The Authentic Creative: expanding our capacity to feel good

After our Let It Be Easier women's panel, Amanda Folkestad sent me a voice note. Listening to it brought me back to something I witness again and again. We spend so much of our lives wondering whether this is the right time, the right place, or the right way to share what's really happening inside of us. Holding it all together can become such a familiar way of being that we forget what...

When we arrive in our bodies first, through breakthwork and reiki, we tell a different kind of truth. That's exactly what happened here. What unfolded was a group of women showing up honestly, allowing themselves to be seen, and trusting that whatever wanted to emerge would be enough. Our theme was Let It Be Easier , we realized that ease isn't the absence of hardship. It's the will...

What if the thing you're longing for isn't success, certainty, or control? What if it's safety? Today I'm in conversation with Mike Elliott, a relationship coach, breathwork facilitator, and guide for men who are longing for deeper connection, emotional presence, and more meaningful relationships. Mike's work was deeply shaped by being separated from his biological mother...

Anxiety. Burnout. Overwhelm. So many of us are living in a constant state of doing, giving, striving, and holding it all together. What if healing isn't about pushing harder? What if healing begins when we finally allow ourselves to receive? I'm resharing this powerful Reiki panel conversation because enrollment is now open for my upcoming First and Second Degree Reiki Certification Retr...

After our recent Edge of Expansion panel, Dr. Saidie sent me a voice note that moved me so deeply. With her wholehearted permission, I'm sharing it with you today because it beautifully captures something I witness again and again in this work. What becomes possible when we feel safe enough to soften? What becomes possible when we are truly seen, heard, and held? What becomes possible when we...

What does expansion actually look like in real life? In this powerful panel conversation, I sit down with an extraordinary group of women to explore what it means to live at the edge of expansion. Together, we share stories about visibility, sobriety, relationships, entrepreneurship, creativity, self trust, reinvention, desire, healing, and the courage to keep growing even when fear is present. Th...

In this Reiki minisode, I guide you through the 5 Reiki Principles, the spiritual foundation of the traditional Usui Reiki practice. These simple teachings have supported practitioners around the world for generations because they invite us back to presence, gratitude, integrity, trust, and compassion. Together we'll move through a gentle meditation connecting each Reiki principle with the bo...

In this guided Reiki meditation, I invite you to slow down, soften, and reconnect with the light already living within you. Together we'll journey through breath, presence, energetic boundaries, self healing, intuition, and ancestral connection, creating space to release what you've been carrying and return to a deeper sense of steadiness, clarity, and inner peace. Whether you're a...

In this Reiki minisode, I open the binders, teachings, notes, quotes, lineage stories, and reflections that have traveled with me through more than 30 years of Reiki practice and teaching. This episode is a deeper dive into the philosophy, energetics, healing principles, spiritual foundations, and real world applications of Reiki, including the attunement process, the Reiki principles, energy heal...

In this guided chakra meditation, I lead you on a gentle journey through the 7 energy centers of the body, inviting grounding, emotional healing, nervous system regulation, empowerment, intuition, heart opening, expression, and deeper connection to yourself. This minisode is an invitation to slow down, soften, breathe, and reconnect to the wisdom already living within you. Through visualization, b...

In this guided storytelling minisode, I share the history and lineage of Reiki beginning with Dr. Mikao Usui’s awakening on Mount Kurama and tracing the path of Reiki through generations of teachers until it eventually reached my hands. This episode is a meditation, a remembering, and an invitation into the deeper heart of Reiki as a living lineage of healing, intuition, presence, and unconditiona...

In this episode, I share the story of how Reiki first entered my life through my mother’s healing journey and how the practice quietly transformed the course of my life and work over the past 30+ years. This conversation explores: • what Reiki actually is • how Reiki supports nervous system regulation, intuition, grounding, and emotional wellbeing • the bridge between science, healing, and energet...

In this expansive and deeply honest conversation on The Authentic Creative: Expanding Our Capacity to Feel Good, I dialogue with an incredible group of women about entrepreneurship, caretaking, creativity, nervous system regulation, motherhood, perimenopause, ambition, sisterhood, and what it means to build a life that actually feels aligned. We began together in live breathwork, releasing grief,...

In this episode, I dialogue with Olga Naiman, a designer, author, and visionary whose work lives at the intersection of psychology, embodiment, and the spaces we inhabit. From her early life as a child refugee to becoming the voice behind spatial alchemy, Olga brings a deeply personal lens to transformation. We explore how our environments hold our patterns, reflect our inner world, and can become...

This morning’s minisode is completely unscripted and unedited. I followed what was alive for me in the moment, and what came through was a conversation I didn’t plan but clearly needed to have with you. It began with something simple. A note on my to do list. A message from my son. Love yourself. And it opened into something much deeper. I explore what self love actually means beyond the phrase we...

In this conversation, I dialogue with Sarah McCrum, author of Love Money Money Loves You, and what unfolds is a deep and unexpected exploration of money as energy, as relationship, and as something that is actually responding to us. Sarah shares how, in the aftermath of a devastating business collapse, she began receiving what can only be described as a transmission. What started as journaling tur...

“I just let myself feel the ecstatic grief of all of that in the moment.” - Amber Lilyestrom In this deeply moving and expansive conversation, I dialogue with Amber Lileystrom about what it means to build a life and business that actually reflects who you are now, not who you’ve been conditioned to be. Amber shares how her work has evolved into something more intimate, more precise, and more truth...

For 30 years I have been working with energy, breath, and the body, and this conversation meets that same level of truth through the lens of making, creating, and earning mastery. In this episode, I dialogue with Amy Foster, songwriter, novelist, and maker, in a conversation that is bold, honest, and deeply grounding. Amy names it clearly “If you can’t handle the fact that you’re going to suck, th...

This conversation unfolds right on the threshold of the spring equinox, in those first hours where something begins to shift. We begin just after a live breathwork session, with the panelists sharing what they experienced and what moved through them before we open into the wider conversation. I was standing in dialogue with an extraordinary group of women, each of us speaking from lived experience...

In this episode, I dialogue with Jessie Larson, co creator of Five Minute Meditations for Kids , about how simple, intentional moments can shift the entire energy of a home.  I share the story of playing her meditation in the ER while Bodhi’s arm was being reset, and how everything changed. What could have been chaos became calm, connected, and deeply held. We explore co regulation, how our nervou...

Some mornings feel calm and connected. Other mornings… everyone is triggered. In this minisode, I share 10 practical tools for regulating the nervous system in the moments when parenting, partnership, and life all collide at once. These are simple practices I use and teach when emotions are high, time is short, and everyone’s nervous system needs support. Because the goal isn’t perfection. The goa...

In this episode of The Authentic Creative: Expanding Our Capacity to Feel Good , I dialogue with my neighbor and new friend Stephanie Fodor MacDonald for a deeply honest conversation about motherhood, entrepreneurship, creativity, and resilience. Stephanie grew up in Hawaii and began acting as a child, eventually building a career across theater, film, television, and digital media. Her life and w...

In this spontaneous minisode, I’m sharing a tender, frightening, and deeply spiritual experience that unfolded for my family in Maui when Bodhi broke his arm. I take you into the moment it happened on the beach, what moved through my body as a mother, what it was like to watch his arm be reset in the ER while playing 5 Minute Meditations for Kids podcast, and how breath, Reiki, prayer, and presenc...

This panel began with an intention to explore friendship patterns. What unfolded became something deeper. We gathered in circle and asked the question many women quietly carry: How do we stop betraying ourselves and still remain in relationship? Through breathwork and honest dialogue, we explored the sisterhood wound and the mother as our first relationship with women. We looked at the ways many o...

In Episode 12, the final installment of this 12 part minisode devotional, embodied companion to The Artist’s Way, I explore what it means to recover a sense of faith and reconnect with trust as a creative, emotional, and spiritual practice. In this episode, I reflect on how faith evolves throughout our lives and how being human inevitably includes disappointment, loss, uncertainty, and transformat...