Larissa Russell 0:06
Hi, everyone, Larissa Russell of Creative U Healing. And today I have with me Michelle Lee. Michelle is a lifelong creative business owner, heartist teacher and catalyst for change. She uses the mystical fusion of art, medicine and Mind Body Spirit practices to ignite the fires of intuition, creativity and life transformation through art and workshops, on the heart woken way. So welcome, Michelle.
Michelle Lee 0:39
Thank you, I am so excited to be here and chat with you today.
Larissa Russell 0:43
Well, I'm excited to have you. Absolutely. For those who may not know you, can you tell us a little bit about yourself and what you do.
Michelle Lee 0:51
I'm a full time artist and workshop facilitator really, I tried to sum it all up, that I'm a catalyst for change. So and connection, so whether that's connecting to nature and emotion through my artwork, or, or to the human experience, through through art, or whether that's teaching and workshops, or one on one coaching with me, I help people really connect deeply into their own self, their own creative power, their intuitive power. And then you know, in turn, connect deeply to the people they're in touch with in their relationships, to connect also deeper to nature themselves, and also the divine and to empower us and help each one of us, in our own unique way, be the change we want to see in the world.
Larissa Russell 1:44
I love that. I love that. When you say it, it's like oh, yeah, that's what I do what you said so eloquently that it's like, oh, I want to I want to do that. Well, today thank you. I think creativity is one of those things that people often think they they're not creative, and get, I believe everyone is creative. And how have you found that creativity has helped people unlock those things that, you know, help them expand and grow?
Michelle Lee 2:19
I love that question. Because what I've found, I get that all the time to like, I can't draw a stick figure, I can't draw a straight line. And, and to me, I'm like, well, great, that's a good point. And I like to gently expose people to things like really loose kind of doodling like art as meditation where you're just really playing with colour and shapes and not having any kind of end goal. You know, it's the process of just playing. And it takes the pressure off. And it also takes people back to that inner child, when we were all creative. When creativity was the first thing we did every day, you know, we're the first go to was like, let's play let's make this up. What's my imagination doing? Let what can I throw around? What look at this box, right? You know, kids go like, Oh, a box, forget all about the toys, and they're in this empty box. And so I think are allowing people to access their creativity, it awakens that inner child. And once they allow themselves that freedom to play a little bit, they can really get lost in that flow state. You know, where where we shut down our left brain, and our right brain takes over connected to our heart and our emotions and allows things to just be, and even when we get stuck in that, you know, sort of judgement of like, oh, I messed up. I love pushing people past that boundary. Because once you go past that, that's where the magic is. Sometimes that mistake is the most beautiful part of it. So that awakening of the inner child. And that sense of play, I think is my in with people who have this block, like I'm not creative. And I also often talk to them about ways they're creative in their existing life. Like if they love to cook or they garden or they decorate their home or just when you get dressed every day. Some people express their creativity that way. So you know, those are my, my little ins with people to awaken their sense of Yes, I am creative. I am a creative spirit.
Larissa Russell 4:35
Yeah. And anytime that we can help people understand their own creativity, I think it's so important, because we do we get caught up in this. Am I doing it right? Is it that, you know, I'm going to be judged on it and allow that freedom of expression, because that's what creativity is whether it's in a garden or a kitchen or on a canvas. It doesn't matter, but it's that expression. And so I think it's really important that we encourage people to explore what that is for them. Because it may not be a paintbrush for everyone. It may not be, you know, it could be anything. I love spreadsheets. I mean, I'm an artist as well, but I love spreadsheets. I love covering colour coding them, I love creating them, I just, you know, very creative
not the norm, but I am very left and right brained balanced. And so I think just allowing ourselves to explore so that we can find out where our creativity lies is really important.
Michelle Lee 5:46
Yeah, that's a great point. Because that, that balance between the left and right brain as what our society is missing so much, right, we we work in this left brain 24 hours a day, and so many people feel stuck there like overthinking conversations they've had that will never come back. And they're still thinking about how they'd respond or how they could change that. And it's like, adds so much stress to our lives. And yet, you don't find athletes out in the field exercising one side of their body, or one arm or one leg, right, they're exercising the whole body for the utmost performance. And yet, with our brains, we let this whole side go. And we also forget about our heart brain, which they're now proving is even more powerful than the brain in our head, which I find, you know, really fascinating and helps give me some ammo for believers out there that are that are happy in their logical mindset all the time. But there's like you said, there's this beauty in the balance of being able to sometimes be really organised and diligent and black and white and linear and thinking and then turn the corner and be like, whether it's colour and art related, or whether it's music, or just mixing of flavours or, you know, flowers in the garden, those things are so much a part of our human experience. And you can see that in indigenous cultures, right? When you look, you know, the way they even decorate just their their dwellings and their bodies in such exotic ways, because it's our nature to do that. And, and I too have that, you know, left right brain tendency to do both. And the more and more I access my right brain, the more I feel my intuition kick in and become very powerful and leading me in the right direction.
Larissa Russell 7:45
I love that you say that, because I think there is a disconnection that has been lost with our intuition in our culture. And it's one of the things I work with women for is to sort of reconnect with their intuition that they're gods with their heart. Because we have been taught that we shouldn't trust ourselves. Someone else knows better, that things need to be black and white. And then we can connect with our intuition, the divine, however you want to say it, it opens up a whole new world. And how do you help people connect with their intuition.
Michelle Lee 8:28
So melding the creativity of art to sort of open that doorway to their inner child and then blending it with some of the Mind Body Spirit stuff I do, is what comes into my workshops, and a lot of my coaching works. So I work through various practices, you know, sometimes I'm doing yoga, sometimes we're doing meditation, you know, are in various forms, but also like activating the senses. And so I'll do Tantra rituals, as well, where sometimes I blindfold people and we walk through the subtle energies of really focusing on one sense at a time as gateways to know our chakra energy and just the subtle feelings that when we're in this awakened state all day on our to do lists and our you know, reminders in our head, we feel these things, but we just shrug them off because we're too busy to pay attention. And when I take people inside to that inner realm, where they start to experience you know, hearing things or feeling little sensations that they've never felt before, or, or sometimes they'll say, oh my god, I actually empty my mind for five minutes for the first time in my life and like, wow, that's a wasn't even a goal there. But everybody experiences the practices differently. So I do a lot of taking them deep inside their own inner journey and melding these different practices, to see what connects To them, because when I do these practices in a group, I can do the same exact practice. And everyone has such unique experiences. And so those really that mind body spirit meld with the creativity becomes very powerful because we're activating our human experience on all levels, instead of just focusing on the physical or just focusing on the creativity, once we light up, you know, the mind, the body, the spirit, the energy, the heart, and all these things, the intuition can be heard much easier, and people start to realise that that whisper they have been ignoring is their wisdom that they need to listen to. And that will get them the more that they're missing out on in life. You know, when they say like, isn't there more to this? Yeah, there is, what is whispering? It doesn't like knock you on the head.
Larissa Russell 10:58
If you don't pay attention, in which case, I seem to always get that knock on the head.
Michelle Lee 11:02
Well, yes, that's true. It will, it will come back tougher and tougher if you don't pay attention, especially if it's an important lesson to learn, you know?
Larissa Russell 11:11
Absolutely. I do. I do seem to always wait till the very bitter end and get knocked upside the head. But the little things I do, I'm like, oh, yeah, I'm so in tune with that. And then it's bigger things. It's one of the you don't really want to look at, those are the right, you get them?
Michelle Lee 11:30
Yes, because they're difficult, right? So we were we all are always looking for these, like, easy solutions. And sometimes those are Yeah, the most difficult, you know, just following the path of my creativity into more fine art and doing the workshops. And the coaching was so much more difficult than my previous career where I was, you know, doing branding and marketing and more acceptable lifestyle and easy way easier to make a full time income off, you know, from off the get go, kind of thing because there's people out there really searching for that and, you know, large corporations and things you can find that work very easily. So to follow, you know, the artists of any kind, whether it's a musician or you know, someone who's a potter or whatever, that's, that's a real challenge. And, and it goes way beyond just our creative field. Of course, like people who want to break into anything, that's not the status quo. It's we don't listen to that intuition so easily, because we know it's such a hard path to follow. But it's also the one filled with the most bliss, right? Because you wake up every day, like, Oh, I get to do this or, you know, explore that we're following my curiosity. somewhere new.
Larissa Russell 12:53
Yeah, yeah, I absolutely agree with that, and what you said, you know, the changing paths and doing the road less travelled, if you will, and immediately brought up that thought about the archetype of starving artist. And we have been, it's been ingrained in us, right, that creativity, in any form really doesn't pay. And we ignore it until it's at the top. So you know, our top celebrities or best selling authors or, you know, rock band, musician, but you have to do the work to get there. But not everybody wants to get there. Right? Not everybody wants to make it a business. But even if they do, do they need to be a top celebrity. When people are trying to sort of uncover their creativity or uncover what their purpose is, what are some of the things that you help show them or that can make it maybe not easier, but understandable?
Michelle Lee 14:00
I think the first thing that I encourage people to do is just follow your curiosity. Like the things you've always been curious about, just follow them and see where it goes and see what lights you on fire. Like, for example, I had always had this thing in the back of my head interest in Tantra. And I didn't even really know what it was, I knew it was somehow related to yoga, and there was essential aspect to it, but I didn't know a whole lot about it, and I just ignored it. You know, and then I think it was a summer of 2020 wine, you know, still dealing with a lot of COVID stuff. And I just decided one day to like start looking up retreats and just decided okay, I'm gonna take off to Portugal on for a month and a half and go get trained in this and it was magical. And it included so much more than I realised and it was so much more spiritual. It was so tied to my career. activity was so tied to so many things that I was already working with, and believed in, but it like blew blew my heart wide open into this whole new realm of even more things to be curious about and to lead others to. So just those kinds of things like following those things that you're curious about, is like a path you could take forever, and it will lead you just like your intuitive heart. You know, that's what's in charge there. And it never steered you wrong.
Larissa Russell 15:32
Yeah, yeah. And that's it. That's what I tell people all the time as well, is that if you can, you know, quiet the brain and and listen to the heart, it, it will never steer you wrong, but trained to not listen, right? We've been trained, but we don't know when, and all of those things. And so when we start to uncover, it can be really scary to, like, is this real? Is this not real? And then the brain kicks in. And of course, it's not real. And all of those things, and, and learning to feel in can be really a rocky road, I guess, to follow? How do you do that for your own self? And then how do you share that with others to help them?
Michelle Lee 16:22
How do I do the feeling into it? On
Larissa Russell 16:27
your own? Yeah, ah, that's,
Michelle Lee 16:30
that's a really wide open practice, you know, I meditate all the time. That was actually prescribed by my doctor for me. And so that was one of the first steps on my path into such a wider world. So a lot of times during meditation, I'll get, like real specific messages or concepts, I can feel, you know, what really is resonating with me versus things that are just churning thoughts or fears, you know, it's such a different feeling. And I also keep a dream journal so that, you know, in the past, I sort of thought of, it's like, my dreams are nonsense, and it's a bunch of craziness. Well, there's a lot of messages in that craziness. And often, the message is the feeling, not the visual of what went on. So I might have this dream about an animal that's very scary, like a tiger that's circling me. And I'm, and I have this feeling of like, Oh, I better be careful. But the feeling is, it's friendly. It's here to help me. And that's when I know Oh, okay, tiger has something to tell me. And I'll start digging into, okay, what's the symbology there, and then it always has a message for me when I follow that, you know, curiosity into what that might be. And, you know, then the same thing when I'm being creative is like, I really just feel into is like, I feel like green, I was thinking yellow. But you know, green looks nice right now. And so I just do it, I, whether it makes sense or not. And you know, I often work with acrylics. And what I love about those is you can just keep layering over it pretty quickly, because they dry quickly. So they're a great medium for beginners to use to because there's nothing there's nothing written in stone, you know, you can just keep layering over it and just feeling into it, on what colours are calling to what shapes are calling to you. And then at the end, you see this magic appear of like, almost like all the layers of your feelings are that visual right in front of you. Yeah, so but often the first step is really introducing people to meditation because I find people are very resistant to it. Like it's who in this busy world has time to sit down and chill and do nothing? No. But when you make the time and you have to do it consistently, right? The first time you meditate, you're like, oh my god, I'm a failure. It's my, you know, everyone thinks that like, I've tried and I can't clear my mind. And I always say, Well, you know, join the club. I've been meditating 10 years and I still can't say I clear my mind. There's so much going on creatively. But I'm aware and I can rein that awareness, you know, back to my breath or to the vision I'm working towards, or the generally I'm working with emotions when I meditate, you know, trying to focus on gratitude or love or something like that. And when I do more creative visualisations with people so they have something to focus on. Or I teach them a little breathwork to combine with the meditation. It gives them this like nice little path into an experience that when they're on their own, trying to just think they're, you know, they need to become a Buddhist monk in five minutes. At some big and that they failed, if they can't clear their head, they start to realise, No, that's sort of nonsense that just the process, just the attempt to do that has this magic inside and that with, you know, repetitive, repetitive use of these practices, they become more and more easy to do, and allow them to reach more levels of sensitivity and knowing the difference between fear and intuition, right, or a sadness that consumes them versus being able to just see it, and process it and feel some compassion to that inner child or that other person or whatever is generating that sadness and realise that, you know, they can work through these things. So meditation, I find is this beautiful practice to take into people's lives because it only takes a few minutes, you know, even if you're in like the line at the grocery store, and you're getting frustrated at the person in front of you, or the darn self checkout. procedure, you can stop, you can close your eyes, take a few breaths, focus on something beautiful, even if it's just like the light of the sun hitting your eyelids, and suddenly, it's like, oh, so Well, I can spare another minute here at the self checkout aisle, or whatever. So that practice, I find really powerful to introduce people to so that they can, you know, awaken these new the new awareness of subtle energies and also start to, you know, rewire their brains a little bit so that not only are they getting out of that left brain, but they're building more and more connections between the left and right brain.
Larissa Russell 21:50
I love that. I love that. Because I think it's so true. It's so true, that even just even just stop and breathe, just breathe. But we forget to do that. Because it it's, it's innate, like, we're going to breathe, but we forget that we don't really breathe, we don't breathe deeply, we don't. And so when when we allow ourselves to like, just stop for a moment and breathe. And the more we do that, the longer again, and very true about we're not Buddhist monks, we don't spend a lifetime emptying our brains, we have other things going on, nice on a mountaintop, and nothing to think about, except them during our brains. So I think it's really important to remind ourselves that, you know, every little bit build up, every little bit helps. And not, we don't have to have an all or nothing attitude to it. Yeah.
Michelle Lee 22:46
Yes, for sure. Because I think that again, that comes back to sort of black and white way of thinking of like, oh, I tried it once it didn't work. It's everything has its like spectrum out there. And it helps us you know, like you said it with with doing breath work, too. I use that a lot, introducing people to different types of breath work because we were gifted this breath and control of our breath that we don't have over the rest of our nervous system, you know, we can't stop our hearts. We can't stop our neural network from firing. But we can hold our breath, we can retain it on the inhale or the exhale and find a sense of stillness there. Or we can speed it up and do something like Breath of Fire and really excite our energy and get, you know, pump up our passion or our drive or our our confidence to push past something and to, to really, you know, ramp up our experience when you know we when we need that kind of breath work. And then there's opposite kind of where you need to, you know, calm stuff like that.
Larissa Russell 24:02
Yeah, so important. So important. I want to thank you so much for being here today. Is there any final thoughts before we go?
Speaker 2 24:12
Yeah, I had a quote in mind. And I just wanted to say it because you know, everything I do with creativity, I'm sure you probably agree to it all comes back to the energy of our heart. It's so tied to our intuition, our right brains, and, you know, feeling into all these things. And I want to remind people, and this is a quote by Rumi, of course. And it says, He said, the heart knows the way run in that direction. And I think that's a beautiful, gentle reminder, to always come back to your heart when you're in doubt or in fear or wondering which way to turn.
Speaker 1 24:52
Oh, I absolutely love that. And it's so true. It's so true. And I see that you have a free gift for our listeners. The read your heart chakra challenge your heart chakra challenge. Yes, yes. Do you wanna tells us a little bit about that before we go.
Michelle Lee 25:07
Sure that is a practice that's meant it, you can do it in less than two hours. Depending how you know, if you want, boom, boom, boom through it, or you want to take your time through it either way, it'll take you less than two hours, you can span it out over time if you'd like. But it's basically gets you out of your head and into your heart using three simple tools. So there's a really gentle, easy, short meditation in there that people love. There's a little bit of journaling in there. And then there's an art play experience. So it's really like a real visual doodling and it's totally related to the left, right brain and feeling from the heart. And it allows you to not just feel the difference when you express from both sides. But you can then see the result at the end and really, you know, get this juicy experience and hopefully take those little practices into your life to integrate them, you know, whenever you need them.
Larissa Russell 26:10
I love that. I love that and we will make sure to have the link there so that people can check that out. And again, I want to thank you so much for being here today.
Michelle Lee 26:18
You're welcome. Thanks so much for having me. It was an awesome conversation. I loved it.
Larissa Russell 26:23
It was, it was. To our listeners. We will see you again next time. And in the meantime, I wish for you amazingly creative days.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai