bit easier. Now, is it fair to say that this was a personal experience, where you sat down intentionally in a space that you devoted in your new home and you integrated the breathing and the meditation with the art? Or had you heard about this meditative practice from a practitioner or just through your learning?
Speaker 2:Great question. So, yes, there was one artist who really inspired it. I'll back up a little. Before that.
Speaker 2:I would do acrylic paintings, so, and those are a lot more time consuming you have to really set up and clean up every time and it you know, you work for probably like an hour each time and I would do what we would call an intentional painting. So putting an intention behind the time there, which was just something along the lines of thinking about like a yoga intention. Right, like what are you hoping to gain from this time here today? We often say that in our yoga practice, like, maybe think about your intention for class. Same thing for a painting.
Speaker 2:So I would sit down and be like, okay, what do I want to focus on here? And a lot of times it was like, okay, maybe I'm focusing on the fact that, yes, things are hard right now but it's going to get better. Or I really just want to focus on being here right now and paying attention to the brush strokes on the canvas, so listening to the sounds of the paintbrush hitting the canvas and just being super mindful in that whole process. So that was really long and that wasn't working with my schedule.
Speaker 1:You had to pivot, given your schedule and the responsibilities you had, and I just want to pause and appreciate you sharing the grief and the steps you were taking when you're going through a difficult time in your life and we got to pivot. The analogy of storms a lot here on the podcast. We don't always see when storms are coming and I find that many people like you you can hear the passion kind of coming through have personal experiences that have led them to pursue tools not only for themselves but to share tools with other people who can benefit through the practices that they have uniquely created.
Speaker 1:So a little bit of a sidebar there just to acknowledge you sharing your personal experience. So I appreciate that so much.
Speaker 2:Yeah, thank you. Well, that's. I love that you said that, because so the artist who inspired the watercolor work. I'm going to transition from storms to waves. That's the way that I worked through. My grief was in waves.
Speaker 1:I like that.
Speaker 2:Katie White. She's an artist out of Tampa, florida. She's actually featured here in the Flow Gallery. You can find her work and this is where I met her. So it's all full circle.
Speaker 1:Interesting how those connections occur. It's amazing.
Speaker 2:So my husband mentioned he's like, hey, there's this woman, Katie White. She's a featured artist here at Palmetto Bluff. She's going to be doing a demonstration on meditative painting. Like that's your jam, Like you need to check that out. I was like, yeah, absolutely, Katie White is a extremely talented artist. Like she makes meditative painting look so easy and inviting and beautiful. She is just so talented in the work that she creates. So she gave a demonstration here and I came and I met her and she's just a wonderful human being as well. So, if you get a chance to pop into Flow and check out her work, she really was my inspiration to moving to watercolors because she showed her five-minute process Five-minute process.
Speaker 1:I can do five minutes. Yeah, as a mom, someone handling a job as well, it's so much.
Speaker 2:Five minutes can fit, yeah. So what I would do? These five minute watercolors I would often choose, like what kind of a wave kind of went along with the grief that I was feeling. So if you think about grief, I mean sometimes the surface is calm but the underneath is just like churning right. Sometimes it looks like it's a giant wave coming from out in the sea and you don't know when it's going to hit you, but you know it's coming, so you know it would be a giant wave that day. Other days it's just these little bubbles that come up. So I would kind of check in with myself in the beginning of the painting and just be like all right, what am I feeling today? Is it something that's like far away and coming for me?
Speaker 1:Is it coming?
Speaker 2:in big waves today, like constant, and that would kind of be the type of watercolor painting that I would do that day. I wouldn't need a lot of colors. It would just be like blue, maybe a little purple, maybe a little green or something like that, and it was just very simple little green or something like that, and it was just very simple, very quick.
Speaker 1:What an incredible analogy, gosh, I am going to remember that after our time together today. Grief, my little extent of understanding it. I have personally never gone through something from a family perspective at the level that I've heard from from others and we hear that a lot, with different members here going through different things. To look at grief in stages is a common thread and it's almost like your wave analogy fits right in with that.
Speaker 2:Totally so. Sometimes when we get into that, you know the different levels of grief. I think that there can be some confusion there, thinking that it's linear, like okay, you're in stage one and you're in the anger stage and we're like well what? I go back and forth between all of them in an hour, you know.
Speaker 1:Yes, it's such a great point. On a previous podcast that I was a part of, we had a grief expert come on and she talked through that same. You know, flow of this is that it isn't linear. It's not like a staircase as much as we want it to be. Uh, the people we lose there. There will always be grief attached to them.
Speaker 2:Totally.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so thank you. This brings us right towards getting into the main segment here, to better define some of the what I would consider elusive practices that don't get the credit they deserve and make them more approachable for our listeners. So we haven't spoken a lot about meditation on the podcast. I'd like to start there. In your terms, jessica, what's meditation? So meditation for me is just bringing your total awareness to the present moment without judgment. Boom, that's it. Bringing your total awareness to the present moment without judgment, oh, that's it.
Speaker 2:So in your total awareness to the present moment, without judgment. Yes, yes. So I often you'll hear me and you know my yoga classes constantly saying just being aware of the sensations coming up in your body, without judgment, so without having to attach a story to it, without having to give it a narrative or going down the rabbit hole. You can just say I feel a little tense in my shoulder. You don't have to go, oh, my shoulder hurts because I'm getting older and there's more to it. It's just okay, that's where I feel it and just being there.
Speaker 1:What great perspective. And I'm going back to your watercolor example in the corner of your house, where it's that slowing down period, noticing your breath, and that's where the art, integration comes. I talk a lot about the three steps of change, and the first step of change, just in our lives, is to be present. It sounds like a mindfulness practice such as meditation gives us that space to do that.
Speaker 2:A hundred percent.
Speaker 1:Very cool, so let's flip the table here. We haven't discussed art very much on this podcast either. When you were going into acrylics, I was like wow, I had no clue the time length of acrylics versus watercolor, so I'm wondering how would you define art?
Speaker 2:That's a great question. So to me, art is anything that you pull out of yourself to create anything, so it can be music, it can be sculpture, it can be dance, anything that expresses yourself and gets out what's inside and sometimes can even tell a story.
Speaker 1:Anything where you're able to express yourself, and sometimes it'll tell a story. Pretty much yeah, wow, and I like that you brought in the dance element to it, because art isn't just painting. No, there are different forms of art.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so I went through a huge chunk of time where music was my main form of expression. Really, yeah, it's very interesting and maybe this is what I'll study. Next is I in my 20s was after I graduated. I kind of put art down for a little while. I think I just the formality of it kind of took a lot of the fun out and I got heavy into singer-songwriter life.
Speaker 2:So I did a lot of that and that was my form of expression, so writing music, singing, getting it out physically that way. So there's a lot of sensations that come up and you can do research into that as well, for what happens to your body and the vibrations when you're singing. So and you can do research into that as well, for what happens to your body and the vibrations when you're singing. So I got heavy into that and then that kind of fizzled and I got right back into the art. So I've never had them overlap.
Speaker 1:Interesting.
Speaker 2:That's what I'm going to study next, Like what's going on in there.
Speaker 1:You know, I can almost feel meditative art connecting with singing.
Speaker 2:And there's this three-way combo that might be out there the way you're describing it, it'd be super fun. Yeah, very cool, absolutely.
Speaker 1:Well, I had no clue how talented you were. It opens the door for more events, musical events here, as part of our Palmetto Muff wellness program. Let's go ahead and dial in on meditation and art. Let's bring it all together here, how would you define meditative art?
Speaker 2:So to define meditative art, it's using art as a tool to bring yourself into the present moment. So I love encouraging non-artists to participate in this. It is my favorite thing to do is to guide someone who thinks that they're not an artist through a meditative art practice, because really, the point I try to drive home is a lot of times what you think that meditation is the absence of thought. I think there's a big misconception there and that's definitely not the point.
Speaker 2:We're not just sitting there and having a blank slate. Meditation the process of it is really when thoughts come in again. It's that acknowledgement without judgment. It's about not chasing that thought and continuing it. It's welcoming in that thought and being like okay, maybe I come back to that later.
Speaker 1:And you used the word quiet earlier as well. It's almost the thoughts coming in. You're able to quiet them and use them later.
Speaker 2:So a great analogy for that, I heard, is imagining that you're on the top of a staircase at a ballroom right, you're watching all the dancers. The dancers are the thoughts and you are just watching them. You can't control them, right, cause you are not the dancer. It's just watching them happen and meeting it from a place of curiosity, so just being like, hmm, I wonder what I'm going to think about next, right? So rather than trying to control it, you're like I wonder what else is coming up today, and just seeing it and letting it go. Also, there's the analogy of imagining them as like leaves on a slow-moving river. Right, your thought comes in and you just imagine it floating down the river.
Speaker 2:So it's just not chasing them. It's not trying to grab them or get rid of them or flush them away, it's just seeing them and accepting them.
Speaker 1:You are a fringe psychologist for sure, because we just had Dr Katie Ryder here on property giving a presentation on coping strategies and healing strategies for chronic pain, and she used the same exact imagery of when you have thoughts, you put them on that leaf, let them float down the river. And it's the same thing with chronic pain. Sometimes our thoughts around pain are what drive the pain to be more present in our body when we approach physical exercise or our daily tasks. So it's so interesting the parallels that are coming up here today.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's all full circle here.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's what's so fun about wellness. I think it's so integrated.
Speaker 2:But for the art part, for that, what I was going to get at is, a lot of times, non-artists. When they show up, your inner critic gets so loud right. So the thoughts that come up are like I'm not good at this. So the thoughts that come up are like I'm not good at this. This is so ugly. Look at the person next to me they're doing so good at that Judgment starts to come in.
Speaker 2:Oh my gosh, huge. So that voice gets really loud. So a lot of my workshops are based around accepting yourself as where you are and it's introducing the concept to them, if they haven't ever heard it before, about meeting that inner critic. So you can even give it a name if you want to when it comes in, just being like I hear you right and I know that deep down that inner critic, the whole role that those voices are trying to play for you, is that they're trying to protect you from either shame or embarrassment or disappointment. So it's greeting that as it comes up and almost thanking it like hey, thank you for trying to protect me, but I've got it from here. Like you don't have anything to worry about.
Speaker 2:Nobody is, you know, unsafe in this space. So I think it's really helpful to have that in such a controlled and supportive environment, because then you carry that with you into the rest of the world. When that inner critic shows up, you're like, hey, is this really how I feel? Do I believe this to be true, or is this just a part of me that's trying?
Speaker 1:to protect me from something. Yeah, and it seems like in that practice, if the inner critic is coming up there, where else in our life is it coming up?
Speaker 2:Exactly.
Speaker 1:Now, when you're executing on these workshops, you're leading them, guiding individuals through meditative art. It sounds like there's language that you hear from people.
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 1:And my question to that language and just generalizing it a little bit here is are people as open and direct with what they're feeling inside their heads while you're going through the practice?
Speaker 2:Sometimes they are. So I have a women's group that I lead once a month. It's called the Women's Creative Connection and what we do is we start with a meditation and we set the intention for our practice and then we do a creative expression project. So I'll give a prompt and some tools for them to work with and give sort of like coaching questions throughout for things that come up like that.
Speaker 1:Oh cool, so you integrate that in throughout the time together.
Speaker 2:Yes, exactly so, and oftentimes they'll know the theme ahead of time. So it'll draw different groups of people for different months based on that and then, once they feel complete with whatever their project is, whatever the art is done, I also have some corresponding journal entries that they can. So questions, journal prompts that go with it, so they can either choose to continue to do more art or they can sit with those questions and sit and reflect and write and then we just do a little bit of somatic movement because you get a little stiff sitting in the chair and making art for a little while so then we do a little bit of chair yoga before we do a closing meditation.
Speaker 2:And my favorite part is the end, the sharing. It's just so beautiful to see how people open up. Maybe they're shy in the beginning and I said, does anybody want? To share and everybody's quiet for a couple minutes. Nobody wants to go first, and as soon as one person shares, then they just go around the table and everybody opens up.
Speaker 2:And it really shocks me every time how open and how people are by the end of the experience about what they're going through, and it really just becomes a safe container for people that just drop the mask at the door and just let things out and not have to worry about carrying anything.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and what a cool way to do it in a group setting with different phases of the experience the not only the intention setting to the meditation, to the art, but then to the journal side of it and then creating that space at the end. So it's really cool, um, that there's a system to meditative art, at least in the way you lead the practice, Um, and I think that can help individuals like myself who would not immediately be like I can't wait to go to this meditative art class.
Speaker 1:You know, I think hearing you describe it, it becomes more inviting and exciting to me as someone who tends to focus a little too physical on the equation of health and could spend more time on the mindfulness component of health, the emotional side of it and the mental health side of it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, good, I'm glad it sounds inviting.
Speaker 1:No, I'm pumped and I'm glad we've got an event on the schedule which we'll leave at the end of our episode for our member listeners. So let's get a little more into the benefits. So let's get a little more into the benefits I find when individuals are educated on how it can impact them viscerally, they tend to want to take action.
Speaker 1:Absolutely the third step, on the model that I share, we're all about action on Behind the Bluff as well. So we're starting to get to that tactical time of the episode. But before we get there, what would you say are the three most powerful benefits of meditative art for mental, emotional and physical? I?
Speaker 2:love this question because I love the nerdiness behind it yeah, let's go.
Speaker 2:So I mentioned briefly earlier getting into a state of flow. So it's that period of time where you're so immersed in what you're doing that it's just flying by. There's been a lot of research on that. So getting into a state of flow has shown to increase your dopamine production. So that's your feel good chemical in your brain that improves your mood and improves your focus as well. So I think that we could all use a little bit of that from time to time.
Speaker 1:Yeah, alertness, that's my nickname for dopamine.
Speaker 2:Yes, and then it also reduces your cortisol level. So that's your stress hormone in your brain. So there's some nerdiness for you, yeah. And it also triggers your parasympathetic nervous system. So it talks to that vagus nerve in your. The vagus nerve is that fight, flight, freeze or fall on that trigger in your brain. So it calms that being like, hey, everything's safe here, you don't have to worry right now, you don't need to be on high alert. And that reduces your heart rate, slows down your breathing. So those are some scientific benefits behind it. But then even just the we talked a lot about, I think, the mental aspect of it and how it can quiet your mind and help you to gain presence. The little detail that I like to also share is like you can tap back into that later. So you can kind of later in the day. If you say you do it in the morning, later in the day you have a trigger come up and you have a stressor. You can kind of do that. I'm going to go there, okay, yeah, I'm a 90s baby.
Speaker 1:So all good.
Speaker 2:Well, 80s technically, but anyway I grew up in the 90s huge fan of Adam Sandler and Happy Gilmore. So going through his happy place, like it's it was funny in the movie, but it's so true like tap back into that happy place. So what I encourage people to do is, at the end of their practice, like really take a mental picture. So take that scan of exactly how you feel that place in your body, how your heart feels, how your breathing rate is, and take that mental picture so that later in the day, when things get crazy and you need that calm, you can go back to that happy place. So try to go back there and remember that it exists and you can get there again later.
Speaker 1:What I'm hearing is lasting effects.
Speaker 2:Yes, lasting effects from the practice. Exactly.
Speaker 1:And it's so cool that you bring that up, because I think anything we do is so that we can to perform and feel better for the other 23 hours in our day, um so, wow Cool. And I I great reference. Um, I think a lot of our listeners have seen happy Gilmore and we'll be able to relate to that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's a little telling, but yeah.
Speaker 1:I love it. I love it, um. So I think we touched on this a little bit, but I want to invite you into sharing more for that novice, that person who's maybe out there, who is listening and they feel that they're terrible at art. They grew up and avoided art class. Never wanted to go. What would you say to that person?
Speaker 2:I would say that meditative art has absolutely nothing to do with what it's going to look like when it's done. That is the whole point. It's not about what it looks like when you're finished. It's about how you feel while you're making it and it's about embracing curiosity. So it's really about dropping the story surrounding that. So, yes, you can say you're not good at it and you avoided it, but it's just about being open to trying something new.
Speaker 2:So, to be honest, when I first started with watercolor and even still sometimes it's so much fun you just put a fun tactic is putting water on the paper first, then dipping your brush in a watercolor and putting the color onto the wet paper. So it's called the wet-on-wet technique, and when you first just put it down, it kind of bursts like a, like a firework, almost spreads through the paper. Um, and you can do that so much that you put holes in the paper and that means you had a great time. It doesn't matter that there's you know it's not. You can't pick it up and it's falling apart at the end and you're just going to throw it right in the trash. It doesn't matter. It's not about something you're making to hang on your fridge. It's about just taking the time to be there and try something new.
Speaker 1:It's fair to say you're not framing the artwork that comes out of the meditative art practices.
Speaker 2:Sometimes, sometimes, yeah, it really depends, because of the connection the person might have created with that piece of art.
Speaker 2:Sometimes you'll surprise yourself and it'll actually look really cool when you're done too. You're like, oh, I actually might like to hang this up and but also, yes, the um, the connection to it sometimes we'll have at the end of class. Be like, hey, if you want to take um, come up with your affirmation of the week, something that's really standing out to you based on this class, and write it in a Sharpie on it when it dries, and then you hang that up so it has that whole, you know, full circle effect that way.
Speaker 1:That's incredible. Okay, well, let's, let's go ahead. Keep getting tactical here. We we love to provide our listeners with practical, practical tips so they can improve their lives. Uh, I've already received a bunch, which is great. Um, that's that's why we do the podcast. Uh, do you need any special skills or materials to get started? What does it look like to start a meditative practice and participate in it?
Speaker 2:Uh, meditative art yeah, you can do it with doodling too. So you can just, you know you can find a crayon with, like one of my kids, crayons laying around, I can use that. You can use a pen, a pencil, um, and you know, you can come up with a ton. I have a lot of different prompts that I use throughout the classes. Sometimes I'll send them out just in my email list to like, hey, if you need five minutes, here's a quick exercise you can do. It's been shown that just that repetitive movement of drawing or painting or even sculpting with clay gives you those benefits of that dopamine increase and the cortisol release that way.
Speaker 1:So very cool.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you don't have to go crazy. You don't need to know much, you just need to sit down and doodle.
Speaker 1:Materials don't matter, Just find a space, devote five to 10 minutes to it and you're off and going. My daughter's got a lot of crayons, so this would be easy for me to create at home.
Speaker 2:Absolutely, and get them involved. My daughter, my um, my daughter, who's seven, going on eight, um, she's not into yoga, she's super into gymnastics but like, she's like anti-yoga, I think, because I love it so much. Yeah, um, you know, sidebar, I catch her doing her stretches and I'm like calling the yoga pose names. His name is she's doing it, so that's always fun.
Speaker 1:She is actually doing that, she's actually doing that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, she just calls it something different.
Speaker 2:But an exercise that she does and our listeners can do it's not like an age-specific thing is you take a pen and you walk it around your page, so just meaning, like moving it up down, sideways, side to side.
Speaker 2:You can do it with your eyes closed and just feeling the pen or pencil or crayon, whatever you have moving around the page, and then, when you're done, you have what looks kind of like a scribbly mess, whatever you have moving around the page, and then, when you're done, you have what looks kind of like a scribbly mess. But then there's all these shapes in the scribbly mess, right, there's like negative space. That's just like a weird shape that can be organic, and you go into each of those spaces and you just put like a different pattern, whether that's little circles inside of it, and then you go to the next shape and you put lines in it. That's a great way for a beginner to get into it, because you don't have to think about it and you can do it just like a little bit now and you can come back to it later and just add to it bit by bit, and it just makes it super accessible.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's. That's great advice. You get to literally shut the eyes, scribble and then work backwards and add some different components to the art yeah. Yeah, yeah, I love the practicality of that. Um any any other advice for those folks curious about meditative art.
Speaker 2:Um, I would say, just try it, and if you don't know where to start, I am like such an open book. I love hearing from people. So, um, or just come to our event that we're having here.
Speaker 1:Yeah and uh for our member listeners. Uh, you, you have the date and the time for that event.
Speaker 2:Uh, friday March 14th at nine 30. I believe that's correct.
Speaker 1:I believe that's right, yeah, and sign up online. If there's any changes, we will certainly email you, but that'll be over here in Moreland at the uh conservancy classroom.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah. So I'm looking forward to that. So that'll be an introduction as to you know how you can kind of get started more hands on.
Speaker 1:Yeah, how, how often would you recommend the person who gets into this? They're like, wow, this is the mindfulness practice that I was looking for. I, you know, start to do it. What regularity do you personally do it? What do you find works well for folks, without being too like strict with it? Um, but what do you think is beneficial to to reap those benefits that were shared earlier?
Speaker 2:I think that truly depends on the person and their capacity. I don't think there's any real blanket for it, but I think at least once a week is beneficial for you. Uh, because that then kind of helps it become a habit. Some people like when I was in the thick of the anticipatory grief period, I did it every day because I just felt like I needed it and I prioritized that.
Speaker 2:But what my main goal when introducing people to mindfulness in general? I don't want it to be another chore on your to-do list. I don't want it to be something that's making you feel overwhelmed, because now you have more to do. So when I work one-on-one with people, the first thing that we kind of go over is what does your life look like right now? What are your goals? And how can we bring these different mindfulness techniques whether it's meditative art or some other form of mindfulness into your daily life without it feeling like it's meditative art or some other form of mindfulness into your daily life, without it feeling like it's overwhelming you and causing you more stress because you didn't do it all that day?
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, that that is pretty classic in health and wellness. You know we get in these stages of wanting to do everything and it can be overwhelming, especially you know we're coming off a couple months of the new year. Folks have maybe settled back into old routines, ways that they don't necessarily want to be living. This is the perfect time to explore something new without putting like strict parameters around it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think you have to be flexible when you're trying anything new. You can't set something hard and concrete until you kind of know what you're getting into.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and until you get reps at it. It's like anything we we use the term uh in in other episodes or maybe not so much, but a term we've been using uh just in coaching and educating folks is be imperfectly consistent. The more you can be imperfectly consistent, the more you're going to build habits that bring you in the direction that you want to go. I love how you said that you sit down with people and you explore kind of their vision and some of their, like, longer term goals and then you work backwards into plugging in which meditative practice will support that direction. Um, and I I think that's so cool You're, you're you're not just a, a yoga teacher, a meditation instructor, you're I wouldn't maybe treats a strong word, but you are creating a plan that, holistically, will help people improve their lives.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's the goal. It's cool yeah.
Speaker 1:Uh, so, jessica, we're getting to the end of our time together here today. I just realized that your business name must be related to the wave analogy a little bit. Did you think about that when you created the business?
Speaker 2:Not exactly.
Speaker 1:It came up for me today.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so the name Creative Current current came from the word flow. So what's the word for flow? So current is what it is. Um current came from the word flow. So I was like what's the word for flow? Um, so current is what it is, um, so just kind of morphed from there and I guess everything to me just always has this underlying body of water to it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, water and the elements of the earth are are pretty powerful and, you know, spiritual if if we're okay to use that word I know that can throw some folks off, but in a yoga practice I've always understood that yoga practitioners there's an elemental aspect to it, and so that's great to see that you've woven it into meditative art. So where can listeners learn more about you, your work? Obviously, our member listeners. You're here on Thursdays as of now.
Speaker 2:you, your work obviously our member listeners. You're here on Thursdays as of now. Yeah, members, you can see me Thursdays, um. So you can find me on Instagram at get creative current, or you can come to my website, which is um, get creative currentcom. Um.
Speaker 2:I also recently took on a role as the director of therapeutic yoga programming for a piece by piece therapy, and there I will be working firsthand with the founder and licensed clinical therapist, leslie Slemons, to create programs for different facilities and groups of people using therapeutic yoga as well, as I'll be working with people one on one in that capacity as well, so creating mindfulness mentorships where we meet weekly and we come up with a custom mindfulness program for you where we meet one-on-one. This is something that's perfect for people who either don't feel that therapy is as deep as they need to go, or they have already done therapy, or they're continuing therapy and they want some more support as they're going through it in between. So it's really just a wonderful opportunity to get to know like we were just talking about that that assessment of where you are, where you hope to be and what kinds of tools you like, what works for you and how you can incorporate that into your day-to-day life, so I'm really excited about that endeavor.
Speaker 1:I am so excited for you as well, jessica it's. It sounds so aligned with your passion and I can only imagine how lucky they feel to have you leading the charge with the program. So we are at that time. I would love to hear from you what does wellness mean?
Speaker 2:to you. Wellness to me is balance. It's really feeling at home in your body, so it's being able to tune into yourself and take a look at what you need each day. I don't think it ever looks the same two days in a row. You'll hear me say that in yoga practice, a lot like, hey, your body's probably showing up different today than yesterday, and that's fine. So, yeah, wellness is just about finding balance in all aspects of your life.
Speaker 1:Boom. Well, I have enjoyed our time thoroughly, me too.
Speaker 1:Thank you so much and I will be in attendance at your upcoming seminar. I can't wait. I am really thrilled after digging into it here today and, members, I would encourage you to check it out. It's a complimentary event and we will have you stick around for five more minutes to get some healthy momentum for the rest of your week. Thanks, jessica, thanks.
Speaker 1:Have you ever mistakenly perceived something as a real threat or issue and it turned out not to be? Or maybe you've mistaken a friend from a distance, but it was actually a stranger. How did that feel? This is what all of us know all too well in varying circumstances. It's called the false alarm. Last week, there were gale wind and tornado warnings across the Lowcountry and it seemed like the weather was going to be very challenging. As a precaution, our team delayed operations and, gratefully, no tornado actually formed. The winds and rain, although intense, they lasted for a brief period of time. It was a false alarm. Let me give you another one.
Speaker 1:About a year and a half ago, I was teaching a lot of fitness classes each week, many of which happened to be in the pool, and you see, when we lead aqua classes, we perform the exercises with our members, not from the deck and, believe it or not, if you're teaching a bunch of aqua classes, the resistance and repetitions they add up. Coupling this with my regular weight training routines, I sent myself to the hospital. No joke, one morning I went out for a run and my chest started pounding to the point I had to stop after a half a mile and then the pain never subsided. That morning it was weird. There was a dull, steady ache. I thought I was having a heart attack. So many of my teammates encouraged me to go to the emergency room. When I got there, they took me right back and they performed an EKG to rule out heart problems. You know, young, healthy guy, he shouldn't be having this type of pain. Good news the diagnosis was overworked. Pectoralis, major and minor muscles, chest muscles were literally overworked from everything that I had been leading Gratefully, it was a false alarm. I had been leading Gratefully, it was a false alarm. This is what's interesting.
Speaker 1:We don't really think about it, but in life there are a lot of false alarms. Whether it's a fire alarm being triggered in your home due to steam from the shower that would happen to us all the time or, mistakenly, muscle pain for a heart attack, false alarms happen. Think about it when you were a student and you walked out of an exam feeling like you failed, but you actually passed. What a relief, am I right? That's the reminder today. Challenges are going to happen, bad things will happen, but more often than not you're going to experience false alarms.
Speaker 1:False alarms might seem inconvenient at the time, I know for me, leaving work, going to the hospital to check things out, felt inconvenient. It's funny, you know, but we forget in these moments, these false alarms, that there are two very important psychological benefits from a false alarm. One false alarms reduce complacency. They encourage us to take warnings seriously instead of ignoring them. And two false alarms build confidence. Repeated exposure to false alarms makes us more confident in handling real emergencies.
Speaker 1:So for this week, I want us to give it up for all the false alarms. The benefits outweigh the downsides and they improve our awareness and preparedness for the legit challenges that we are destined to face, that we are destined to face. That brings us to the end of this week's episode. We want to thank you for spending time with us once again this week and, if you are an avid listener, we'd love for you to give us a rating, preferably five stars. That'll help more folks find us. Please share episodes that you think will impact those in your life, and remember to actively participate in life on your terms. We'll see you next week.
