Sarah Selecky Audio: Recent Episodes

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Christina wrote Good Burdens during the 2020 lockdown. In this conversation, I asked her how she actually wrote it. She talks openly about her process, and gets practical with the details. She also talks about how she cultivated trust, and her support systems.

A heroine knows that she’s not supposed to achieve success alone. She knows her strengths and her limits. She knows that she is in community, and she knows that her connections are part of her power.

It is so inspiring to hear a writer talk about this — especially an expert! Christina researched and wrote the book on how to turn effort into joy (this is what Good Burdens is all about).

Listen to Christina as she describes her journey from proposal to draft to failed pitch, and how she started all over again, with deep support. Learn how she found trust again, and finally wrote the book that she wanted to read.

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“People find me because something is collapsing within or around them,” Carmen Spagnola writes. “...their relationship, self-identity, ecosystem, or something else. They find me because that’s where I am: in the collapse place, holding ground.”

This is such a beautiful articulation of her gift, and what she offers the world.

In this month's unpodcast episode, I sit down with Carmen Spagnola. Carmen's work is a cross pollination of attachment, polyvagal theory, somatics, trauma recovery, and mysticism.

We talk about the metaphoric power of the autumn season, ritual literacy, attachment theory, and what we can do whenever we start to think, “Does any of my writing matter? What is the point?”

If you can, give yourself 5-10 minutes after listening to let it soak in. Carmen drops a lot of truth in just under an hour. We don’t get to hear unfiltered integrity all that often — I felt sort of dizzy after the call, and needed to stare out the window a bit to let the truth settle.

Enjoy this episode!

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Sarah Selecky 0:06

Carrie Klassen is a writer and ghostwriter who believes that communicating with care is peace work. By practicing and teaching the art of intentional written communication, with nature, intuition, and each other, she’s creating a more peaceful, connected world. Before the age of thirty, Carrie left her fancy corporate job to be creative director in the nonprofit sector. She led a team in publishing magazines and websites, and rolled out a brand that touched an entire city. From there, she became a marketing communications vice president working with teams on both sides of the Atlantic. At this point in her career, she says on her website, “then it all came apart.”

We all know that transformation takes time and is often painful. Carrie spent her proverbial cocoon time doing Eat Pray Love in Italy before Liz Gilbert did. And when she came home, she started her own business. Pink Elephant Communications opened in 2008. Her clients were in helping and creative professions, therapists, artists, and doulas, for instance. In her work, she aimed to make writing even in commerce, an act of connection, an act of love.

This is how I found Carrie, because I started my writing school around that same time. Her happy home page PDF is in the DNA of all of my professional writing, including the home pages on both of my websites today.

Years later, I was introduced to Carrie by a mutual friend. And it’s been such a pleasure and a privilege to know her personally. I believe that we learn and grow best through friendship, and I’ve learned so much from having Carrie in my life. After eleven years, she retired Pink Elephant and became, finger flexions, Carrie Klassen, now with a.com, behind her name. As a ghostwriter, she works with people on social movements around the world who have meaningful and often difficult messages to communicate. Whatever it is, the message of their life, the core of their teaching, the thing they most ardently wish to convey, Carrie helps people communicate with clarity, precision, sensitivity, and care. When I was researching and reading about passion, which is this month’s theme in our Centered writing membership, it dawned on me that Carrie Klassen is one of the most passionate people I know.

She’s a writer, a web designer, flower intuitive, and an activist. She’s a multi passionate empath who knows how to create conditions in her life and work for passion. I’ve seen her prioritize it. And I’ve been taking notes for years learning from her. I reached out to Carrie to see if she’d be willing to have a conversation about passion, and she sounded surprised. Maybe we’ll talk a little bit about why that was her reaction in this call. We’d both agreed that we wanted to keep this recording casual and emergent. So neither one of us really knows exactly what’s going to happen in this hour.

Welcome, Carrie.

Carrie Klassen 3:06

Hi. Oh, it’s funny to hear you talk about me like that.

Sarah Selecky 3:13

You were surprised!

Carrie Klassen 3:15

I was surprised. I’m still surprised hearing it again. Yeah, I think because, like, when I think of my personality, my sense of myself is a quiet person. And I think that I have sort of complete passion. Passion with like, a bigness or a, I don’t know, a certain kind of energy that is is not my sticker energy, and things I care about a lot. So I [inaudible] think about passion in that sense. But I don’t know, I don’t know in what way you are thinking of it.

Sarah Selecky 3:59

I mean, it’s true. We haven’t really talked about this pointedly before in this way. So I just have a feeling that because of what you just said about imagining that passion has this bigness to it, specifically, because of that, that you might have some insights about it that might be interesting for writers to hear. Because a lot of writers are — not all, not all of us — but a lot of writers are on the quieter side of things. Observing often.

And so you know, feeling alive, which is one way that I’ve come to understand what passion is, it looks different and manifests in different ways for different people obviously. But yeah, there are ways that I have witnessed you feeling alive that stand out to me. They seemed simple and maybe even quiet, some of them but you really saturate some of these choices with pleasure in this way that, I have a body remembrance of certain choices you make. I have a little list. They’re simple. A yellow dress, a really good bra, ordering a delicious meal in New York City, taking yourself out to an art gallery, the way you pay attention to flowers. And then of course, there’s like, your more bold moves like writing and publishing a book of erotica, and taking your young daughter to Indigenous rights protests and events. So, question, do you see any of these choices as passions, even when they’re in a list like that? What do you think?

Carrie Klassen 5:42

You know what, I love your, yeah, like it all dropped into place for me what you’re talking about. Your concept of passion, equating it with aliveness. Like, I do care about that a lot. And that does... I do celebrate aliveness through a yellow dress, and through a rally, and my parenting, and yeah, a good dinner. And pleasure, like, like the idea of pleasure and passion being together, they look, they’re sort of commodified in a certain way that I don’t relate to. But when you invoke the yellow dress, I’m like, Oh, yeah, yeah, no, I get it. I agree with that. I’m passionate in that sense.

That makes sense to me. I took a course with Joanna Macy earlier this year, which was so beautiful, and actually really good for me as a person who is somewhat... I mean, I work on a computer all day. That’s how I write. But I am resistant to screens and that kind of interface. I’d rather be, you know, in real life, with a person to feel most at ease, connecting. But I felt so connected through technology and realizing that that is possible. It’s a gift. But that is not what I wanted to bring up. Something she said that has stayed with me, actually, a couple things that stayed with me and I think are relevant to what you’re talking about is just the line: “To be alive is holy.” And, you know, she said we bless the world by our attention to it. And I think that that’s what, when you talk about writers being maybe, we’re noticers. We are noticers. That is a kind of activism. That is the kind of active participation in life, but it’s also like making it work. Acknowledging what’s sacred about it. So you noticing me wearing a yellow dress, I mean, that is, yeah, that’s aliveness.

Sarah Selecky 8:03

Oh, I love that, that the noticing can become the noticing can become the noticing of the noticing. That’s what makes it work. Joanna Macy’s, to be alive is holy, reminds me of Mary Oliver. Who writes about paying attention as a form of devotion.

Carrie Klassen 8:22

Right.

Sarah Selecky 8:23

Yeah.

Carrie Klassen 8:24

Yeah. And what I love about writing, or what I feel like it is for me, one of the things that is for me, is then because we can live so much in the ethers and, you know, the realms of spirit, and the authorial, and being able to ground it in actual words, you know, with serifs, and that you can then hand to somebody. Like someone else can read it, they become tangible, they become mental, and rounded, and all of that. There’s sort of a wholeness to that.

Sarah Selecky 8:57

Yeah, I mean, that’s why I write by hand, like not even just the serifs but even before it comes to that, there’s something of a pleasure in making something tangible, that has like a sound of a pencil scratching on paper, or the way that ink comes out kind of wobbly sometimes and imperfectly on the page, and the scratch. Like, all of that is part of the pleasure of this ethereal kind of airy, windy thoughts swirling around that sometimes. Even noticing can come into this place of like, not that it’s abstract because in the moment of noticing something, it does feel quite embodied. But it hasn’t been made tangible yet until you make something out of it. I think that’s what artists do. And in writing, it’s words, it’s language.

Speaking of writing, one of the things I wanted to ask you about and talk about was several years ago now we both went with, a lot of amazing people were at this event, to adrienne maree brown’s launch of Pleasure Activism, her anthology that she edited, in Toronto at Lula Lounge, and I was wondering what you remember about that night?

Carrie Klassen 10:22

Lots of things. I think one of the, I mean, sometimes something is memorable because it changes my thinking. And sometimes it’s memorable because somebody said something to you that, like, better articulates your own loose thoughts. And I think she did that for me. And she talked about, and I won’t get the words, right, but saying that those of us on the like, who want to, who claim to be progressive, and are seeking a more just world, that the world we create...She wasn’t talking specifically about language, but you know, that’s where I go with it. You know, the world, we want to articulate, this vision we have for a more just place, it has to be, we have to make it fun, we have to make it appealing and be a place that anyone would want to... we want to be a club that anyone would want to join. And so often, the discourse around, you know, different issues of inequity are presented in binary ways. You’re either good or bad, or you’re either with us or against us, or you think this way or you’re evil. And they’re really, like, there’s violence in the way some communication happens. And I want to be clear to say that, like, how people, how anyone communicates, especially about oppression, especially, especially about their own oppression, is honourable, and I respect.

But I think of myself as a white woman who does not face a lot of oppression. How I communicate with other people, it requires... I think I have a lot of advantages I should use. And I should be more responsible with language. I should be responsible with, with my use of language, to just to really take care in how I speak about what I think is possible in ways that are... I don’t wanna be... I don’t know. I’m aware of how this will sound, but love! I want it to be loving. That’s the world. Like that, at the foundation of it is what I want. And so the other thing that I think about when I think about that night, is how much love there was in that space. Like, we all loved her.

Sarah Selecky 13:08

Yeah.

Carrie Klassen 13:09

And it didn’t matter what she said, or what she was talking about, there was just this, like, it was so thick and beautiful, you know, in the air and in the wood of the tables and in the dirty floor. It was just so present in that room, how much collectively we loved this lady. And it felt reciprocated. And so I thought, you know, in whatever I do, in the way that I talk to people, in the ways I share ideas I have, in the ways that I, you know, aim to build community as an introvert, as a quiet person, mostly through language, you know? I want people to feel in whatever ways I am capable — that’s what I want to contribute to. I don’t want to shame anybody into doing anything. I just want them to feel loved. And it’s hard. You know? But I think there’s a place for writers to contribute to that. And I think that’s part of my work in the world.

Sarah Selecky 14:19

Absolutely it is. I think you do that with your... I think that is what you do with the care. Your love of what you do. Your love of language, it’s... Love is definitely foundational. And, you know, it’s funny, I have a little note about what I remember about that night. And similarly, I came away with, I remember that something about like, this has to be a club you want to join. Like we want to, we want to join. And the energy of everyone in that room, and her presence was just so electric. And what I said was just like we were all in her spell, but what you... I like the way you described it even more, which was just like, that thing that happens with love in a room or in a space, everything becomes imbued with it. It exponentially grows when it’s shared. It’s one of those infinite resources. And that’s what she was doing. She was like a power source. She was a love source.

Carrie Klassen 15:25

Yeah.

Sarah Selecky 15:25

And the other thing, the other thing that I took away, you know, I have the book, I haven’t finished reading it because I keep getting like paused on the power of one of the essays at the very start of it by Audre Lorde. It was a presentation that she gave that adrienne maree brown included at the beginning of the anthology and said that that’s sort of like what started her on this work was this essay. Really recommend going back. I just reread it again last week. And there’s this section, I didn’t remember what it was ‘cause she read it that night. But now that when I reread it, I was like, Oh, yeah, that! There’s a section where she writes about... The essay is called, I think, “The Erotic As Power.”

And she describes opening a packet of margarine as a child, and squeezing in the yellow coloring that’s in this like little bubble plastic, and mushing it around into the margarine, which was white before you coloured it to look like butter with a yellow dye. And she just described the sensory act of squishing up this dye into the margarine. And it’s just, it’s erotic. It’s like laced with pleasure and love and joy. It’s just pleasurable. And then in the essay, she’s like, that pleasure is a power source. And you can, just like, I loved how you described like, the, the wood of the table, and the gritty of the floor. And all of that was just imbued with this pleasure and love. And that’s exactly what Audre Lorde’s essay is about. It’s exactly what adrienne maree brown is doing. And it’s like, it is a power source. It’s that you can feel it when you’re in presence, in the presence of someone who’s finding that level of pleasure. In anything, you can find it in anything.

Carrie Klassen 17:24

Yeah. Years ago, I took a Tantra workshop. And the woman had us go into her backyard. It was done in her living room. And there was like a totally nondescript, I won’t even call it a garden, like there were some plants. And nothing flowering, just some green things, nothing that had been tended. And she asked us to study the different shades of green. And the longer you looked like, at first, it’s this wall of green, and then you begin to notice how many different shades there really are. And the longer you notice, it becomes an erotic practice. Like it is such a turn on to have this connection to all of these colours, like, to feel the aliveness of the world. And you know, that you can do it with, like a bunch of weeds. I mean, I don’t believe in weeds, but they’re all wonderful plants. I love them all. But yeah, it’s just in anywhere in any moment that is accessible to us. It’s in the margarine, it’s in the dirt on the floor. It’s, you know, it’s in a hedge.

Sarah Selecky 18:42

And you know, even beyond the simple or the banal. So I have a theory, a question. Thinking about the way you write, where, the way you have chosen and cultivated and curated a writing life where you get to write about things and help other people write about things that other people avoid even thinking about, let alone writing about. I’m thinking about the letter, the open letter you wrote to your daughter about your wishes should you be hospitalized. You help people with writing eulogies. You help people write about money and sales. You communicate with nature, you communicate with flowers. And of course in erotica, you write about sex. And my question, my theory, my question is — do you think that the more passionate you are, or the more willing you are to feel alive, or the more you feel alive, I don’t know how quite to word that. It means that the more stamina you have for all parts of life? Like passion means loving, powerful sensations or accessing powerful sensations, feeling not just good or bad but like feeling alive.

So, you know, there’s a whole spectrum of experience that that goes from the margarine and the different colours of plant leaves, right into like, fear and trauma and death and sex and money. I mean, you read about death, sex, and money. All the controversial stuff. What do you think?

Carrie Klassen 20:26

Are those controversial? I mean, they’re so human. Oh, my gosh, I...Well, first of all, I don’t know what the answer to that question is.

Sarah Selecky 20:40

Me either.

Carrie Klassen 20:39

So... It’s not mine to give. As you were talking, I’m like, I’m at my father’s deathbed. And I remember, I mean, it was such a transformative experience for me to witness physical death over many weeks. And, you know, to care for him through that time. Because there was so much about, I mean, for many reasons, but just on a purely human level, I knew so little about death, and had to confront how little I knew about death, in the process of witnessing helping someone I, you know, love so very much to die. And I would, in the beginning, because I didn’t realize it was a process, like I watched the movies, and it’s so romantic, and it’s serene. And you know, your eyes are open, and then your eyes are closed. And that’s kind of how it goes. But, and I’m sure it’s different for different deaths. But in his case, and there are some, for people who go through this process, it’s not a quick thing.

There are stages that I didn’t know about. And, you know, in the beginning, I would sort of, there were all these small losses, small, not small, but stages of loss. And so I was, you know, loving him through food, and I would make his favourite foods, and then I would bring him something, and he would take a bite, and he couldn’t taste anymore. And he’d lost taste. And I didn’t know that that could happen. And he wept. And I realized, Oh, I need to understand, like, some things about this. And so while he slept, I would be reading hospice PDF manuals and trying to figure it out. And in being so close to that, it was such a strange... He brought me into the place between worlds. I was there with him.

But I was also having to be in this world. And realizing that that’s possible, was quite something. But also being so aware of the loss of each sense, and how it went, you know, one by one, and that when they are gone, they are gone, and being so aware in his dying of my aliveness. And it took me a long time to come back to this world after being in the inbetween place with him, and having to, like, consciously find my way back to, you know, what, like, that this life... Like that I, that there is so much, ahh, see this is the place beyond language that I keep striving to find the words for. But I, I write about dying, because I don’t want my daughter to, I want her to understand about death, because I learned about life from witnessing death. And I want to appreciate the taste of food while I am here. There’s so much that I took for granted that I realized, this all ends. And, you know, there’s nothing mundane. And all of it... If I notice it, you know, if I really, I mean, I go through a lot of my day totally unconscious to this existence.

But when I do pause, and then if I can, like, you know, I don’t have... There are lots of gifts I don’t have but I think language is one, you know, a sensitivity to language is one that I do. And that is my practice of reciprocity with life is being able to, you know, is attempting to put some of it to work so that others can sort of pause and share that with me. Another way to connect with life, with humans, with my humanity. I have no idea what question you asked. That was my answer. Thanks for riding it out with me.

Sarah Selecky 24:47

It’s perfect. It’s perfect and as you were talking I was thinking about something else that we share as writers, and I’m curious about your thoughts. How it plays into, or how it has affected your life as a writer, and that’s that we both share a Catholic upbringing. As girls. And initially I wanted to ask about, because you write about death, and money, and sex...

Carrie Klassen 25:24

[laughing] And flowers, Sarah.

Sarah Selecky 25:29

And flowers! But you know, there’s a spiritual aspect to those things and I was going to ask if reckoning with shame was a part of your journey as a writer. But I also, you know, there are gifts to that upbringing of believing in some things that we can’t see and also the like, facing death all the time. It occurred to me on my walk this morning, as I was trying to figure out how to ask this question or what even there was of a question in this point that I wanted to talk to you about. It occurred to me that the Passion Play, like the Catholic Passion Play, is so much a part of that. And I just wondered if, if you’ve thought about that. And if, if there’s a role in where you are now as a writer, and those beginnings as a girl?

Carrie Klassen 26:28

Yes. It’s funny, I was just writing about this, this week. I was away with my daughter. And while she was with somebody else, I had some time to myself to explore Guelph. I’ve never been to Guelph. And I was just walking the city and there’s a beautiful Basilica up on the hill. And it’s just really beautiful architecture. And I was aware of my body, of the old pining for old churches. And you know, what I got as a young girl, because I would go to church by myself. I was a weirdo. My family had left it, and sometimes my dad and I would go, and then we would critique the sermon together. I’m very lucky. I think the reason that I fare better than some, where shame is concerned, is my dad. That we would sit and then just tear it apart, you know...not even tear apart. I shouldn’t say that. But he would ask, what do you think? He would interrogate it, interrogate the ideas. And so I grew up knowing that this man who stands up there in the robes doesn’t have some kind of monopoly on truth.

And I get to question it. And that is not a real authority. It’s just some guy. And you know, my ideas about that, and my questions were welcome. And so we would have really good discussions. But I remember, I mean, very clearly, the last time I was in... I’ll go back to churches for funerals and maybe that’s all. Weddings, if I’m invited. This is a Catholic church. I have been to other churches since where, you know, there is a more welcoming language. And, what I felt standing on the sidewalk, this pining was for the ritual, and the incense, the ceremony, the singing about grace together. The praying together, the believing something together. All of that. There are moments, I mean, there are moments in a Catholic church, I suddenly feel nervous that I’m talking about this, I don’t, I don’t, for those who find their god in it, I don’t want to criticize. So this is just my personal experience.

But there was, there were moments of some of it as rote, some of it for me was rote, you know? We’re just repeating words, but they were....And this is where we are and this is where we sit, and you’re part of the club or you’re not. You get the bread or you don’t. But there were moments that were so transcendent, where I felt with adrienne maree brown, that you know, there are moments when something is being said or shared, or there is a reading that really touches us all. And you feel that. You feel that connection. And that’s... Those are things that I miss, I miss that place of belonging. The church for me was a place of belonging until I was old enough to understand that it wasn’t. And you know, I wrote to the pope asking to be permitted...

Sarah Selecky 29:58

You did?!

Carrie Klassen 29:58

I did, I said, women should be able to be priests and priests to be able to marry. And I think I should be a priest. And so I will say still that I think I would have been a very good priest if I was able to marry and also have children.

Sarah Selecky 30:12

Oh yeah! 100%.

Carrie Klassen 30:13

Like my sermons, I think they’d be lovely.

Sarah Selecky 30:15

I do too! I do too!

Carrie Klassen 30:18

If there are any priests listening, who would like, you know, someone to ghostwrite some sermons I think that would be fun. Yeah, and maybe that is my work, you know, maybe those are my Facebook posts. Maybe that is what I’m actually doing. Trying to be, I don’t know, I’m not trying to be a priest or trying to teach anything, but I am trying to say something beautiful about the world that we’re in, and what’s possible.

Sarah Selecky 30:39

And create that space of belonging that you were just saying that you miss.

Carrie Klassen 30:43

Yeah!

Sarah Selecky 30:43

You know, it sounds like what you were describing, I don’t know if this is quite right, but it sounds like something of what you were describing in the class you took with Joanna Macy was another one of those spaces.

Carrie Klassen 30:57

Yeah. And the rest of the church story is me sitting on the sidewalk, feeling the pining, seeing that some kindred spirit had painted blood red, the hands on the steps. And knowing that I, you know, I am not welcome in that space, and my friends are not welcome in that space. And I do not wish to be in that space for those reasons. There’s just too little alignment with my own beliefs and values and things that are important to me and how I want to be a human in this world. And so I walked on. But there is, with you know, a grief, that beautiful teachings, I mean, Jesus said great things and was a radical.

But those teachings could be twisted and confused and then manifest in such harm and such violence, in such unrepentance when there is the possibility for something different. I continued on and outside the fence surrounding this church was a huge patch of wild bergamot. And as I stopped to observe it, feeling my feelings of loss and my feelings of rightness in walking past, and my feelings of appreciation for the person who put the handprints there. You know, the kinship with someone honest. This beautiful yellow tiger swallowtail butterfly landed right in front of me. And I was reminded, again, that this is my church, and I belong to this world. And, you know, the building and those practices, that it’s okay that I’m outside the building, because there’s all this.

Sarah Selecky 32:54

Yeah. In the material. In the sensual. In nature. Thank you for sharing that. I relate to a lot of what you’re saying and I think people listening also will. Thank you for, thank you for sharing that story. Can we talk about writing about sex? It feels like a great segue. Can you tell us a bit about your journey writing and publishing Rouge. And, in particular, I’m curious, did you, were you reading a lot of great erotica before writing your own great erotica? How did you know? Where did you learn how to do it? As a writer, I’m really curious about what empowered you to do it. And how you knew not just that you wanted to do it but how to do it.

Carrie Klassen 34:02

I like that you think I knew how. No, I’m not a reader of erotica. I have read some and not particularly enjoyed it. And so I thought of it as a genre that is not necessarily for me, I’ll just live it, I didn’t need to read it. Gosh, okay, we’re going back in time. So my process… this was… I’m trying to... I decided to take a month. I was married, I decided to take a month living in Paris. I rented this lovely, charming little apartment in the 16th. And outside my window — it was November, I was spending my birthday month there and I was going to write every day. And I was going to write erotica. And I don’t know why. Don’t you have these things that just come to you and you’re like, oh, what I’m supposed to do! I’m just gonna do that. And with no, like, nothing more beyond it than that. So I moved a little side table into this window alcove. And it was November, but there were these red geraniums blooming outside the window. So I could open the windows and it was very sunny. And so it was actually warm. Like that smell. I’ve never really enjoyed geraniums, but I loved them, and have loved them since for that gorgeous, earthy, luscious perfume that was coming into this apartment.

And yeah, I just wrote. And then it sat for a while. Also, while I was in Paris, I was taking this month to decide, not that it was my decision alone, but I needed some clarity within myself whether motherhood was something for me or not. And at the end of that month, I did decide, I am now a mother, that was something that I did want to experience in this lifetime, if it was going to be possible from my body, and in my relationship. And a few months later I was. And so Rouge was, then became a part of my...

There is such a narrative about what a mother is or should be. What a woman is and should be. And it’s so oppressive, and so confining, and so sick, and so inhumane. Because even still, I will, like I’m sitting here now talking to you and I’m like, I can’t believe I’m a mother. I don’t feel like a mother. I’m me, I’m still the same. I’ve never changed. My responsibilities, my life has changed dramatically, and my obligations, and my practice of servitude in the world, my capacity for other things — those have all changed. My writing practice has certainly changed. But who I am, has not. And so writing erotica and publishing erotica, as a mother of a baby was kind of this, f-you to what I was supposed to be.

Sarah Selecky 37:39

Yeah.

Carrie Klassen 37:40

Because it is, like you said, What empowered you to do it? And to me, it’s like, it wasn’t really, I don’t know, nothing empowered, like, What’s so, what’s so risky? Is that the word, or what’s the word? It’s just another kind of writing. And to me, it’s not different from the other writing I do. I think, what I’m trying to do if I ever articulate it, I mean, if I were to try to articulate it... You articulate it back to me better than I can think it myself, is being alive, you know?

Sarah Selecky 38:17

Right.

Carrie Klassen 38:17

And being alive to the, to what’s growing in my garden, and being alive to like, the, I mean, another of the Joanna Macy lines that, so saying for me is she said: “We’re not nouns, but verbs, the magic that can be found in interactions.” And that reminder that I’m my body. And I am life expressed through Carrie and through this form, and my writing and certain things that I do, but I’m also like, constantly, like, we’re interconnected, but I exist in the interplay between me and you. And, you know, my voice and this technology, and the tree that is waving outside, and the moth that just fluttered by the window. All of it is aliveness.

Sarah Selecky 38:17

Yeah, the erotic is power.

Carrie Klassen 38:35

The erotic.

Sarah Selecky 39:19

Yeah.

Carrie Klassen 39:23

So yeah, so writing about bodies, and like, bodies enjoying other bodies. It’s just a way of being in our nature, like our natural humanness. Maybe that’s it. That was part of the thing that I got in a new way from being with my father, was an awareness of my humanness, like what it is to be human. I had thought, I’d spent, I mean, I’m a thinker, you’re you’re a thinker. I love your brain. And part of how I interface with this world is through the mental and through analysis, and I love that about, I love that about your brain. I appreciate it about mine. And so, trying to figure out, and maybe it all started in church...Why am I here? What is the greater purpose of all of this? And watching my father die, I left his hospital room that last time with an understanding that I’m just here to be human. I’m just here to have a human experience. And it doesn’t have to be some greater purpose. That is the greater purpose. And so what are the ways that I can do that?

Sarah Selecky 40:38

Right, okay. And... I love all of that, it’s really ringing true. And when earlier you were saying that writing about bodies, writing about bodies having pleasure in other bodies, it’s a lot like the other writing that you do, which I get. I understand. And this is like a logistical thing. But it’s just interesting. And keep in mind that it’s mostly writers listening. So you use a pen name, Em Demaison, for your erotica. So, what, I’m just curious, what led you to that decision, and was it about your professional life? Was it about your choice to be a mother? Was the exposure in there that you wanted to mitigate? Or what, like, what was that about? What led you to that decision? And then what does it feel like to have a persona who is you and not you, like, can you talk about that? Because I think as a writer, I have not done that. I’ve always written under my name. And I know that this is a real thing. But I don’t, I haven’t had a chance to ask someone who has a pen name, like, what is that like and why do you do that?

Carrie Klassen 42:01

At this moment, my child walks in the door. [Laughter] So let me get my thoughts back in order as I’ve been pulled into another part of myself. Why do I do that is such a good question that I’m gonna walk up the stairs while I reflect on it. And you know what? Like, is it, is part of it about exposure? I mean, I’m, if I’m honest, there is a seed of that, I’m sure. But that wasn’t the reason. It was more like...I thought it’d be fun. I want to do this whole other thing. What if I do this whole other... Like I’m married to a performer, I’m married to an actor who gets to, like, kill people on stage and there is something cathartic for him in that and I’m like, oh, but like... I mean, I could, like I could... it’s on my Carrie Klassen dot com website. So it’s not like it’s something that’s secretive.

Sarah Selecky 43:32

No!

Carrie Klassen 43:33

So yeah, and like, people know, but I think it was also... Like, when I told my mother, she did not enjoy that conversation. I was really uncomfortable about it. This comes up in writing all kinds of ways. I mean, there’s, you know, I have pieces of memoir that I don’t, I would never, I’m not... That I sit with the question of whether to share or not, because we’re verbs and we’re in, you know, it’s in the interplay. And, yes, my story is my story, and my version of my story is my story. But I also want to be clear that the erotica is not my story, it’s just stuff that... I um, I mean, there was a time in Italy, but anyway.

[Laughter] Yeah, but there is overlap, you know, in what I say about somebody else, and so I’m not sharing that. So there is sort of like the, I am me, and I am my own, you know, life being expressed through Carrie. And there are, you know, confines that are my body and identity and all of that. But also I am in a relationship with a child, and I’m in relationship with a mother, and...

Carrie Klassen 45:02

As I say this to you, I don’t think a writer shifts. I do and did.

Carrie Klassen 45:14

As I’m saying this to you... I don’t know what I said after that. This is all out of body, Sarah, just, the words are just coming, and then I’m gonna, like curl up in a ball and be like, oh my goodness, what did I say? Yeah, I think what I was getting at is that we’re like, yes, I am myself, I don’t think writers should make a decision about a pen name based on the feelings of other people. I mean, I think that that is really a restrictive way to go.

But in my humaneness and out of respect for what would make me feel more comfortable being, like sharing something like that, publishing something like that. It did feel better to not make a choice for our child, or for my mother, that they might not make for themselves. So being aware that they can’t consent to that. And I mean, they would like they would deal with it and be fine. And it’s not such a big deal. But my mother felt uncomfortable. And I just didn’t want to visit that on others.

Sarah Selecky 46:24

Right.

Carrie Klassen 46:25

The name came from going way back, I was researching my mother’s line. And it is an old name from my family. I thought at the time, based on what, you know, the other members of the family had believed were our ancestors following my mother’s mother’s mother’s mother. In the last couple of years, I’ve come to learn that in fact, I have no relation to a Demaison.

Sarah Selecky 46:56

Oh, interesting!

Carrie Klassen 46:58

Yes. But the mother line is entirely different from the one that I thought. So it is really, truly a borrowed name. But it’s just lovely. So I don’t know what to do with it, but it, you know, it arose. And I do trust those things. And I trust that it felt, the choice was really more about the fun of being mysterious.

I mean, we talked about this at the time, but you know, one of the short stories in the collection was performed as a spoken word opera. And so I attended this event where this mezzo soprano is reading my words and afterwards there were copies of my book there, and people were asking me to autograph it. Which is an experience you would have had, but I’m like, Oh my gosh, I have to sign this name that I don’t like, how does Em... like what is Em’s signature like? And it was just all so strange, but kind of wonderful. Really wonderful actually. It was fun. I fully advocate doing things just because they’re fun.

Sarah Selecky 48:10

I mean, it sounds... That’s the thing. My curiosity was how much of it is the exposure piece and consideration of other people piece, and then how much of it is just like because it would be fun to play. And it sounds like as per human, human nuance, it’s all those things! I mean, it’s like, why choose? Why choose?

Carrie Klassen 48:40

Yeah, yeah, I’d say 80% fun.

Sarah Selecky 48:42

It does seem fun! It does seem fun.I would love to talk to you more about whether you’ll write more of it? And have you ever taught a workshop around it? But we can follow up on that later. Because we’re getting close to an hour, I’d love to ask you about passion as it relates to a sense of integrity, and truth telling, and justice, and to specify a little, to take it out of the abstract a little, in specific like when you go to protests. So as an introvert, I find crowds very difficult. Even way before the pandemic that stopped crowds from forming so all over the place. I find crowds overstimulating and overwhelming and my nervous system actually fritzes out when there’s more than six people in a room. I’m not... I’m not 100% there. And I know that you’re introverted as well. And I see your activism, your physicality in groups. I know you do it in lots of other ways, but I’m particularly interested in this and how you budget for it so you can participate in the causes that you’re passionate about that way. Is there anything that you do or don’t do to make that more comfortable or possible?

Carrie Klassen 50:20

Um, well, I also have a six person cap for managing my nervous system and energy. So I definitely get that. For me, attending rallies and protests feeds me. So it is not, because it isn’t like a dinner party of ten, or like a party where you have to interact with all those people. Or where there is a taking, in, you know, in an exchange, you’re having to listen to many people...For me a protest is like church. It’s like the adrienne maree brown. It’s, we sing, you know, like, this is what democracy looks like, this is what community looks like, this is what love looks like. And people drumming together, people singing together, people walking together, there is such a physical resonance because we are all in, in communion around an issue.

And it’s always around care for people or the earth, or it’s love. And, for me being in a space where there are so many people, so many different people, so many people I might not otherwise interact with, or share space with, who care and love the same things. And it is showing up in this same way. And we’re doing it together. For me there’s just something so, it’s just such, it’s just such a gift. And we spend so much of our lives, feeling, I think, lonely and isolated. If we’re people who are thinkers, even just people who are notices, because you are always somewhat separate. I mean, they’re in the practice of noticing you can mesh with what you are noticing. But done more casually as a way of living, it can also be a way of being separate. And so this togetherness of it, but I feel the same way...Like in the subway, like I just fall in love with humans as a concept.

But if I had to talk with each of them, I couldn’t handle that. But being in a space and taking our child and showing her there is so much to despair in our world, there is so much to grieve, there’s so much that has been lost, and that it’s in the process of dying. And so many who don’t know, don’t care, but being with others who do and remembering that this too, is part of the human experience. This too is part of this world — that there are so many who want a more just life for all and being connected with that is a power source for me.

Sarah Selecky 53:31

This is why I reached out to you about passion, because of how you answered that question and how you interact with life in this way. I do remember, we have had this conversation about being on the subway. I, you know, quote unquote, escaped the city and moved to a space where it’s just like an open horizon and I feel really lucky and calm to have all this space. And I remember you saying like, Yeah, I love space too. I love nature and like, I love the subway and like the people and the city and humanity! And it sounds I mean, this conversation is so good and so nourishing. And it’s feeding me and I really see how the writing that you do, the ghostwriting, writing Rouge, communicating with nature, and going to the church of a rally and standing up for marginalized voices. They all do have something in common at the source of it, and that is, this is what...

This is really what I have come to learn from you in our friendship and the work you do is like, how I can recognize more of my passion, and access it. That deep pleasure and deep energy of connection, and use it in more of what I do like writing and otherwise. Thank you for sharing how you do what you do, and why you do what you do. Before we go, I wanted to ask you if there was a book or two that you would recommend we read that reflects this theme of passion. Is there anything that you have been reading or would recommend that we read, fiction or nonfiction or otherwise?

Carrie Klassen 55:45

Well, I’ve talked a lot about Joanna Macy. So I’ll say, World as Lover, World as Self, and just read into it. She’s really worked it, she was just finishing it up for the thirtieth anniversary release while I was taking the course, so we got to read some of the excerpts. I just find that deeply inspiring. So that would be one. I’m also, a book that is not about passion, but is imbued with passion is Medicines to Help Us by Christi Belcourt. Her painting, The Wisdom of the Universe, is normally at the AGO. I mean, I could look at that forever. And the book Medicines to Help Us, she cares about things that I care about. So that’s beautiful to me. But it’s very practical. It’s a very short book, it’s about certain plants. She shows the beautiful traditional beadwork designs from her artwork, or each plant, she gets the names that they have been known by and are known by as a way of reclaiming language. And, you know, it just reminds us that the earth is so generous. And so, that she has these, she is so passionate about the reclamation of wisdom, Indigenous wisdom. And that it takes this form as in this book, I often think to myself, you know, what is... What is my version of that? And how am I doing that, too? And how she brings together, you know, herbalism, and language, and art, and all of these things that we think of as disparate and that creativity.

And so, you know, we sometimes as artists get told that, you know, this is your medium, this is what’s yours to make, this is your particular skill, this is the thing that you’re meant to do. And and so I look at this, little tiny book, and it reminds me that passion, to use your word, can show up in lots of different ways and lots of different expressions and that I may have, you know that even to be a writer like writing, there are so many ways to be a writer.

Sarah Selecky 58:17

Yeah.

Carrie Klassen 58:19

So those are two.

Sarah Selecky 58:20

Those are beautiful. I don’t know either one. I mean, I know Christi Belcourt and I know Joanna Macy, but both titles are new to me. So I’m going to get them and I’ll include the links on the site, on the post where we post this recording so other people can order them as well.

Carrie Klassen 58:37

Wonderful.

Sarah Selecky 58:38

As well as Rouge, of course. And I wanted to just add that The Wisdom of the Universe, the painting, the mural, the painting is actually painted, Christi Belcourt painted it on the back of a church in Picton, where I live. In this small town where I live, and we often go, there are a couple benches right in front of it. It’s right next to a beautiful garden for the food bank and an epic labyrinth with a big maple tree in the center of it. It’s a really beautiful church. I’ve never actually been inside the church but it’s gorgeous on the outside and I go all the time. I didn’t know that it was… This is silly. I didn’t know that it was inside the AGO. I just thought it was this mural.

Carrie Klassen 59:23

So perfect.

Sarah Selecky 59:25

Full Circle moment. Thank you so much, Carrie. I’m really pleased to introduce you to our writers if they don’t already know you and I think they can find you at CarrieKlassen.com. C a r r i e K l a s s e n. And, that’s right?

Carrie Klassen 59:48

Yes, that’s right.

Sarah Selecky 59:51

Okay, and we’ll be in touch about maybe some erotica workshops in the future.

Carrie Klassen 59:57

[Laughing] Okay, I’ll think about that.

Sarah Selecky 59:58

Okay. Think about it.

Carrie Klassen 59:59

Sarah, thank you so much. It is such a pleasure to talk with you. Always, always.

Sarah Selecky 1:00:05

Always, always. Thank you.

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Ronit Jinich and Sarah Selecky - STILLNESS

Sarah Selecky 00:05

Ronit Jinich is a Dharma therapist in private practice working at the interface of Eastern and Western understandings and approaches to human psychology. Her mind-body approach is informed by her exploration of these disciplines and traverses various schools of thought, as well as communities of practice for over fifteen years. Born in México, Ronit is fluent in Spanish, English, and Hebrew. Ronit has a diverse academic background spanning from literature to performing arts and Gestalt therapy. She holds a master’s degree in Environmental Studies with a focus on self as social transformation from York University. Ronit is the Manager of Education and Lead Facilitator for Mindfulness Without Borders, a leading provider of evidence-based programs on secular mindfulness, and social-emotional intelligence for youth, educators, health, and corporate professionals in communities around the world. She is the founder of Dharma Praxis, home of The Living Room, a community dedicated to exploring the principles and practice of mindfulness in everyday life. Ronit is also a faculty member of the Applied Mindfulness Meditation Certificate Program at the University of Toronto. I’m really excited to introduce you to Ronit, who I am really quite fortunate to also say is one of my closest friends. Ronit, welcome.

Ronit Jinich 01:29

Sarah, thank you so much for having me. And it’s just interesting to have you read that introduction. Because this feels like, you know, like, it feels impressive. And then I say, Who is that person?

Sarah Selecky 01:41

I know, I know. This is what I love about this format, I get to see your professional... And you are impressive. And I do get to see your professional side, and I get to show both sides. I get to be in conversation with you as a friend. And I get to show how amazing you are to our readers. So thank you so much for agreeing to do this. And I’m really excited to have this professional conversation about the things that we do and talk about in our lives and have been for many years now.

Ronit Jinich 02:15

Yeah. Well, it is a pleasure for me. And it’s an honour for me. And I also think you know, as you mentioned, this idea of friendship and professionalism. I think we think better in friendship, we think better together. When we are in conversation with people that we love, that we share values with. And even with people that we don’t share values with, but can extend the hand of friendship. Something magical happens there, and our thinking becomes more than what it could if it was done on our own. And so I love this idea of bringing the professional and the friendship together and seeing where it takes us.

Sarah Selecky 02:56

Me too, I love how you said that. So we have written together, we have done sitting meditation together, we have done walking meditation together, dance practice together. In so many ways, I see you as someone who really attends to the present moment. And you always have and you have built a life around helping people access that present moment for themselves. And I want to talk to you about writing in particular and just let you know, like, obviously, we are talking to writers, most of the people listening to this are writers. So hopefully, I want to talk about how you bring, and how we can bring more aliveness to our lives, our living lives, as well as to the scenes that we write. Kind of like professional life and friendship life, you know, merge and integrate a little bit of that writing life and real life together. So that’s just kind of my introduction, I’d love to talk to you and ask you a little bit about meditation and creativity and why do you think it’s so important for writers especially? Like, do you like working with writers in your practice? I know you are a writer, so working with your own writer. But, why?

Ronit Jinich 04:14

Well, I mean, there’s a bunch of questions there. And so I guess the first thing I want to say is this thing that you said about presence and being in the present moment. And I find something that is very important to say is that regardless of having or not having a mindfulness practice, a meditation practice, a contemplative practice, by virtue of being human beings and having the brain and the neural physiology that we have, we have access to the present moment and access it on our own, intentionally, and not intentionally. And so I think that there’s something going on with rarefying this idea of the present moment, as if it was an inaccessible place, but actually all of us have access to it constantly. And we know that. What meditation or a mindfulness practice does is that it begins to decodify the mechanism by which to get in contact with it more readily. Sometimes even at will, or even, you know, to take it a step further, when we are caught up in patterns of anxiety, or obsessive patterns, we can begin to notice that and we can begin to dismantle that because we know how to get ourselves back in touch with the here and now.

Sarah Selecky 05:46

I love that. And it is true that we talked about the present moment like it’s this rare, special place. And it’s like, we have the telescope backwards. I mean, the present moment is actually all there is. The rest of it is thinking, and remembering, and worrying, and dreaming. And the present moment is actually the most real.

Ronit Jinich 06:09

Yeah, and you can think about it this way, as well, like how there’s so much talk of mindfulness, and I feel like the word is getting, you know, Thich Nhat Hanh has this very beautiful saying about the word love. Because he says that sometimes words get ill, and we have to heal them. And he talks particularly about the word love because he says that in the Western culture, it has come to denote love, as, you know, a kind of hunger or quenching of a particular thirst or a particular need. Like, I love hamburgers. And so it really diminishes the value of the word. But in using it differently, we can restore its meaning and even grow it. And I think the same thing goes for, I think the word mindfulness has been overused and therefore is losing a bit of its essential meaning. And mindfulness comes from the Sanskrit word Smriti, which means to remember. And you know, at this point, you can begin to consider what is it that we need to remember? Where in this context, we need to remember the present moment, to come back to the here and to the now.

Sarah Selecky 07:30

I’m thinking especially of writers of memoir, who are going back in time to write something that happened already, or fiction writers who are writing about something that never happened. So there’s the imaginative in this, and there’s also bringing our minds somewhere where our bodies are not, in the scene. How can meditation help? Why is stillness and mindfulness useful for writers who ostensibly aren’t trying to be in the present moment?

Ronit Jinich 08:03

That’s a super interesting question. Because it really depends on what we mean, by the present moment. You know? And I think, to be mindful, is always to be mindful of something. A lot of people tend to think that being mindful is arriving at a certain state of mind and staying there. And then once you are not mindful, you’re not there anymore. But actually, being mindful always is being mindful of something. So you could be mindful of daydreaming, you could be mindful of the thoughts you’re having, you can be mindful of the fact that you’re anxious or that you’re rushing, or that your mind is not settling. That is being mindful. Mindful is not being in a place where no thought is happening, where everything has seized. And I think this is one of the great confusions.

Ronit Jinich 08:56

So I think your question with regards to writing, and the way you asked it was a very interesting way of asking it because you said, you know, how could this help people who are taking their mind elsewhere, you know, or where their body is not? But actually, the mind and the body are one and the same. And so when you’re taking yourself, for example, in memoir, you go back to those places, you’re not only going back there with, you know, and I’m doing the sign of quote unquote, mind, because we would need to define that category. When I write memories, my whole body is actually reliving, re-feeling, re-sensing the residue of that particular thing that happened. So we’re not going to the past, we’re actually bringing the past into the present, where it is. The past lives with us in the present, you know, the thing about the past is that it’s not the past, it’s here, and therefore we are calling upon it to be able to see it and write with it.

I believe that the technology, sometimes I call this practice, practices, technologies of self, which is tools that people in and of themselves and with each other employ to be able to know themselves better, and to transform themselves. And I would imagine, this could be said as well, of writing. You know? I think that what mindfulness does is, well, let me start here. Mindfulness like writing is, you know, we construct something out of nothing. We sit, we gather our tools, and then we use them. And we wait to see what happens. Right? Like you could exchange that with the act of writing and sitting in front of a blank page, like I come to my question, I use the tool of the posture that I choose, I use it the tool of my breath. And then I train my attention in a certain way to come back again and again to a certain object of attention. And then in doing that, I am creating a scaffolding for my experience.

Sarah Selecky 11:37

Wow, that does sound a lot like writing when you put it that way.

Ronit Jinich 11:41

Yeah. And then what amazing things can happen when I construct this scaffolding, because even when it gets scary, I have a place to return to. Even when I lose track of where I’m going, there’s this scaffolding that I can come back to ground again, and look again. And when it gets to be too much, I can retreat and feel safe. And so sometimes in the classes that I teach and the community that I lead, I talk about the actual practice of mindfulness as, and I think it’s a very pertinent metaphor as we are in spring, I’ve been watching just how the robins construct their nests. And they just go out and bring this little twig and then they go out and bring another one, and then in two or three days, suddenly you have the most beautiful constructions, perfect, where they now can lay down and rest and pay attention to what’s here, in order to pay attention and to engender what is yet to come. You know, which is you can think about it as the little eggs that are there. They’re already here. But they need the warmth, and they need the scaffolding, and they need the space, and the tenderness, I would say tender care, in order to evolve into something else.

Sarah Selecky 13:09

In your metaphor, are the eggs the thing that is going to evolve into something else? Are you talking about the self? Like in the people in your community, the person?

Ronit Jinich 13:20

Yes, it could be the person. But in your case, in the case of writers, it could be the expression of that self. And I think in the community where I teach, it’s also the expression of that self. Because ultimately, that is what this practice is all about. I think at the beginning, mindfulness or I like to talk more about Dharma practice than mindfulness, because mindfulness has been separated from its origin as Dharma Praxis.

Sarah Selecky 13:52

Yeah, can you introduce that?

Ronit Jinich 13:55

Dharma Praxis?

Sarah Selecky 13:56

Yeah.

Ronit Jinich 13:57

So Dharma, roughly speaking, you know, there isn’t an exact translation for it from Sanskrit. There are some approximations, but none of them seem to be the right one. So basically, you can understand Dharma as the canon of the Buddha, all the teachings of the Buddha, and then you can understand Dharma practice as the way of life acquired by someone who’s influenced by the teachings of the Buddha. But then I decided to call my locus of work Dharma Praxis, because praxis in the Paulo Freire tradition let’s call it, is the action reflection of people upon their world in order to transform it. And I added the world and the self, the action reflection of people upon their world and themselves in order to transform those things, which I don’t think about as separate.

Sarah Selecky 15:02

Right.

Ronit Jinich 15:03

Because if you only have action, just action and just reflection can both be blinded. So you could have blind activism and you can have empty verbalism. But if you bring them together, then you have the opportunity of using your highest intelligence to test things out in the world, come back to this nest that you have constructed for yourself, consider the impacts of it, refine, and then go out and do it again. And so Dharma Praxis is the, like I said, is the action reflection of people upon the world in order to transform themselves and the world, but also influenced by the tenets of Dharma. Some of them are, you know, I can name now three that I think would be very useful for writers, which is not knowing, bearing witness, and tender action.

Sarah Selecky 16:04

Yes, like tender action, like being compassionate to yourself as you write a first draft, let’s say.

Ronit Jinich 16:11

For example. Or, being tender when you find within yourself this knot of emotion or feeling that is hardened, and that you experience as ugly and gooey. And you don’t know what it is, and you get scared at sensing it. If you can remember to bring some of the tools that you cultivate through this practice, to be curious, to be gentle, to just bear witness to it. To respect its beingness. The reason that it’s there. Then you have a much greater chance of it telling you what it needs to tell you.

Sarah Selecky 16:50

Right. Right! So Dharma Praxis I see as from a Buddhist perspective, from that compassionate theory, kind of being the change that you want to see. It’s like the theory in action.

Ronit Jinich 17:11

Yeah, yeah. Yeah. And this idea of expression, you know, you asked about the eggs.

Sarah Selecky 17:17

Yeah. Yes. Like are those books? Are those stories?

Ronit Jinich 17:21

Yeah, exactly. You name it. I feel like the essence of this practice, what it’s aiming at, is to allow you to connect to your very own uniqueness. And I’m talking about something very different than exceptionalism, you know, sometimes, especially when, when we’re writing, and we’re thinking of heroes and heroines and I think that just the word heroine denotes a certain exceptionalism and apartness. And we need to think in those ways for story purposes sometimes. But I think that what this practice does for you is letting go of the exceptionalism to embrace the uniqueness, which are two very different qualities. What makes you you, and when you connect to that you realize that what you say, how you behave in the world is the only way you can say, and you can behave in the world. And it gives you a sense of assurance, like, hmm, this is me, no one can do or say the things that I do or say, just by virtue of being me. But to get to that, me, that by the way, is always changing.

Sarah Selecky 18:46

Right?! I wanted to say, how do you get...

Ronit Jinich 18:50

...Especially when we live in...Yeah, go ahead.

Sarah Selecky 18:53

Well, I want to reverse engineer that or break it down a little bit. I do know what you’re talking about, from my own experience with meditation and my own practice. And for the benefit of those who don’t have one or haven’t experienced that and just see it as sitting still and watching your breath. How do you get to a point of understanding your own uniqueness when you’re just sitting still?

Ronit Jinich 19:20

That’s a great question. I think, let me put it this way. So much is moving all of the time, right? When we think about any of our given days, our days are plagued with a, well, not plagued, it is also a blessing to be busy and to be... But so many things are moving, within and without. And so when through mindfulness practice, or sitting practice, or meditation practice, you’ll begin to construct this place that you can return to again and again, and you focus your eyes in a particular way, and you focus your breath in a particular way, or you focus your attention in a particular way. It might seem like your body is still because you’re not moving. But as soon as you arrive, that place of what looks like a still body, you realize that the mind is in constant flux. All the time moving. All the time churning. And it’s almost like in the building of that nest, you can become the observer of that activity.

Ronit Jinich 20:40

And so mindfulness can also be thought of as a practice, to familiarize yourself with yourself. Almost like beginning to map out your beingness, you know? Certain states that you constantly enter, the stream of thoughts that you visit again, and again, the new thoughts that every now and then come, can all be beared witness to, when you find this place of, I don’t want to call it stillness because I think it’s misleading, but of grounding. So you ground yourself, and for a very long time you just wrestle with the ability to just follow your breath. And in the midst of that, something happens. And you acquire a certain quality of grounding. And then you begin to observe your thoughts, and you’ll begin to observe your emotions. And then you will begin to observe the corollary physical sensations. And what this does is that, first of all, I think it diminishes the fear that sometimes we have in encountering certain thoughts, certain feelings, certain physical sensations, certain emotions. Because as you find and construct this place of grounding, you are able to see the arising of say, an emotion accompanied by a sensation that is not pleasant, or that elicits discomfort or fear for you. But you can stay with it, you can become very curious of it, you can see it unfold, you know, and show you what it is, and then dwindle. And so to be able to see the arc of an emotion emerge, arise, evolve, and disappear, it’s quite empowering. Because you get to know it. It’s not as scary.

When you have a steady practice, you begin to notice places that you visit again and again. And you also begin to see how much of your experience is constructed by the culture that you live in, by the family you grew up in, by the particular experiences of your childhood. And many of them though you cannot entirely shed them, you begin to polish them. And as you polish them, something else begins to emerge, which is what you alluded to. This uniqueness. And then you don’t need to discard these experiences, because they themselves are the building blocks of that uniqueness. But they’re not hindering you, you’re not escaping them. You can use them as the goals of, What do you want to construct next? What do you want to write? What do you want to say? What do you want to do? Whatever that is, you know?

Sarah Selecky 23:50

I love this. And it’s making me think about the inner critic as you’re speaking. There’s a lot of stuff that comes up around resistance for writers, for creatives, for all of us, but writers really face this and much has been written about resistance and facing your resistance, getting past it. Just keep your body in the chair and keep your pen moving. And what I hear you saying is that it’s a more holistic look at those internal interruptions of thought that come up. Sometimes they’re really obvious, the inner critic that’s just saying, like, no one wants to read that or this isn’t worth it, or this is derivative, whatever things our inner critic says. And sometimes it’s more like, ooh, when you look at your notebook, or you look at that file on your computer, you feel this feeling in your gut, you know, of aversion to it. And what I hear you saying is that just by paying attention to the doubts and the voices of the inner critic, those might become more quiet with observation. Correct me if I’m wrong.

Ronit Jinich 25:08

Yes.

Sarah Selecky 25:08

Yes?

Ronit Jinich 25:09

Yes. And what I want to say is that, so you know, sometimes people begin sitting practice in there, they really cannot connect the dots between how is this going to help them in any way, how is coming back to the breath or to sounds, again and again and again, going to help me with my relationship to myself or to others? But the thing is that, again, going back to this inner scaffolding, you are constructing certain skills that are the exact same ones that you’re going to be using when, say, the voice of doubt comes up and wants to hijack your work. You know? When you have that scaffolding, you can identify, oh, this is the voice of my inner critic. Hello, again, I wonder what it is that you’re here to tell me this evening. Okay, let me hear it. And then you have the capacity, the internal capacity to bring yourself back to the task. Because you’ve done so, so many times with your breath. Because you’ve done so, so many times with sounds. So on any given sit, you’re sitting there, and you’re, you know, you set yourself up for ten minutes, and I’m going to be observing my breath. And in second 33, you’re already thinking of something else.

Sarah Selecky 26:37

Yeah.

Ronit Jinich 26:37

And you notice this, and then just gently you nod yourself back to the breath, and then back to the breath, and then back to the breath. And then what this does is this creates the neural pathway that wasn’t there for you to be able to interact with the distraction and bring yourself back. So the way it works is like, you know, let me just put a very simple exercise, when we go to the gym, you want to become strong. We don’t carry a dumbbell once and you know, and consider, oh, I’m done. I’m strong. You know, you have to do repetitions. The same goes for the practice of mindfulness. You come to the cushion, you set yourself up for observing the breath, you notice yourself deviating, you bring yourself back, deviating, back, deviating, back. And then there’s something that begins to happen in the mind, that begins to understand, oh, this movement is important. And so the periods of distraction start to become shorter, and the periods of awareness where you can bring yourself back to your task become more available and start to last longer.

Sarah Selecky 27:52

Is there, okay, I’m just gonna get really practical for a minute because that’s what I do sometimes. Also, I just want to provide instructions, like earlier today, I was looking at a plan for running. Kind of a couch to thirty minute program. So by the end of twelve weeks, you’ll be running for thirty minutes straight. But here’s how you do it. First, you walk for twenty minutes, then you walk for thirty minutes, then you walk one minute, run one minute, and repeat. And there’s a plan. There’s a recipe, you know, it’s a step by step prescription. Is it like that with the breath work, and deviating, and breath work, and deviate? Like paying attention to your breath, and then losing it, paying attention to your breath, and losing it? How do we do that? Is it different for everybody? Or is there a tried and true standard method that gets you from you know, in twelve weeks, you get from full of self doubt, full of inner critic, lots of resistance to being able to recognize my uniqueness, and be okay with the inner critic, and finish writing my story in twelve weeks is that like — how long does it take, Ronit? When do we get to a point where we can, you know. A plan.

Ronit Jinich 29:01

I know. I love your question. Because it really brings it up to the world in which we live, you know, and to the demands that we place on ourselves on any given day. And also a culture that is so goal oriented. And you know, goals are super important. Nobody would begin meditation if they didn’t have a goal. And we project all sorts of goals into it, right? I do think though, that there is something that passes through a different place when we are engaging in the practice of meditation. And I think you know this also as a writer, which is the art of misdirection in which you’re, you know, you’re sort of taking your reader in one direction while you know, all of a sudden, the character that you thought was least important suddenly shows up with something that, you know, you did not expect at all. And I think that meditation is a little bit like that. You need to have enough reason to come to the cushion. And it doesn’t matter if it’s for five minutes, or ten minutes, or thirty minutes or an hour. But what matters is the repetition and the consistency. And I think that in the repetition and the consistency, something begins to shift within you, sometimes you are not even aware of it. But because you’re giving yourself to that place, and in showing up to the cushion you’re constructing this habit, no? Of being there, no matter what. Something begins to soften and feel more trusting within you just because you’re showing up.

Ronit Jinich 31:02

And I think about it also very closely to writing, right?

Sarah Selecky 31:07

Yeah. It sounds like writing.

Ronit Jinich 31:08

Yeah, we sit there. And sometimes it feels dreadful, and we just want to walk away, and we don’t want to do it. And then we show up, and maybe we write for five minutes, and it’s all we can do that day. But we don’t leave that place. We don’t abandon it. There have been times in my life, when I just touch the, you know, I have a space in my home where my meditation cushion is. And it’s visible. So every time I pass through it, I see it. So it’s a constant reminder that that space is there for me, should I need it. You know? But in the times in my practice where it’s been very difficult to sit, there were times where I only came by the cushion and just touched it and took a few breaths there. You know, just to let me know that that space is there for me. I think before considering goals, we need to assess the need. I mean, the reason why I came to meditation is because I was really struggling, I was really struggling with my mind. You know, like, I read this quote, I think it is from the Rigveda, which was, I do not know just what it is that I am like, I wonder about concealed and wrapped in thought. And for me coming to sit on the cushion, even with the struggle, even with the discomfort was better than not doing it because what I was living outside of the cushion felt unbearable, you know? So at least by coming to this place and creating it, I started to accompany myself in the difficulty of what my mind was churning. And so I think that once that desire is there, then the goal and the target can move a bit. And you can begin to experience yourself differently right away, you don’t need to wait, you know, months and years. Just by bringing yourself to that space, you can begin to experience yourself differently.

Sarah Selecky 33:27

I love this, I absolutely love the way you turned that around. And again, it really does remind me of writing. They really are close sisters, these practices. And the external goal, like I was talking about, like how to get to thirty minutes of sitting on a monthly plan or on a weekly plan, kind of mirrors these challenges, right? These challenges to get to a finished place. How many words a day, how many pages a day. Certain personalities especially, I think there’s an inner or outer competition factor that kind of adds to the creative play for some people. And I think that if we layer those external goals for our writing on top of one another, again and again, like book after book, or published story after publish story, or write another chapter, write another chapter, write another chapter. But don’t touch that compassionate space that you describe, of looking at your cushion and just patting it. Or looking at your notebook. I think what could happen if you don’t nourish that kind of personal relationship that’s internally motivated to be in touch with something of yourself, then when you do look at your cushion, or your notebook or your writing desk, you may feel like, guilt or heavy burdensome and feeling because you’re not showing up. You know what I mean? Does that ever happen?

Ronit Jinich 34:58

Yes. I think you talked about our relationship to the spaces. And what came up for me was, you know, why is it that we write? What is this desire that is at the heart of our need to express? And I don’t know, for anybody else but I think that for me, it is about evolving. You know? It is about things that I haven’t been able yet to understand that I want to understand.

Sarah Selecky 35:30

Yeah.

Ronit Jinich 35:31

And to give, to give that the space. When we are able to stay connected to that as one of the primary motors, or motivators of why we ride or why we come to the cushion, then gentleness is possible. You know, because we understand that evolution has its own timing, different for each and every one of us. And when we notice those voices that come up and say, the next book, the... Getting published next, we can see them as sometimes supportive, because yes, they can propel our work forward. And sometimes as obstacles and even ways to distract ourselves from the actual goal in itself, which is writing and the discovery of what will come through us in the coming to sit with our minds in front of a page.

Sarah Selecky 36:36

A few things came up for me. One is that I don’t want to underestimate the power and beauty of being around someone who has a strong meditation practice or mindfulness practice. It’s a gift to be around someone who has a daily or regular practice of feeling grounded. It affects me. It affects other people. So I, I want to say that and then link it up to writing in that, as you were talking I was thinking, at the same time, what humility is required of coming back to the internal motivation or, or what is the motor of why I write, being to understand myself to understand something I don’t understand yet. It feels so navel gazy, it feels so like, who am I to spend all this time trying to figure out myself? And at the same time also I feel like, what pride! What pride to make all this time to sit down and like you think other people are going to read that and think about it, and that’s going to be useful for other people. I guess what I’m coming to is that my ego really is wrestling with this concept of what writing is for. And I think if the parallel continues, if it really is a mirror, if these two practices of meditation, mindfulness, and writing are mirrors, then it would go, the hypothesis would go so far as to say that if you can sit and write with the intention of putting your ego aside, so leaving behind, I’m so humble, or I’m so proud, like leaving that behind, and going into the inquiry of paying attention to yourself to see how you are evolving, that it’s a gift to the people around you who may read that work later. In the same way that coming back to your meditation practice is a gift to the people around you who benefit from your grounded presence.

Ronit Jinich 38:40

Hmm, that’s so beautifully said. It feels like you know, it seems like the taste of something really good in my mouth. Like a full, beautiful meal. Yes, I think you said it beautifully. Writing and sitting, and I say sitting but you can practice meditation lying down, you can practice meditation sitting upright, in a chair, you don’t need to have meditation gear. You know, you can practice walking meditation, there are so many entry doors into this practice. And I want to say this out loud so that those who have an idea of what this practice looks like, and they see themselves and they can say that hmm, that’s not for me, I would never be able to do that — let go of those ideas, because those are set ideas that do not necessarily have anything to do with the practice and that can deter you from you know, the curiosity that you could have and the benefit you could reap from trying it. But what I wanted to say is that the offshoots, they are so alike because they are practices, and they are called practices for a reason. You know, it’s a practice because we come to it again and again and again. And we think that the goal is outside of the practice. But whatever comes out of the practice is something else, the book that you’re going to write, it’s going to have a life of its own, and it’s going to be something else. If you know, it was created within the space of your writing practice, it was revealed in the space of the writing practice, and then it’s in the world, and it bears the mark of your uniqueness. Likewise, sitting, you know, you come to sit and, you know, after sitting for almost twenty years, like sitting is in and of itself. It becomes this place that is both me and not me. And it is its own reward. It doesn’t need anything else. And yet, what I’m able to do because I devote my time to this place, and to myself, is quite unique. And so we’re back to this idea of uniqueness, this very thing that you can be or that you can say that no one else can.

Sarah Selecky 41:16

We’re coming close to the end of our call, and I love this conversation so much. I know that people will want to find out more about you. You’ve been so beautifully articulate. And my mind just feels like it’s expanding in a very slow and delicious way right now. How can people work with you? I know you have a new program coming up. Can you tell people a bit about the Breath Works and Dharma Praxis, and maybe how they can get in touch with you?

Ronit Jinich 41:49

Yes, of course. So, you know, you can go to my website, and you’ll find out all the information. But let me talk a little bit about the work that is offered through the website that is called Dharma Praxis. So the first thing is the Living Room. The Living Room is a Dharma practice community that was started in 2013. It’s called The Living Room because it started in my living room. And I just opened the doors of my home and my place for people, neighbours, and friends to come and sit and study together and just get to know each other. And, of course, now with a pandemic, this has evolved into a Zoom platform, and we meet every Wednesday, evenings. There’s a guided practice, there’s silent practice, there’s the reading of the theme. And there’s some inquiries that sometimes are done as a whole group, sometimes in dyad, sometimes in triads, and then people share what’s up, you know, what’s been happening in their week, what their practice is looking like. And by practice we mean both the formal practice of sitting, but also the actual practice of your life. And, you know, this is again, we’re constructing this space slowly, week after week, getting to know each other. So that’s one of the offerings, but I think that by the time this episode comes out, we’re probably be in our summer break. But come September, The Living Room will restart again, and everybody is invited to come.

Then the second offering that you will find there is, you know, what Sarah read at the beginning, which is Dharma therapy. And Dharma therapy is a combination of my root practices. On the one hand, mindfulness and Dharma practice. And then on the other: therapy. My second practice for the last twenty years has been therapy and psychotherapy, and different understandings of the human mind in western traditions. And I have found both of those practices affirming of each other, supportive of each other, and enhancing one another. And so I wanted to begin offering a space that would bring both. In Dharma therapy, what we do is that we harness the skills that our mindfulness practice gives you and we put them into use in the therapeutic space. And the reason why that is helpful is that sometimes in the therapeutic space we need to sit with not immediately intelligible material. Things that we don’t know exactly what they are, that don’t feel comfortable, that feels scary. But if you have a mindfulness practice, and you have constructed that space that we went into so beautifully in our conversation, then again, you have a lookout. You have a nest to see these aspects of your experience that are difficult. And so when it’s too much, you also have practices that can help you nourish states of joy within you, to recharge your battery. So that when you need to confront again something difficult, you come at it with energy and not depleted. Because when we go up things that we’re not ready to go at and we’re already depleted, chances are that we retraumatize whatever was there, you know? And so in bringing together these two ways of understanding the mind, the body, we simply enhance them. We use with our highest intelligence what’s most intelligent in those two. And that’s the other offering.

And there is a new offering, this is really brand new, out of the oven, it is called Breath Works. For the longest time, I’ve been incorporating different ways of using the breath as an add-on to my meditation practice. So sometimes when the mind is too busy, I would pull one of these breath techniques and use it to help settle the mind and then go into the meditation. Sometimes I would use it at the end. And for the longest time, I never thought of sharing those with anybody because these were, you know, like, these do come from some practices that I’ve learned in the past, say, for example, from pranayama work, which is the breath of yoga. But also from things that I’ve organically felt like doing and felt like were supportive to my practice and to my well being. And then one day I said, people would benefit from this, why don’t I teach it? So I’m offering a four week course, once a week, an hour and 45 minutes, starting in September. I think it’s going to be Friday mornings, and you will be able to see this in my calendar.

Sarah Selecky 47:14

Wonderful. That’s perfect. So people can think about it, and then go check that out. And there’s lots of time for them to consider it and sign up. That’s wonderful.

Ronit Jinich 47:28

Yeah, but you know, if people have questions, if people want to reach out, if you go to the website you’ll see that in the contact section, there is a menu and say, for example, you’re interested in a discovery call, just click that and then send your message. If it’s general inquiries, if it’s about The Living Room, if it’s about Dharma Praxis, then, you know, select what you’re most curious of and we can set a discovery call.

Sarah Selecky 47:57

Fantastic. Thank you so much, Ronit. This was really a beautiful conversation. I feel very inspired and I can’t wait for people to listen to this and to introduce you to all of our listeners and our readers.

Ronit Jinich 48:13

Thank you, Sarah. This also felt very nourishing for me. And again, just to go full circle to the beginning. I do think that friendship is a better way to think. So whatever was expressed here is, you know, the combination of both of us, both of our experiences, our voices, our practices coming together and then bringing, you know, churning up something that only you and I could conjure together. So thank you.

Sarah Selecky 48:45

Totally unique.

Ronit Jinich 48:46

Exactly. Totally unique.

Sarah Selecky 48:50

Thank you so much.

Ronit Jinich 48:52

You’re so welcome.

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Annie Bray and Sarah Selecky - June 2021

Sarah Selecky 00:05

Annie Bray is a trauma-informed somatic coach, registered massage therapist, and movement and meditation educator. Her work is offered through the lens of intersectional feminism, anti-racism, and body liberation with a focus on embodied resilience using movement, touch, somatic exploration, and supportive presence. With the body as a portal, we move at the speed of trust, connecting the dots between challenge, change, and meaning. Annie Bray has also created special somatic practices just for writers in the Story Course and the Story Intensive, which some of you may already know about. And she happens to be one of my dearest friends. Hello, Annie, and welcome.

Annie Bray 00:45

Hi Sarah.

Sarah Selecky 00:47

Thank you so much for meeting us here and talking to me. I thought maybe before we start talking, for anyone who doesn’t know you and your work, or hasn’t experienced what you do in the Story Course, you could start us off by explaining what you do by showing us. What does a somatic practice look and feel like? Could you lead us in something small just to get us grounded to start?

Annie Bray 01:15

Yes, I can definitely do that. So yeah, why don’t we just start, and then I can lead us through like a few minutes?

Sarah Selecky 01:24

Okay.

Annie Bray 01:24

And then maybe I’ll just explain a little bit about the practice that we’ve just done.

Sarah Selecky 01:30

That would be wonderful.

Annie Bray 01:32

Okay, so, you know, one of the really basic things that is always included in my approach to somatics is a fairly radical approach to consent, which means I will always, and sometimes it might seem almost excessive how often I’ll remind that what I’m suggesting are suggestions, and not orders or commands. And just that it’s really important, like, as you’re settling in to do any sort of body practice for your own well being to know that you’re your own guide first.

So, with that in mind, I’m gonna suggest that wherever you’re sitting, or standing, or laying down, that you just take a moment and actually find some sensory awareness of the places that your body is supported. And this can be with your eyes open or closed. If your eyes are open, it can feel really nice to create a non-receptive gaze, meaning just soften and draw down your eyes a little bit. So that we can come inward. Take your awareness into whether it’s your feet, or you know, where you’re sitting, the backs of your legs, or if there’s other parts of your body that are resting into gravity. Notice that pressure and support. And then, if it feels okay to do this, what we’re going to do is start to take in the space that’s in front of you. So your eyes right now — they might be closed, they might just be softly open. And then we’re just going to start to orient ourselves to the space that we’re in. So just noticing whatever your eyes are resting on, and then beginning with your body staying relatively still and stable, to turn just your eyes to the right. And so if you’re sitting this might feel a little more natural. If you’re lying down, it might just be that your eyes are moving over to the right and then your head a little bit. But if you’re sitting up, you can actually start to look over your shoulder a bit and just take in whatever is there to the right. And looking back over your shoulder, up and down. Maybe noticing doors or windows or anything that has to do with leaving the room if you would need to. And also noticing if there’s anything appealing, comforting, or beautiful.

And slowly starting to bring your gaze back. Again leading with your eyes and letting your head and neck just follow until you come back to the midline again, and then starting the same process over to your left. Just look up and down a bit as you go. Noticing things that are familiar. And just feeling that little bit of movement and stretch in your neck and your upper body as you look back without straining, and then gradually bringing your body back. Your head and your eyes back.

And you can keep your eyes open here, like just do whatever feels comfortable about that. Just pause, come back to that feeling of connection, sensory connection to the support that your body has right now. And we’ll just take a moment and also orient ourselves in time and space. So just quietly, well, if you’re by yourself you can do this out loud, it’s fine, but just saying, you know, “I’m Annie. I’m in Ottawa. It’s Saturday morning. I just walked the dog. Now I’m here talking to Sarah. This is where I am right now.” So just take a moment for yourself and locate yourself in your own life. And then when you’re ready, let yourself come back.

Sarah Selecky 06:02

Thank you.

Annie Bray 06:03

Yeah.

Sarah Selecky 06:05

So many things popped up for me, it always surprises me that first time that I look over my shoulder. When I do this with you, or do one of your recordings, there’s this awareness of like, “Oh, I have not been consciously aware of the room that I’m in” until I do that consciously. And then I feel like, it’s like, you’re kind of teaching us how to be an animal, the animal that we are.

Annie Bray 06:33

Yeah, I mean, that’s a beautiful, beautiful entry point into — even just a brief, I won’t talk for long about that specific practice, but... it is about finding our animal body. It is. It’s about letting it be important and okay, that we need to feel safe. And that part of our sense of safety has to do with orienting and really paying attention, you know? And so if we’ve like, for all kinds of reasons, closed off our sense of capacity or need to do that, we’re often overriding that need that we would have if we were in the wild to both, you know, relax as much as possible whenever we can, but to always be tracking our environment.

Sarah Selecky 07:21

Yeah. Yeah, obviously, one of the things that I want to ask you about and, and talk about, is why you think this body awareness —that piece of it —is so important for writers and creatives of all kinds, but writers obviously, because that’s who we’re speaking to, that’s who I’m sending this out to, in particular. And I also just feel like saying how it feels very contrary, or very counter to so many of the places where our information is flowing right now, to start with an exercise like that. And Annie, you and I have met on Instagram Live a few times, and I’ve just been doing some Instagram Live, some meetings with some of my Intensive teachers and graduates. And in that environment, I especially like to start with one of these practices, something that just like, it’s very brief, I mean, even just like a third of the time that we just spent. So just a small amount. And I’m aware, on Instagram, in social media, that starting with something where people are quiet is an invitation to scroll past. And I feel like this is exactly what we’re talking about: the need to slow down just shows up in such contrast, in such great relief, when I’m on Instagram or on social media. I feel like this is what we all need when we’re like sitting up on a screen and people’s names are floating by, and little heart emojis are floating by, and I’m looking at my own face as well as your face. And I don’t know where I am in time or space, I don’t know. It’s the exact moment that we need to sink into our bodies, and it feels so revolutionary or counter or, you know, a questionable practice to the algorithm.

Annie Bray 09:23

Yes, I mean, immediately I’m sitting here and I’m kind of like, the part of me that is disruptive— like that has a disruptive, rebellious approach to things, which is, I wouldn’t qualify myself as being like really far down that path. But you know, yes, it is a disruptive thing to do —You’re literally disrupting the status quo of Instagram, of social media, of the algorithm by saying, hey, like, what if instead of just blowing past this, you know, moment, what if we stopped and actually experienced it, and then see what happens, right. And it’s like you’ve taken a fork in the road at that point, like you’ve literally said, like, “we’re going down a different path and, want to come?” And you might have fewer people come with you.

Sarah Selecky 10:11

Yeah. Yeah. I feel like we’re talking to the right people right now about this. Writers get it. I mean, that’s what they’re inviting. Every time they’re putting some words down on a page, they’re inviting people to join them instead of doing whatever else that they were doing. So they get it, they get the power. I mean, you know, writers, you live with writers. You’re a writer. Why in particular, is what you teach so important for us writers?

Annie Bray 10:43

Hmm. I’m so curious. I feel like, you know, we’ve talked... we’ve circled around this and I’m always like, oh, am I gonna give a totally different answer than I did last time?

Sarah Selecky 10:51

Probably!

Annie Bray 10:52

But this feels like... I feel passionate about this. Every time we talk about it, I notice something really bubbles up for me. Like when you ask me, why is this so important for writers? I feel it might correlate a little bit with my experience of mothering. I feel very protective. Being a writer is not easy. And any resources that we can add to that life, I’m like, so in for that. Well, you know, specifically why is this somatic awareness, a body based awareness, and also some skills for how to be with our experience, why is this so important for writers? So you know, there’s one thing about learning how to arrive and come back to the body. But that’s actually a tall order, if you’re not also including skills for writing out whatever you find there.

I do think it’s important for everyone. I do think that an experience of being a whole person needs to include some kind of healthy relationship with our own body and our embodied experience. But I think for writers, and we’ve talked about this, like, there’s, I feel like I want to name two important things. One is that writing requires you to be translating sensory experience into language, you know, you talk about bringing the ineffable into language, which is kind of a process. It’s like alchemical. It’s magic. If you have some kind of regular supportive way of landing back in your body, and experiencing, and then maybe even starting to be able to name the experiences that you’re having, that’s just going to be like a tool in your toolkit. I think you’ll just be a better writer. So that’s kind of more in the realm of skill.

Sarah Selecky 12:37

Yeah. It’s a technique.

Annie Bray 12:39

Support and skill. And then the other part relates more to the trauma-informed aspect of my work. And the fact that when we’re writing, we’re exploring memory and consciousness. And we’re also sometimes exploring out into our experience of what’s happening in the world. And trying to go really, to the heart of it. And so that’s risky. It’s risky work.

Sarah Selecky 13:06

I was speaking to a writer yesterday, who was sharing that she had a story that she’d been wanting to tell, she’d been wanting to write it for years. And this year, she started writing it, and working on it gently. It was a difficult, challenging, emotional story. And she was given a deadline. An editor requested a piece from her, which when that happens, and you’re a short story writer, you’re a fiction writer, you’re like, okay! Take it. So she was like, I’ll take the deadline, and she wrote it to the deadline, and successfully finished the piece. The editor really liked it. It’s coming out soon. It’s really a great story. And the story was traumatic, it was about a character who was experiencing, or had experienced sexual abuse. And I don’t want to talk too much about her experience and where she is right now. But when she was talking to me, it was like, this is what your work is for. This is what you do. This is what you help us with, because it wasn’t a story. It wasn’t a personal story. It was fiction. And it was a truth. She was writing a true experience. So her body felt it. Her physiology, her body, mind, and spirit felt it. Because she’s a good writer. And she is transmitting all of that. So the reader is feeling it and it’s still in her, you know, she felt heavy. She kept saying it was a heavy story. It was a heavy experience. And this, I feel, is the trauma aware piece that we don’t... I mean, maybe in writing education, and in creative education there’s a little bit more conversation about this happening now, thankfully. But in my education in creative writing, that was kind of a no-go zone. You couldn’t really talk about the emotional ramifications and physiological ramifications. If you were having an emotional and physiological experience that was difficult and challenging that would kind of leak over into the writing-is-therapy zone. It’s just like, you can’t...writing is not therapy. And I think what we’re seeing is that we can’t separate that. That is a false and damaging separation.

Annie Bray 15:18

Yeah.

Sarah Selecky 15:19

And so given the fact that we see that maybe not all writing is therapy, but writing is definitely therapeutic for the person writing and the readers reading. And given that, what do we do then? Because we need a new set of tools if that’s the case. If writers aren’t going to break their spirits in and through writing, what needs to be written and sharing what needs to be shared, then how do we resource ourselves so we do that and honour it, and honour the experience?

Annie Bray 15:50

Yeah. Oh, my goodness. So many thoughts, Sarah, this is such a rich conversation. So what’s really coming up for me, there’s a bit of a sea-change happening also in the world of trauma resolution. You know, there’s been, I mean, the turbo timeline is, you know, we used to talk about shellshock or PTSD that kind of emerged after the Vietnam War. Shellshock was sort of [experienced for] First and Second World War, and Vietnam vets, then it started to be more like, oh, well, that diagnosis applies to other people: it applies to women who’ve had sexual violence. And then it sort of just started to spread. And now we’ve reached where we are now, where we have this unbelievable capacity to do brain research and imaging. And we know a lot of what’s actually happening in the brain when trauma is occurring. And it’s kind of been like, it’s emerged all very fast. And all of a sudden, there’s this sort of world of people who are fascinated with, and at times possibly fetishizing trauma. Or it’s like this whole idea of trauma is so huge. And I think one of the things that is really amazing to me these days is working with and learning from people who are moving past this kind of monolithic idea of trauma as this thing that like happens, and then you’re in big trouble. And then like, you’ve been changed forever, or you’re, you know, it’s more like, granular than that. And there’s a real beauty in understanding that we’re very resilient, and we have so much capacity to adapt.

I’m just thinking of a writer, how wonderful it would be to just acquire a set of tools, so that you can gradually feel a little bit more in the right relationship with your own traumatic past or whatever that might be. And also to feel like you have a skill set for when you choose and want to go into the heavy and dark material, because you feel called to bring it up and put language to it and transmute it.

Sarah Selecky 17:56

This is exciting to me, when you’re talking about transmuting it. I feel like that is what storytelling does. Like I think that something happened over the past couple hundred years, that storytelling became writing. Something was gained, and something was lost. And I think the connection to our bodies, and the connection to our dreams, the connection to the mystery and the symbolic, perhaps was like so many things from the receptive, nonproductive side of our awareness and consciousness. The subconscious became a little bit lessened in the service of mass producing novels that are page turners. But what the writers know who are creating the stories is there’s always conflict. There’s always a shadow. There’s always an unresolvable dilemma. And for there to be any kind of transformation in a character’s world or life, whatever the story may be, or however subtle that transformation may be, there’s a reckoning. And in that reckoning, comes the desperation of not knowing what to do. The desperation of like, this is impossible, and quite possibly also, all those experiences, those emotional experiences that we try in our waking life, to keep out of our lives. That’s where the writer has to delve. In our normal waking lives, we don’t want a story to break out. We don’t want to have anything to reckon with. Please, let’s not! So every day a writer somehow goes into that place.

I know that that’s a bit of a ramble and I started this talking about the difference between the writing and the storytelling. And I think that’s a false separation. It’s just that in our bodies, and at our desks, and in the academy with all of the MFA programs it’s harder to talk about bringing our body into that relationship with story, with conflict, with shadow, and with that reckoning. And if you take your body out of it, what happens Annie?! Like, is this what happened to Virginia Woolf and Ernest Hemingway? Like, is this what happened to Sylvia Plath? Why does writing have to be so hard? And, ellipsis... Does it?

Annie Bray 20:27

Yeah, I know. Well, I just think because we do culturally, I would say for some time, I mean, this isn’t my area of knowledge. But for a very long time I believe there’s been a sense that making art has to be this kind of, I don’t know, it’s like a trip to hell and back. But then at the same time, there really isn’t a lot of support and appreciation for, maybe it is, maybe sometimes it really is kind of a trip to hell and back. Maybe that’s true, you know? But I also think that whether you’re writing or making art, or generally speaking, engaging in your life in a way that centres meaning, then you’re going to be periodically making trips to the underworld. You’re going to be course correcting, seeing things aren’t right, making big changes going through the painful process — like you and I’ve talked about this — like draft as book, draft as life. It’s not a well supported process. And so I think if there’s a way for writers to begin to learn some of this language, not to have to become neuroscientists and know the depth of this, but to have some literacy in the goings on of their body. So if you are trying to keep a writing practice alive, and you’re grappling regularly either with feeling blocked, or you’re feeling super resistant, that’s where I think a body practice can be incredibly game changing.

Sarah Selecky 21:58

Can you tell us more about this? Because that’s at the heart of something. Like what’s something practical? If a writer knows she loves what she’s doing, she’s drafted the book, it’s great. She’s got her outline out and she has all the scenes and...

Annie Bray 22:12

Just can’t.

Sarah Selecky 22:12

She’s like, why is it so hard? What can she do?

Annie Bray 22:15

That’s like a, that’s kind of a big, you know, that’s cognitive. Generally speaking, that’s kind of like a brain, it’s like, I can tell you this is this, it’s too hard, blah, blah, blah. And we’re having a whole bunch of thoughts. And I mean, I’m just going to fully own that I still feel green. Even though I’ve been doing somatic-based work for 20 years, I still feel taking that process of cognitively naming and swirling about something and shifting, I’m going like, how does it feel in my body right now? Like when I’m walking into my room, and I see my desk, when I see that pile of paper, when I opened my computer, and I just want to turn away, or throw it out the window. Like, what is that? And if we can sort of reduce judgment not be attached to a specific outcome on that given day, but just put the focus on curiosity. What is alive in me right now? What part of me is not okay? Do I feel safe? Do I have the resources I need to go and do the thing that I’m trying to do? Like, am I literally trying to set off on an underworld journey and I don’t even have like, a snack with me? You know, like, we’re so hard on ourselves. We’re so hard on ourselves. And I just think like, how would it feel to have a compassionate approach to this experience? And to maybe play around with like, letting go of the idea of writer’s block and think like, there’s actually a really, really legitimate, and fair, and good reason that some part of your being is not up for this task just now. But it’s not that you’re not up for it forever. You just need to draw in some allies, and resources, and some goodness, so that you’re bolstered enough to turn back towards what’s important to you.

Sarah Selecky 24:08

You know, what I love about what you’re describing is, in some classic story structures, what the hero or heroine needs before going. Like, it’s just so meta. What the heroine needs, there’s an invitation and they always say no first. And then they need another invitation. And then a meeting with some allies, a meeting with a mentor, a teacher to come and guide them. Something makes the invitation more sweet, so that then they can have the courage to go with curiosity. And then they’re rewarded with some kind of wonder or an experience of surprise or something they didn’t expect. It’s that trip to hell and back that you were describing.

Annie Bray 24:55

Yeah!

Sarah Selecky 24:55

It’s baked in. It’s built into our growth and transformation. So what you’re saying is why would a writer have to go into that journey? Even if she’s writing about the journey, knowing the structure herself requires more resources, not giving them to herself before she goes in. So aside from just like snacking, which I do like to do when writing literally.

Annie Bray 25:20

Oh yeah. It was a metaphorical snack.

Sarah Selecky 25:22

Something crunchy or sweet is great.

Annie Bray 25:24

Yeah. Real and metaphorical snack.

Sarah Selecky 25:27

But what are some metaphorical snacks? Like, what are some of the things, and maybe you can share a little bit about some of the stuff that’s in the Story Course? Because that’s what you created for us, is like stuff for our backpack when we go in. What can some of those be? Like for someone who’s listening now who maybe doesn’t have the Story Course. What could they do today if they’re looking at their desk, and they’re feeling that dread?

Annie Bray 25:51

Yeah, so I mean, first I just want to say, one of the sort of basic principles of somatic practice, from my perspective, and others, is, this is work that needs to be done on repeat. We need to enter into some kind of experience with our body, like a ritual or practice, and then preferably do it on some sort of regular basis before we’re really going to start to get the nourishment from it. So you know, I would be cautious to say, like, “oh, do this today and then you’re just going to be like, on fire with your writing later in the afternoon”. But having said that, you know, circling back to just that, that switch from trying to articulate something cognitively. So if you are having an experience of dread, or sometimes it’s not even so clear as a negative feeling, it’s just like a no. So if that’s happening, making a conscious choice to switch into, just even for a short time, it might be kind of hard or uncomfortable to switch into noticing what’s happening in the body. But just taking a brief pause and, you know, try just noticing. Where are you tight? What parts of you have tightened up? What sort of needs might be presenting in the body? And I really am talking about the most basic needs, like, “am I thirsty? Do I need to actually, you know, prepare something for myself, that’s like grounding and nourishing?” You know, those kinds of things are really easily blown past.

And then, you know, the other thing that I just generally like to start talking about with people really early, if they are in this process of turning towards their felt sense, and their embodied experience, is understanding what sort of resources might be available. So before you go too much further with picking apart like, what is this? What does it mean? It’s figuring out like, what do I need right now to feel maybe even, like five or ten percent more resourced? And so I mean, obviously the practices that are in the school really orient towards this quickly, you know, there’s a whole practice about connecting with an ally. You know, but that’s something, even if you don’t want to get into a whole guided practice about it, just really actually recognizing how supportive it could be to connect with an element. Or, I’m just literally meaning light a candle, and be present with the flame. Or open the window and pay attention to the air flowing through — connect with the wind or the flow of the movement. Or go and pour a little bowl of water and sprinkle a little salt into... I mean, I know I’m veering over into the sort of ritualistic...

Sarah Selecky 28:46

I’m into it.

Annie Bray 28:47

Yeah, I mean...

Sarah Selecky 28:50

Writers have more advanced ritualistic practices to get... Like there are whole books written about writers and their rituals. Yeah.

Annie Bray 28:58

Yeah. But also not, you know, noticing if some of your rituals have become stale, and if they’re not serving you. Allowing a bit of spontaneity into the practice of identifying, what do I need right now to feel bolstered as I move towards this meaningful work that I want to do?

Sarah Selecky 29:17

Yeah, yeah.

Annie Bray 29:19

We could say a lot more about that. But I feel like that’s probably just a simple little...

Sarah Selecky 29:23

That’s beautiful. And I think you’ve explained it really well. And I do think that, again, the writers listening already understand, I mean, we do the work of this deep noticing for our characters and scene. We keep reorienting ourselves to scene, to scene, to scene. So what you’re actually asking us again, it’s this bigger perspective, which is to orient ourselves in our own scene first.

Annie Bray 29:46

Yes! Literally put that in...

Sarah Selecky 29:49

Yeah.

Annie Bray 29:50

Yeah. Orient yourself to your own scene. The scene that you are in right now is the most important scene. It needs to be tended, and it needs to be as just right as possible, and it can’t be perfect. If you try to make it perfect, you’re never going to get down to your work. There’s some kind of flip where the striving for perfection is an avoidance tactic. But the turning towards and noticing, what is a doable thing that I can actually bring in right now to make this just more workable? That is a very transformative thing. It’s a way of tending to ourselves in a really deep way.

I also would like to just share that if we start doing that in small ways, it can be quite emotional. Because if we’ve really come through life in a way where we’ve tended to push our needs aside, and most of us have in certain ways, when we are really compassionate and look after ourselves, and these kind of simple, almost childlike types of caretaking ways, it can actually be a little... Can take a bit of getting used to.

Sarah Selecky 30:59

Annie, we’re coming to the end of our time here. We will continue our conversations again, I’m certain, but can you help writers? What do you do? Like if people want some of this, how do they find you, and is there a place... I know, go to anniebray.com? Is there any other way people...Can we call you?

Annie Bray 31:27

Yes, please do. Yeah, so I would say, if a person is trying to write and is starting to recognize through some of their body awareness, that they may be grappling with —like, bigger stuff than just like sort of a five minute ritual before writing is gonna help with that one part — you can book a discovery call with me. And I offer one-on-one coaching. And we can do a much more bespoke approach to supporting you through a journey from feeling stuck or afraid, or, you know, all the different kinds of stuff that can come up around the creative life. You know, that’s one piece. And then, by the time this comes out, I’ll be already into the summer program that I’m running. But it’s basically a beta program where I’m orienting towards working with caregivers, and creatives. I mean, those are my people. And I don’t even really fully distinguish the two as separate.

Sarah Selecky 32:36

Love that.

Annie Bray 32:37

I feel like whether we’re caregiving humans, or we’re a garden, or like our creative dreams, you know, it’s a lot of the same principles apply. So yeah, there’ll be group offerings coming in the fall of this year.

Sarah Selecky 32:52

Wonderful. Thank you. And anyone else who’s listening, definitely, if you have the Story Course, or if you haven’t yet upgraded to the new edition of the Story Course, do so now, so you can get in on some of these rituals and practices. There’s one for every lesson. And I highly recommend them, they have definitely changed my writing life. But also I know a lot of writers who have told me that they’re also using these practices every day, which is what you were inviting us to do, right? With the practice, with the long game, with the repetitions. You know, when you start your day, when there’s a phone call and you don’t know who’s on the other end. Before you show up for a Zoom meeting that has a lot of people in it. They’re incredible ways to orient yourself in your own scene. Yeah.

Thank you so much, Annie, for everything that you’re doing, and for bringing it to our community. I’m really, really grateful. Love working with you.

Annie Bray 33:54

It’s magical for me to be working with your school and with you. Thank you, Sarah.

Sarah Selecky 33:59

All right.

Annie Bray 34:00

Bye.

Sarah Selecky 34:02

Bye.

View Details

Catherine Wright & Sarah Selecky — Sleep, July 2021
Conversation recorded on May 18th, 2021

SPEAKERS

Catherine Wright & Sarah Selecky

Sarah Selecky

Catherine Wright is a lifelong lover of sleep. Starting in early childhood, she discovered sleep was a stabilizing force in her life, something worth protecting to help her feel grounded and happy. Almost a decade ago after becoming a mom, and bumping up against the realities of sleep deprivation, she evolved her practice as a birth doula and Shiatsu therapist into a sleep coaching practice supporting other new families on this frontier. Her practice has since blossomed again, and she now also works with school aged kids, teens, and adults. Catherine understands sleep is something we can nurture from the moment we wake until the moment we turn out the lights. She’s seen that cultivating a great sleep practice is really about bringing awareness to the elements of healthy sleep, and tending to them as we go about our days. She believes that when we heal our sleep, we inevitably heal other areas of our life too. This has been Catherine’s experience, as she too has navigated bouts of insomnia and burnout, and now taps into the pleasure of sleep and rest as her superpowers, while helping others do the same. Catherine’s soulful approach to sleep is evidence-based and integrates cognitive behavioural therapy for insomnia, sleep science, and mindset work. She’s a certified sleep coach and educator and the founder of Recoop, which you can find at www.recoop.care. She’s also one of my closest friends, which makes me really lucky. Catherine — hi, and welcome.

Catherine Wright

Hi, Sarah, thanks for having me.

Sarah Selecky

This is really fun and I have all sorts of official business-like questions for you. But also, since we’ve known each other for so long, I have a feeling that we will just begin to ravel and unravel into conversations about sleep as we often do: sleep and creativity.

Catherine

I love it. Yeah, I think that this will come fairly naturally to us. We spend quite a bit of time talking about sleep.

Sarah Selecky

Now I have you and I’m recording and I can just get to ask you all the questions that I really want to ask you.

Catherine

Excellent.

Sarah Selecky

So first of all, just briefly, in case the people who are listening haven’t heard of a sleep coach before and this is new to them: as an adult, like for adult human beings — what does a sleep coach do? What does your sleep coaching practice look like? What might it look like for someone?

Catherine

Yeah, great question. So my sleep coaching practice looks like... Well, first of all, I only work with people who have non-medical sleep challenges. So luckily, about 95% of sleep challenges are actually non-medical. So most of us who are struggling with sleep don’t actually have a bigger underlying medical issue, like sleep apnea, for instance. So my first job is to make sure that the person’s sleep challenge isn’t actually a medical sleep challenge. And like I say, most of the time, it’s not. Most of the time, what we’re looking at are, well there’s usually something that happens in a person’s life initially, like a precipitating factor, that starts to cause this disruption with sleep. It could be a childhood trauma. It could be the loss of a job. It could be having kids. There’s usually sort of a main event or a stressor that sort of starts to disrupt our natural ability to sleep. So sort of figuring out what is that? What was that? Where did this begin? Where did sleep start feeling like it became a challenge?

And everybody’s different. For some people, it started a long time ago, and for some people you know, it’s more recent. So sort of figuring out what is the cause and then really looking at, for each individual, what is it that’s going to help this individual get back on track with their sleep. And usually, it’s a combination of things that we look at. I refer back to what I call the elements of sleep. So we’re looking at it almost as if sleep is a garden that we’re tending to and we need to make sure that we give it, you know, the proper diet and everything it needs. But often there are sort of habits or behavioural changes that need to take place. Whether that’s working on certain routines or rhythms — timing is a really big piece. So figuring out for each individual, when is our optimum sleep time.

Everybody’s is a bit different. Everybody sort of has their own sort of really awesome sweet spot for falling asleep and waking up. In the biohacking world that’s referred to as your chronotype. So there’s a lot of stuff out there right now, talking about like chronotypes and how to work with your chronotype. We sort of figure out chronotype, we figure out behavioural changes, and then we work with our own energy management mindset. A lot of the time, there’s beliefs that need to be shifted in order to allow for sleep to unfold in sort of a more natural way. A lot of people who’ve had long term challenges with sleep, you know, think of themselves as bad sleepers. And so there’s often that piece that needs attending to as well.

But a big part of my job is to sort of put the sleep puzzle together for each individual. Sort of look at what are the elements that we need to work on, and then help that person be really accountable as they start to make the changes. Because it’s hard. As everybody knows, changing behaviours is difficult. And it takes time.

Sarah Selecky

Yeah, yeah. I love that you described it like a garden that you need all the different nutrients or elements to surround this force, this being, this power — I like the way you talk about it. What came up for me when you were talking, which is, I also have a note about it, and it often comes up when we talk about sleep is — I feel like it’s so similar in some ways to the creative mindset. And there are all these parallels. Because creativity, and our feeling of being in a creative flow state, also is something that people have a mindset around, like, “I’m not a creative person, I’m not good at getting my routines right.” There’s a feeling of being an adversary to your creative mindset. And I know like a lot of, and I certainly have been there myself when I’ve had deep bouts of insomnia, feeling like sleep is this adversary that I’m fighting with, kind of, I want it but I love it. And I’m in this relationship with it that’s kind of negative. And it’s so much like … I’ve been reading your work, and I’ve been reading a lot about sleep science, but especially the way you’ve talked about it in your newsletters, you’re writing about taking care of your mindset and taking care... It’s these elements of sleep, the garden that you’re talking about. And so many of them are similar to what I advise writers, and what I know works for me from my writing practice: like tending to your nervous system, having analogue nights, getting routines set up, and changing your behavioural patterns, so that things flow better. And it’s something I guess, that you receive, rather than actively force and do. Maybe that’s sort of what’s similar about sleep and creativity. But I wondered if any of this rings a bell for you? If you see similarities there? And, or, and also, is there a known relationship to sleep and creativity?

Catherine

Wow, okay. That is a really awesome parallel. And listening to you, it actually makes so much sense to me. Because what you’re doing, and what you’re helping people do, is tap into something that’s already there. It’s like allowing for an unfolding of something that’s waiting to come to light. Right? So it’s about removing blockages, and paying attention to when we’re applying those own blockages to ourselves. Whether it’s the thoughts that we’re having, our posture, or how we’re breathing, or what we had for breakfast. You know? All of those things. So it’s really more of like, an allowing, like you say, then then a forcing or fixing. Because naturally, our bodies all really do know how to take care of us and how to sleep. Just like we’re all, you know, creative as well. And so it’s more of like, yeah, exactly. I like peeling it back and allowing that to unfold and happen naturally. The linkages between, and I’ve never quite thought of it until, like, exactly like that, but it is sort of about allowing the true nature to be revealed. Right? Whether it’s writing or sleeping.

And, yeah, I mean, the links between sleep and creativity, they’ve done so much study on this now and it really... That’s why a lot of people call sleep and rest a superpower because now we know that it actually is...Specifically it’s the REM sleep and the dream sleep that we link to creativity. And so when we nurture our sleep, both our deep sleep and REM sleep, and our dream sleep, we are also nurturing our creativity. A lot of people use yoga nidra, which is like a sort of a meditation or a resting practice, which takes us down through the different sleep frequencies. Brainwaves. And a lot of people also use that to get creativity happening in their life — to spark creativity, find unique solutions to problems that they may feel stuck on. All that kind of thing. I mean, sleep is definitely used now. People are motivated to sleep well for feeding their creativity.

Sarah Selecky

Ooh, okay, there’s so much in here. I want to go back and just like unpack, unfasten. So, first of all, you were talking about deep sleep, dream sleep, and REM sleep? Were those the three categories? Did you have different...

Catherine
Yeah, no...I mean, yes, essentially, there’s two, like there’s NREM, so non-REM, otherwise known as deep sleep. And then there’s sort of four stages of sleep within that. But really, there’s deep sleep, and then there’s REM sleep, which we know of as dream sleep.

Sarah Selecky

And does deep sleep, the NREM come first, and then REM after?

Catherine

Yes, and then REM. Yep, in 90 minute cycles. Exactly. And they sort of serve different purposes, like they sort of work differently in the brain. So you want both. Both are essential to survival. But they definitely have different jobs.The deep sleep is sort of more body focused: it’s more of where your growth hormones get going, and where you start to repair on a cellular level. And then the REM sleep is often attributed to memory consolidation, creativity — sort of stitching together the different things we learned the previous day to make sense of it, and put it together so that then we can apply it to our lives in a meaningful way.

Sarah Selecky

Oh, that’s so interesting. I’m just thinking now how smart our bodies are: that they put the stuff that we need physically to survive first, and then, because I know in stressful times, sometimes just like crashing, and then getting up later, like at least you’ve told me this once, or I learned this from you once, that when I was waking up in the night and not getting a ton of REM sleep, I was still getting a lot of that NREM sleep when I first crashed after a stressful day. I would just like sleep and sleep and sleep. Like at 8:30 I’d fall asleep on the couch. But then I’d be up and lose some sleep. But talking to you reassured me that my body was not falling apart, because it was still rebalancing. However my creativity was suffering and my memory, like, I was just like fumbly and not emotionally at my tip top best. It’s kind of like art — there’s the first half of that cycle is necessary for our physical functioning. And then like, the art comes from the second, sort of.

Catherine

Yes, totally, that’s exactly what it is. And you just reminded me, because I remember that conversation that we had, that the way that our body distributes deep sleep and REM sleep is actually different across the night. So the first half of the night is more deep-sleep rich. And the second half of the night is more REM-sleep rich. So it’s totally right. It’s like our bodies have decided like, okay, we need to at least make sure the body’s okay. And if there’s time, we can kind of finesse it. Get that, like, you know, the extra down, which is all the work that happens around memory consolidation, deletion, and creativity and that kind of thing. Yeah, exactly.

Sarah Selecky

Like, I hope that that’s reassuring to anyone else out there who’s struggling with sleep or being up in the night. Sometimes when you read about sleep stuff, it gets a little scary. I know we’ve talked about this too, like sometimes it feels like, “You must sleep or else!” and it’s like, “oh, oh God”. But it’s nice to also remember — and I love this. I love how you teach this, and talk about this —but the body is really smart and knows how to take care of itself. And healing is what it does. And you know, I think about how a cut will heal without me having to do anything about it. And probably a lot happens through those cat naps that I take in, those, you know… Like, a lot happens: the body knows how to take care of itself. So for anyone in burnout, there is a capacity, even if you’re not getting great sleep, to still nurture your body.

Catherine

Absolutely, and your body wants homeostasis. Your body always wants to get you back to equilibrium. So even if you’re not getting, you know, your ideal eight hours of sleep a night, your body will really take what it needs in the amount of time that you give it. It will be efficient in how it goes about helping you repair and restore. And we always want to look at our sleep, you know, with a bit of gentleness and acceptance because it isn’t always perfect. And some of the people who get stuck around sleep are, you know what I called sleep perfectionists, right? And I was one. I’m a recovering sleep perfectionist. Like that sort of catastrophizing,when it’s not perfect, right? Our sleep doesn’t like that, our sleep doesn’t want us to put pressure on it to be everything.

Sarah Selecky

See, this is also how it reminds me of our creative self and our creative voice: that trying to make everything that we write and create, like, any kind of perfectionism is just like it cowers from it, it makes it cringe. Like it wants to be in a joyful collaboration with us. That’s how our creativity wants to exist. It wants to love us and be loved. And that’s when it really flourishes. And that means kind of relaxing and letting a lot of what seems to be imperfect just be.

Catherine

Yep, exactly. It’s exactly the same.

Sarah Selecky

In your last newsletter, you mentioned this feedback loop. And I wanted to talk about that a little. We’ve covered that even if we’re not getting great sleep, we can still nourish ourselves and the body wants homeostasis, and we’re going to be okay, and not to catastrophize. Now talking about how to like, not hack it, I don’t want to use that word, but just putting in really great elements for our sleep garden. And you wrote about this feedback loop that while there is a correlation that when you don’t get a great sleep, there seems to be a tendency for some lower emotions or feelings to come. Can you talk a little bit about that?

Catherine

Yeah, so sometimes when our sleep bank’s a little bit on the lower side — it’s the first thing that a lot of people notice actually — is mood. And just sort of feeling that low resilience. And the thoughts that sort of come along with that. So when we are sort of scraping the bottom of the barrel a little bit with sleep, we have a higher propensity for emotions on the lower end of the emotional scale — so depression, stagnation, feelings of apathy, that kind of thing. And the feedback loop works such that, you know, often when we’re in that space, it’s harder for us to take action. It’s harder for us to do the things that we know we should do, or maybe we want to do in order to pull ourselves up that emotional scale. And also, we’re more prone to sort of the effects of stress on our nervous system, which then can feed back into our sleep. So it can sort of become a bit of a feedback loop. And I know there are some people out there that actually, in the sleep world, that actually think that insomnia and depression are the same thing. I’m not sure I entirely agree. I think it’s a little bit more complicated than that. But I think the point being that, often, those things go together, and they’re really hard to pull apart because of that feedback loop. One exacerbates the next. And the opposite is also true. So often, once we start to turn around our sleep, or we get to go on holiday, or have a really good week of sleep, we can start to see, oh, we wake up and we feel really different. Our perspective, actually, and our outlook on the exact same thing, is totally different. Depending on how much... you’ve probably had that too. I’m sure you’ve had that too. I’ve definitely had that too. The thing hasn’t changed. The only difference is that we just got a good night’s sleep, but it looks totally different.

Sarah Selecky

Everything can be totally different. Including, and especially when I’m reading something new, or probably revising as well, but lately it’s been writing something new and getting myself into the chair, sitting down and writing even though I haven’t had a great night’s sleep. It’s so much more effortful, everything is so much more effortful. And then I can get there and it’s fine. But then the feeling I have about the writing session that I just had. I know that I have no access to knowing whether it was good or not good. Like, I know that. But the feeling I have that was just crappy — it lingers, it hangs around. And I’ve noticed that if I have a good night’s sleep, not only is it easier to sit down and enjoy my writing session, it doesn’t feel like I have to force myself. I generally feel pleased that I showed up and that was enough. And there’s this feeling of like, enoughness. And nothing really, probably is different. It’s just my mindset.

Catherine

It’s your attitude towards, what is that? What is it?

Sarah Selecky

What is it? What do we know what it is?

Catherine

I’m not sure that I can put that into words. It’s perspective. I don’t know what’s happening to the brain when it’s under the force of sleep. But whatever it does, it does change our perception. It alters the way that we see things. And we have greater access, I think maybe to what it is: we have greater access to the emotions on the upper side of the emotional scale. So we can choose to believe that our work was great, or that we had a good writing session, right? We have more access to that choice. Because — here’s the other interesting thing that happens when we’re well slept — So the part of our brain: we’ve got the amygdala, which is the emotional centre, where all of our emotions reside. And then we have the — this is about as neuroscience-y as I can possibly get — then we have the prefrontal cortex, which is in charge of basically decision making and follow through. So, you set an intention, and then you decide, and then you follow through. That’s the part of your brain that’s engaged. When we don’t sleep well, the two don’t communicate properly. So the amygdala and the prefrontal cortex, it’s like they’ve got jumbled communication. So we can, I was just thinking about this in the context of writing, we can make a decision: today I’m going to sit down and have a really great writing session. Our ability to actually follow through is way higher than if we’re low resourced with sleep. So it could be going for a run, it could be cooking a healthy meal, it might, it’s any sort of positive outcome you want to follow through with, or behaviour, or habit is way, way, way easier when we have sleep under our belt. So because of the way that those two parts of the brain are communicating on sleep, and without sleep. Does that make sense?

Sarah Selecky

It does. It makes sense, and it’s just making me feel like, I love sleep. I’m so grateful for sleep. Like, it’s my favourite. It’s such an ally.

Catherine

Such an ally. Yep.

Sarah Selecky

Love sleep. So, okay, we already talked a little bit about yoga nidra. And you mentioned, that is a really great resource that I want to remember and flag. But just how much we love sleep and how great sleep is, and how great it is for our creativity. What are the elements that you’re talking about, about sleep? How can we nurture it? What are some of the things that we can do? Yoga nidra is one. But if we want to have that delicious sensation, where it’s easier, where we don’t... It’s not so uphill, to do the things that we really want to do and act on them. And we want to hang out more in the higher part of the scale, not just sort of tolerating the stresses of the day. But actually having that perspective. What are some of the things we can do to nourish it, that you would suggest?

Catherine

So I put yoga nidra into the stillness bucket. If we’re looking at the elements for sleep, we need to, we want to, ensure that we’ve got enough stillness built into our days so that we’re not sort of in that state of hyperarousal. So that when we go to bed, our bodies are able to downshift and drop into sleep and stay asleep. So it’s not that we have to be still all day long. But it’s more about sort of tending to our nervous systems by having stuff in our day that allows us to access that kind of stillness — whether it’s going for a walk or doing yoga nidra, or cuddling a pet, or having a stress reducing conversation with a loved one — all of those sort of down-shifting things. Those things actually help us fall asleep, and stay asleep, when bedtime comes.

Sarah Selecky

Like, if you do them throughout the day?

Catherine

Yeah, exactly. Especially if you are someone who is, and tends towards, a higher stress job or you know, tends to be pretty revved up, or a lot of rushing around or multitasking. Then I think that those stillness elements become more important, because they give us these little pockets of pause where we can kind of bring ourselves back down, and that helps us at nighttime to fall asleep more efficiently and stay asleep more efficiently. And then the flip side to that is movement. It’s funny — our bodies just naturally need a little bit of this still and a little bit of the movement. Wear and tear is really awesome for sleep. So wearing our bodies out during the day makes it really, really easy for our bodies to drop into sleep. We’re physically tired. And the exercise also puts a stop on this cortisol production. So the stress hormone, which our sleep loves taking little breaks from, you know, pushing out the cortisol. So exercise sort of turns off the stress hormones and really dials up all the happy hormones that are also part of melatonin. So that’s the big sleep hormone. We want all of those hormones. We want to kind of boost them up. I think of exercise as the best first aid for sleep. You don’t know what to do, or you’re stuck, or you’re stressed or whatever, that’s a really great, easy— well, I say, easy — great place to start. Because the benefits for that juicy, deep restorative sleep when we exercise is huge. And actually, that’s the part of sleep, that when we exercise, we spend more time sleeping. Twenty minutes of cardio and you spend, I think an additional up to forty minutes in deep sleep.

Sarah Selecky

Wow, really? They correlated that? Wow.

Catherine

Yeah. And the studies that have been done say that you really start to reap those benefits after like two weeks.

Sarah Selecky

Wow. Okay.

Catherine

Yeah, it’s big.

Sarah Selecky

Okay. Again, I’m just seeing the parallels in creative writing, because you need both. And it’s funny this whole month that I’m talking to you is part of this theme — wellness for writers — and I have Ronit Jinich talking about stillness. And I have a post about being a writer who moves and uses physical activity. And I’ve got Annie Bray talking about our nervous system, and how to downshift throughout the day. So it’s like, they really are twinsies.

Okay, so I interrupted you, though. So there’s stillness. And then there’s movement.

Catherine

There’s stillness and movement. And then I would say, like, for, I’m thinking of writers, and I’m thinking of, you know, all the creative people out there, there is a stereotype. In the people who’ve done the chronotype study, like kind of people into like, night owls and larks and all the different sleep types. Creative people and writers, this is a generalization, this is not everyone, but they tend to fall into sort of the night owl category, or more sort of sporadic sleep patterns. And, I mean, that’s totally not going to be true for everyone, but it’s going to be true for some people. And the thing that now that, like all the bigwigs in the sleep science world are discovering, is that so much of the quality of the sleep that we get is just as important as the quantity. If not more. So what I mean by that is having a steady time, like ritual, and bedtime, time of night, where you start to prepare yourself and let your body drop into sleep. Keeping that pretty steady is more helpful to your sleep then actually, like counting how many hours of sleep that you get.

Sarah Selecky

Wow.

Catherine

So, and again, it has to do with offering your body that beautiful diet of the REM sleep and the deep sleep, which your body will do if you kind of give it steady timing. So it would be more important to keep the timing steady than it is, you know, go to bed before X hour if that makes sense.

Sarah Selecky

It does make sense, and you know, it is really similar to you know, athletes: when you ask a fitness coach, like what’s the best time of day to workout? They’ll just say like, make it the same time every day so your body knows and you’ll have the best workout. And what I always say is like, it’s really good for your writing if you can pick the same... It doesn’t matter if it’s morning or afternoon or night. It’s just really great if there’s a ritual attached to it. It makes it so much easier for you to slip into your creative space if it’s the same time every day.

Catherine

It’s funny that there’s so many parallels. I didn’t realize that was a writing thing, but of course it is, because it just becomes like a habit like anything else. And then the habit gets grooved out and then we’re moving with the current rather than against the current.

Sarah Selecky

That’s right. Yeah.

Catherine

It’s exactly the same. It’s like a grooving out. And it starts in childhood. That’s why like, you know, we get babies on naps, and toddlers. Because they start to like groove out these sleep times during the day where their bodies know, oh, it’s twelve o’clock. You know, all of a sudden the child or the toddler starts eye-rubbing like clockwork right? Because their bodies grooved out this window where it knows, okay, now it’s sleep-time. Boom. And we nurture that by offering a schedule and nap times. And we’re not that different: we’re the same.

Sarah Selecky

I love it. I love thinking about this. I don’t know where the line is between where it’s a useful metaphor to think about how we take care of our sleep and how we take care of our writing, and where it’s actually the same. Like physiologically, I’m not sure. It’s a little blurry. But just thinking about those nap times, like, something feels off, if you’re a writer, or a creator, and you’re not creating for a while, something feels really off. Like a toddler who needs a nap who doesn’t have the space — just something’s off. Your system is not right. And then we, so often as grown adult people, we don’t recognize those cues as telling us, you know, we need a nap. Literally, it would be great to just have a nap. Or, we need some creative outlet, we need to receive some creative inspiration, we need to open up a blank page and doodle on it. Like, we need that. And we feel off because we haven’t received, that we haven’t been open to that, and we haven’t experienced that part of our human self in a while. So then we do things like eat chips, or pick a fight with a friend, or you know, do other things to kind of let it out.

Catherine

Absolutely. Oh, that’s amazing. The whole biohacking thing is about also finding windows — you’re carving out the same time for eating, sleeping, and then you’ve got your high performance times, right, as well. And if you skip a meal, your tummy will start to growl right around the same time because your metabolism is so used to being nurtured at that exact same time, right? So it all fits together like a puzzle. It’s fascinating actually.

Sarah Selecky

It’s fascinating.

Catherine

And I never, I never ever thought... I wonder too, if for writers, if, well I don’t know if you do that, but help people find their utmost alert times of day and use that?

Sarah Selecky

Oh, definitely. Definitely. Yeah, absolutely. Again, it’s going with the flow. So it’s like the portal is there and you can go through it. The language I use to describe it is like, you’re collaborating with a source. So you don’t have to force it, you don’t have to build it, you just show up and you pay attention. And then you use your craft. That’s where you’re putting your use. But the breath of inspiration or the images that rise up, all you need to do at that point is just write them down. You don’t have to think them up.

Catherine

Ah, love that. Oh I think of sleep in exactly the same way. You’re collaborating with the source by also allowing yourself to have a buffer zone before bedtime. By like, giving yourself a little bit of a window around your devices, and your sleep. That’s just collaborating. That’s collaborating with source. You’re saying, sleep, you’re here, you know, you’re coming, I’m coming for you. And you’re coming for me. And I’m gonna let that happen, with ease, by not staring at my phone until the last moment I have to turn off the light. Or whatever. It’s just… that’s exactly what is. It’s like collaborating with the force. Yeah.

Sarah Selecky

Yeah, and the force is so mysterious. Like the creative force, sleep, is really mysterious. Like, we’re not even awake. We’re unconscious, right? We’re kind of like, or maybe with lucid dreaming, maybe like semi-conscious, because we can remember our dreams, some of us sometimes better than others. But there is a similar loss of separate ego, kind of consciousness in sleep and creative states, that is very mysterious. And to honour the space around it, like the buffer zone that you described. I love it. It’s like you’re respectfully making way for sleep to come and you’re not assuming that you can just switch on and off like a robot. You’re like, making... you’re preparing for it. Like it’s something that’s kind of mysteriously separate from you that you’re inviting by rolling out this little carpet of a buffer zone. And I feel like the rituals I endeavour to take on around my writing and how I describe it to writers I work with, it’s like, honouring and respecting the creativity so you don’t think so egocentrically: “I know everything about this story. I’m gonna write this now. I’m going to make it all up”. No, you light a candle for it. You get the good ink out. You close the door. You clean your desk. You respect it so that it wants to come.

Catherine

Yeah. I call it sleep revering. And that’s totally exactly what it is like. It’s a power that’s bigger than you. You know to offer it a little bit of that reverence. It doesn’t have to be, you know, a crazy two hour wind down. But just to bring a little bit of attention and intention to that. That’s the biggest surrender that you do, right, all day long, is fall asleep.

Sarah Selecky

Yeah. It’s humility.

Catherine

It’s pretty amazing. And to drop into writing right? Where you let go.

Sarah Selecky

Yeah. Yeah, there’s humility to it. With respect, I’m going to surrender this and let go of knowing everything for this part. Yeah. Oh, it’s so beautiful. I love talking to you about this. Let’s do more again.

We’re coming to the end of our time. So I’d love to wrap up. Before we say goodbye and tell people how they can find you again, is there anything that you’re really excited about right now? Like a new frontier for you? Or a new way of looking or thinking or something that you would... What are you excited about right now? Around sleep?

Catherine

Hmm. I’m excited about helping people really, like the conversation that we just had, actually, that we sort of just left off on in terms of reviewing sleep. And I’m excited about helping people really find more pleasure in their sleep. Whether it’s the rituals that they have around their sleep, whether it’s starting to pay attention to what it actually feels like to drop into sleep, like the sort of the brain wave frequencies that change, and that’s where yoga nidra is really fun. And I’m having a lot of fun really getting into that. But I think just more around helping people really use sleep and the rituals around sleep as something that’s enjoyable, something we can really gain pleasure from. So it’s not just about, “I have to go to sleep”. But really helping people have more conversations — like you and I are having — where we can really start to see how much of our sleep, and our sleep practice, can be really, really, really enjoyable. I think that’s where I’m excited to dig in more.

Sarah Selecky

Love it. I know that I have benefited greatly from being your friend, as you’ve learned more and more and more about this. And definitely, definitely, I’m experiencing more pleasure in my sleep after talking to you and working with you. So I’m really excited to introduce you to my people. To the people I know. If someone wants to work with you, what would you recommend? I mean, first of all, everyone listening, like, sign up for Cath’s newsletter at recoop.care. For sure. The newsletter is amazing. But how else can people reach you? And what might you point them to if they’re interested?

Catherine

I offer twenty minute chats with anybody who is maybe looking for sleep support, if they would like one-on-one support. That’s how I work with people right now. So anybody is welcome to email me at catherine@recoop.care and I will happily set up a phone chat. And I can learn a little bit about what it might be that you’re struggling with or want to work on with your sleep and let you know how I work with people. I’m pretty flexible in terms of my support time and my packages. And in the next month or so I will be popping up some groups as well. So some sleep circles where I’m going to be doing some sleep education, but also with a little bit of individualized support along the way. And if you sign up for my newsletter, I will be definitely providing more info as that starts to come together. But it’s probably gonna happen in the next couple of months.

Sarah Selecky

Okay! Amazing.

Catherine

Yeah!

Sarah Selecky

That’s great. Highly recommend it.

Catherine

Thank you Sarah.

Sarah Selecky

Thank you so much, Cath.

Catherine

This was great.

Sarah Selecky

Yeah, it was really, really great.

Catherine

Yeah. My pleasure.

Sarah Selecky

More soon. Bye.

Catherine

Bye.

View Details

Gillian Ferrabee and Sarah Selecky: FLOW
Conversation recorded on May 25th, 2021

Sarah Selecky 00:05

Gillian Ferrabee has such an exciting and multifaceted professional story. As I was preparing for our conversation theme, studying flow and improvisation, I recognized our theme in the way that she’s followed the twists and turns of her creative career. This is one of the signature features of flow.

So, I’ll tell you her story. She started as a performer and for over a decade toured Europe, North America, and Mexico with the innovative dance theatre companies Carbone 14 and O Vertigo Danse. She then expanded into a new decade-long career as an actor in TV and film. In 2004, she joined Cirque du Soleil and traveled the globe auditioning talent. She was the artistic casting director of The Beatles: Love show. And in 2008, she was casting advisor for the complete roster of the company’s touring shows. Then in 2012, she was promoted to the Director of the Creative Lab at Cirque du Soleil Media, where she led a team developing projects destined for international TV, film, and new media markets. Those highlights include the 2016 Emmy Award winning VR project Inside The Box: Kurios, produced with Felix & Paul Studios for Samsung, as well as the preschool animated series Luna Petunia for Netflix. She also developed projects in partnership with Ubisoft studios, Google Chrome, Fox Studios, Jim Henson Studios, and Discovery South America.

In 2018, Gillian founded the innovation agency Kite Parade, which offers consulting and training and transformational leadership, multiple point of view storytelling, actualizing genius creativity, and cultivating masterful collaboration. Clientele include international consumer product brands, scientific and cultural organizations, nonprofit foundations, and digital startups. Our own school has worked with Kite Parade too. Gillian is a certified coach with the Hendricks Institute and she’s been coaching creative professionals and creative executives one on one for the last 10 years. That’s how I first discovered Gillian. I read The Big Leap by Gay Hendricks and then I went looking for a coach who used the Hendricks method. Gillian is more than a coach though. She’s a magical unicorn, and she’s joining us now from Quebec. Not Montreal, though. Right, Gillian? You’re somewhere else right now?

Gillian Ferrabee 02:29

Yeah, right now I’m about an hour north of Montreal, on the Laurentians.

Sarah Selecky 02:32

The Laurentians. Welcome. I’m so excited to introduce you to our readers. I’m so excited to introduce our readers to you. Welcome, Gillian, thank you for being here.

Gillian Ferrabee 02:43

Thank you for inviting me.

Sarah Selecky 02:46

So I want to start simply, I think it’s simply, by asking you about a couple of stories that you’ve told me over the past years that we’ve known each other, that I’ve never forgotten. They just keep coming up for me. And when I was thinking about flow, and asking you about flow, and our conversation about flow, I was like, I want you to talk about these in this context. So the first one: do you remember telling me about working with some executives, I think, or someone in the corporate world, and putting balloons into their hands in a meeting as a way to help them learn something new or have a more productive brainstorming or something? Do you remember this story?

Gillian Ferrabee 03:26

Yes, I do.

Sarah Selecky 03:27

Can you tell us... can you talk about that? What were you doing?

Gillian Ferrabee 03:31

I did it initially in a workshop that was on how to elevate the results from creative meetings and stuff like that. And then I later did it in meetings. And the principle is that our brain is, from a neurological point of view if you like, our brain is primarily a sensory receptor — so what you’re seeing and feeling and hearing — that’s what our brain is doing most of the time.

And we’re all aware of that. Otherwise, we would, you know, fall off our chair and not know what to eat. And so our brain is constantly picking up information. And then the thinking is on top of that, the cognitive and other practices, and creativity is in more the cognitive sphere. So if you were to give your sensory system just a little bit of new information, it opens the net, if you like, of what your mind is paying attention to.

You add something as simple as a balloon, and I tell people, you need to keep the balloon in one hand or the other through this whole meeting. So their body is going to pay just enough attention to keep it from falling and to keep it from bursting. But it’s not going to occupy any of the real conscious thinking track. But it’s going to be occupying the sensory track that’s going to say “Ooh, this is a different associative rapport.” And we all know that in creativity, the new ideas often come from new associative reports. And so what they found that happens is if you do that on the sensory level, and then you drop in a creative question, your intellectual, factual thinking brain will also expand the net of associative ideas.

Sarah Selecky 05:02

Wow.

Gillian Ferrabee 05:02

So that’s the principle, that because your sensory brain has gone, “Whoo, wait a minute: this is different than usual,” that your creative brain… And I’ll let people know this, this idea came because Cirque du Soleil had a core principle that they never repeated themselves. But imagine you come into a meeting when I was there, they’d made 12 shows, every one of them was what’s called a “golden egg.” So it was 14 years running, 84% capacity of sales, like there never was a drop in any of the shows. So now it’s time to make the 13th show. And the mandate is you cannot repeat anything fundamental from the first 12 shows. Well, our mind has creative bias as well. All those things worked. So the first thought you’re going to have for your own survival in a way is like, “Let’s repeat what we did that is working as a golden egg.” And so you have to juggle your brain to say, you’re not allowed to go to the familiar. And we all know that challenge. But strangely enough, sensory input is a huge optimizing factor of that ability. So that’s why people get great ideas when they’re, you know, walking their dog or in the shower.

Sarah Selecky 05:52

Right!

Gillian Ferrabee 06:12

Yeah, there’s additional sensory input. But you know, your dog’s a little bit different every day, the weather is different, there’s other people on the path. So there’s something that you do have to pay attention to. So it has to be a kind of relaxed input, but just a little bit different or that your brain has to pay attention to.

Sarah Selecky 06:29

Yeah! Well, I’m thinking about, like writers who knit and like quilting bees, and anything where you’re doing something with your hands that’s just challenging enough to keep you occupied. Like you have to pay attention.

Gillian Ferrabee 06:43

Right.

Sarah Selecky 06:44

Or walking your dog, or getting into your car, you have to pay attention. It’s dangerous if you don’t pay attention, but you know how to do enough of it comfortably that it’s very relaxed.

Gillian Ferrabee 06:54

Yeah. And we’re talking about that “aha” connection. Not so much just sorting through, like a kind of editing thought processing. It’s that you’re slumped, you’re looking for that kind of, “Ah, there it is!” You know?

Sarah Selecky 07:06

Yeah.

Gillian Ferrabee 07:07

This is another thing that’s been found: it happens in between states, like waking up or falling asleep, but it’s much harder to grasp. You know, we’ve all had those dreams that you’re like, “Oh, yeah, I’m gonna remember this in the morning,” and then nothing, right? And so when your sensory brain is more active, you’ll also kind of anchor that “aha” moment to your memory more than if you didn’t have that going on.

Sarah Selecky 07:30

Oh, that’s fascinating. That’s fascinating, too. Because even when an idea is fleeting, and it just comes in the middle of something, like taking a shower, or some habitual thing, if I don’t write it down, yeah, it’s often really hard to remember it. But if I do remember — this just happened to me the other day: someone reminded me of an idea that I had mentioned in a voice memo — and when I remembered it, immediately I remembered being in the shower, like it was my memory. I remember being. I saw myself there. There was a physical memory. It was embodied, even though it wasn’t really on purpose. That’s fascinating.

Gillian Ferrabee 08:06

And the writing down. Yeah, the writing down is both the visual aspect because anyone listening here who’s a visual learner, you know, those people that write things down in a classroom or anywhere that they want to remember. And sometimes I do that, but I rarely actually look at the notes again. It’s seeing — it has an effect on my memory, but the other one is moving your hand. So that’s people who doodle when they’re in a class, or doodle when they want to have a kind of intellectual acuity. And it’s the movement that’s helping them. So when you write down that fleeting thought you’re both moving in connection, and having a visual. So that’s two things that for most people are going to help you remember it.

Sarah Selecky 08:47

Oh, that’s also really interesting.

Little bit of a sideline but I’ve been looking into different ways to gather and remember and store and organize and work with writing that’s online, because I just use index cards and notebooks. And then the last stage of anything that I write goes on the computer. But it’s all in my book — I have paper books, I have highlighters, I have Post-it notes — I write it all down. And they’re all you know, there’s Instapaper and Readwise, and what else is there? Pocket... There are all these ways to gather information and sort it and organize it. And I’ve been kind of lingering in there. But because it’s all digital, I just feel like it’s not going to help me. It’s not going to help me with my writing process.

Gillian Ferrabee 09:32

And do you find that you do that visceral part more when you’re in the you know, the ideas arriving, the sort of magic exploration, and that when you get to more revising or editing, which is more organizational, is it...Is that when it’s easier to transition to digital?

Sarah Selecky 09:51

Yeah, it’s when ideas are forming that I’m using all the paper and the pens. Yeah.

Gillian Ferrabee 09:55

I’m just getting all excited. I mean, it’s one of my favorite subjects. It’s because of the sense of it. You know, it’s the ideas forming. Whether people experience it as a kind of a download, or like a fluttery, you know, blurriness that comes into shape, or, all of those are, whether we’re calling it right brain, they’re just a certain part of the brain that is very connected to our body, and to this moment. And the other things can live and function more purely intellectually, like revision and moving a paragraph here or there. But that receptive — what is essentially the sort of birth aspect of the creative process — it needs the body and I think, because of the two parts of the brain, but also because our body lives in the moment. And that kind of creativity is also very present-based, if you like. And there’s something, but there’s something where what you just said, there’s a line that gets crossed in a lot of the creative process, where now it doesn’t matter so much that you be so embodied.

Sarah Selecky
Right. Can we go back to what you were just saying? You just mentioned the mind being present. And that reminds me of the second story that I want to ask you about. You told me this story: there was something else about this story that was kind of the point, and it was like, by the way, when I was doing this, this day.

You told me that you woke up one day, you were in LA, and you told yourself, “Today, I’m only going to do what my body and instinct moves me to do.” So like everything from, “Do I want coffee? Where am I going to have breakfast? Where am I going to go?” Like everything, you were just going to be all on your body. The story was about something else. We were talking about something else, but I’ve never forgotten that. And I want to ask you more about that. So that is like the ultimate present moment. You were just paying attention moment to moment of what you wanted to do and where you wanted to go. And how did it feel? Where did it lead you? And how did you do that?

Gillian Ferrabee

Great, great question. A great, great example story. So I’ll give your readers a little bit of context, because that helps. So, I’ve always been what people call intuitive. You know, and there’s lots of examples of… To me, it’s a kind of listening, and I think artists understand this. It’s, you know, yes, it can show up. Some people say, Oh, you know, you see a sign that says a word or...But really you’re listening for a different kind of navigation than logic. You know, you wake up, I got this much time today. I need to eat, I need to do this. And then you set about your day in a logical and efficient use of time and space and your energy, if you like.

And then there’s another way that is saying, there’s some other kind of listening, that we’ve all had it where someone will say, “I was walking on the street, I just had this feeling to turn left, you know, and you were free to do it. And then you bumped into this person you’ve been trying to contact for, you know, 10 days, and you go, how did I know that?”

So it… we don’t always have words for it, but it’s a kind of listening. So I was spending a lot of time… I was in a transformational leadership training. And so for people to know, you know, I’d started with like a singular thing. Like, I’m going out to eat at a restaurant. Do I have a sense from my body of one restaurant or another? So I’d been calling on that listening purposefully, and sort of building my track record with that. So I’m going to give that, because it’s quite an advanced version in this story. And I don’t want people to think like, what the? You know, how did she do that, just out of the blue could do that, you know?

So I was in LA with the Beverly Hills Hilton, I think. I was there for work, and there were three meetings in the morning that got canceled. So that’s where that space came from. And I decided because the rest of my days were very packed, I’m going to practice this technique that I was learning in a training. And so I said, “where do I want to go for breakfast?” And there was this great Earth Cafe that was super cool up the street, but my body said go to the hotel restaurant. And I was kind of like, really? Because anyone else who has been in a hotel restaurant, you know, it’s not usually the best culinary experience. So I went down, and I sat at my table and I looked at the menu, and I’m gluten free and there was nothing really to eat, but I ordered coffee, and then the newspaper was there: the USA Today. So I opened that, go into the entertainment section, and there’s an article on a woman whose name was Jill Soloway at the time, she goes by Joey Soloway now, and she is the writer of Transparent, the series. And it was all about this whole legal battle going on with women being underrepresented in the industry. And she was one of the few women who was willing to put her name to her comments. Other people, you know, were just being anonymous at the time. And so there’s a picture of her. I was like, well, that’s interesting. Then the woman comes and says we have nothing gluten free and then I check in with my body and my body goes “We’re going to Earth…” Like how it works is I literally had gone to Earth Cafe and I just saw the street in my imagination, my mind’s eye. I say, “What do I do now?” and I just saw the walk to that cafe. I got up, walked to the cafe, and ordered my muffin. ’I'm waiting in line, it’s a very popular spot in LA. And then I’m waiting for my food to arrive and there’s a long line up and I turn to my right. And there’s a woman who looks just like this picture of Jill Soloway. And so I look at her again and again, and then she looks at me like, “What are you looking at? “And I say, “Look, I’m really sorry I’m staring at you. I just read this article about this woman, Jill Soloway, and you look a lot like her, so I’ll stop looking at you.” And she goes, “Well, maybe that’s because I am Jill Soloway.” And then I’m having that, if anyone’s had that, I’m like, woo, Twilight Zone moment. Like, what the?

Sarah Selecky 15:28

Yeah.

Gillian Ferrabee 15:29

“You’re Jill Soloway?” And, and so I do this bumbling thing, which I realized was very California but I was like, “Okay, well, I’m just gonna tell you, you have…And we’re both waiting for food, so, you know, well, this is really weird, because I literally just didn’t know who you were five minutes ago. Just read the article.”

She did a little bit sideways eye, like, “You don’t know who I am and you’re in LA? I just got like Emmys and stuff.” And then I said, “You know, so I don’t know why this is happening, and if you’d be willing to just keep talking, maybe we’ll find out why this magic is happening.” Anyway, so we did chat. And I was saying that I was looking to work with more women, there was none of these, you know, Free The Bid. There were none of these organizations for finding women in the industry at the time. And she said, “Look, there is the Women’s Directors Guild. I’m speaking there tomorrow night. I can arrange for you to get a ticket. Why don’t you come and meet a bunch of people?” So that’s how I began to network. Because you know, in LA, you can put women’s names on a list, but nobody chooses them. That’s how it was at the time. And then after we got our food, and she left, it’s like the antenna just turned off. It was like, that’s what I was going to miss.

Sarah Selecky 16:34

Yeah. That was the session. That was the session.

Gillian Ferrabee 16:37

Yeah. And that’s what I was going to miss if I had...

Sarah Selecky 16:40

Yeah, and what I absolutely love about this story is that it is like you are staying in the scene of your life. It feels like you’re writing fiction. That’s how it feels when you’re writing fiction.

When you drop into a scene — and the way I describe it, and the way I try to teach it is like you’re holding a divining rod. When you’re in the scene, you don’t know where you’re going, you might have a milestone, like you might know... the milestone might be that your character needs to get something to eat this morning. So, you start freewriting. And there’s no way to, I mean, it’s a kind of listening. And often, not all the time, but often, if you pay attention to the physical details in the scene and pay attention — taking your temperature is another way that I I describe it for writers, when you’re in a scene, just keep taking your temperature so you can feel whether the line is alive or not. Whether your connection to that... whether the divining rod is sourcing water or not. And you follow that with your words and the words kind of write a bridge over to the milestone, and more often than not, there is an insight that drops when you can do that within a scene. And you get to the point where the character gets to eat the thing, but there’s a moment of complexity, or another character enters the scene that you didn’t know was going to be there. And another plot point is revealed. You know, it’s just as you described it, but of course, it’s fiction, but you’re doing it in your real life.

Gillian Ferrabee 18:07

Just lovely to hear you describe that, because as you were talking, I had a thought like… so were you surprised? And then you said, and then a character arrives. And the phrase that came through my mind when you were sharing was, the body knows. There’s something that our bodies know. And it isn’t just something that seems very esoteric, like, you know, was that going to happen anyway, and, you know, some sort of almost like, psychic, it’s something else.

The few times I’ve experienced it writing when I’ve played with writing — I’m not by any means even close to a professional writer. But I’ve explored sense writing, I took that training, as you know, Sarah, and I took it from the curiosity of this work. It was to see, you know, comparing stuff. And what was so interesting was, I was exploring that question in a scene and it took me back to a memory when I was four years old, in Jamaica, where I was living. And I know that memory, but it had never seemed that important to me. And when I did this process of the body, you know, keep listening to that temperature. It actually showed me how that memory was my first experience of meditation as a child. And I didn’t have, maybe because I was quite young, I didn’t have very much cognitive memory of the moment. I just knew that it had been significant, but I didn’t remember much sensorially about it. So I think there’s, I mean, I’d be curious how different writers access that state.

Sarah Selecky 19:32

Yeah.

Gillian Ferrabee 19:33

Because I’m more kinesthetic than some people I would guess.

Sarah Selecky 19:38

Yeah. Similar. So am I. I think maybe, in some ways, it could be seen as a flaw because you don’t have the words right away. And so much of writing is about words. But it’s also a feature. It’s also really great because in a lot of writing, and a lot of genre, it is through the sensory details and describing them effectively in a certain way that a reader then discovers the emotional resonance. Because you’re speaking through words, you’re writing to another reader’s body, really. So that character, that feeling is...

So writers who are kinesthetically forward, have all that access to all that body awareness, whether they have words for it or not. They’re processing information in the world through the body first — a kinesthetic person does, you know, a lot. And then the step of translating it into language is where the training and the practice can come in. And there are other writers who come at it very mindfully, like very head-centered writers who are really thinking it all through and then they need a different kind of unfastening. You know, it’s a different skill set and motivated from different places for different writers. But the body is really important, I think, in every scene. I don’t think we can get away from it, because we are in bodies.

Gillian Ferrabee 21:01

We kind of discussed this once and I remember, you know, then reading and saying, “oh, yeah, the writing isn’t just a person’s inner thoughts or what happened, you know, because that would be missing a piece of the senses.” And so I remember guessing that if a writer comes in to it first, from a more organizational, or structural, or thoughtful process, they would then need to add the sensory reality from some level. From, you know, they’re seeing it so they would have to describe it more as a body would experience it, the character, rather than singularly visual. And then I would read after that conversation, I think it was Ann Patchett or some... I was reading somebody’s work that I love. And I could see this, almost this choreographic triangle dance, you know, between what was happening, how this individual body was experiencing it sensorially, and then that person’s inner emotional...

Sarah Selecky 21:58

That’s right.

Gillian Ferrabee 21:59

And it would just dance between the three.

Sarah Selecky 22:00

Yeah, it’s so beautiful. I think that we can enter it from an emotional space, we can enter it and experience it from the physical space, we can enter it from the mental space, and then that triangulation is what creates an experience. It rises off the page. I mean, those three ingredients are what we’re made of.

You mentioned dance. And this is a good moment, I think, to segue to the next question I had coming out of this: how your body knows. You have a background in dance. And so I know this about you — and we can’t see each other right now: this is audio — but I bet you’re moving as you’re speaking because I’ve had enough conversations where I know that you express yourself through your body as well as your words. In a talk that I heard you give once you talked about naming your company, which we now know is named Kite Parade. But at a certain stage, it was an as yet unnamed company. And you talked about how you danced the names to choose them when you were brainstorming names. Can you tell us a little bit more about that?

Gillian Ferrabee 23:07

That name, Kite Parade, came to me in a Muji store in Milan, the name. And then we had a couple of other names, you know, that came along from all kinds of sources. And when you’re asking the question, it reminded me of a description that Leonard Cohen gave once when he was writing the lyrics for Hallelujah, the song, which is, I think I’ve told you, one of my favourite songs, and not just for the kind of spiritual uplifting, you know, in the musical sequence, but the sort of perfection of the words. And he spoke about how it took him almost five years and that he would take a line and move it through his mouth over and over again. And with a lot of his work, you read a line, and you can almost hear the so-called perfect ending, which would be the perfect sort of literary ending. And then he'll just choose a word that’s a little bit different. But that actually feels more true to me. And he said that that’s what he would do, he would say it in his mouth and feel it in his mouth, feel the resonance in his body. And then when he would say the sort of perfect mental word, it wouldn’t have the same dance in his body. And then the word that he finally chose would have this kind of hum in his body.

And so it was similar to that, except for me, it’s full-on dancing. So I could spend like five minutes just now (you can’t see me moving), but I would, I would be moving my body. So I would end up going like “Kiiiiite”... And, well, to go along with the movement. And at some point, you just can feel that the two are working together. And with the other titles, it just wouldn’t dance. Like, my body couldn’t dance to those words in sequence the same way. And if there’s any entrepreneurs in your writers as well, you know, I went through people saying “What? What? Why is that the title, you know? It sounds... It’s like a kids’ TV show!” or you know. And then interestingly enough, the more I even danced with it creatively in its creation, within a year, people were like, “God, I love that name!” You know, and the name hasn’t changed at all right? And I think the body intelligence was what I realized later with, you know, as people remember it now, because it is different than anything else associated with what we do. So it sticks out. It’s like, I’m not naming what we do. It’s not the words of our profession. And I think that my body, if someone else danced it, it might have been different. I think my body was telling me, you know, “Don’t give up. This is it. This is your word.” This is, I’m sure you have this experience when you’re writing, you know, struggling with, this isn’t making the most sense to me, you know, like my body and my intuition, and my temperature is telling me to write this, but my brain is going “What?”

Sarah Selecky 25:54

Yeah. Oh yeah.

Gillian Ferrabee 25:55

“Really? People are... I’m not gonna win an award for this, like it’s doing a whole other dance.”

Sarah Selecky 25:59

Oh yeah. Especially if something is unreasonable or illogical. And often, that stuff I think falls out more readily when we’re in the trance of a freewrite. And the mantra of — the spoken or unspoken mantra — of a freewrite is just “Trust what’s random.” Let it go, let it go, like, don’t edit as you go, just let it go, let it go. So your body is much more involved. Your whole body is much more involved.

And I see this — is a bit of an aside: but when writers are gathered around a table, which is how I used to teach, we were together, physically together. When people would get to that spot in their writing, their bodies would relax. Their muscles in their face would relax, their spine would relax, the rigidness would soften. And their bodies would respond. And there’d be this hush in the room. It’s a really beautiful… it’s so beautiful to write at a table with other people. It’s very quiet, and then everyone’s relaxed. In that space, if you interrupt that with logical thinking, you’ll talk yourself out of all of those. Like, a lot of the stuff that comes out you don’t want to use but something like Kite Parade — some delightful combination of words, or sentences, or a character’s name, or a way of describing something, or a metaphor — might fall out that you would never, your logical mind would never allow you to get that far, because it doesn’t make sense. Then the delight gets taken out before you even have the experience of expressing it. You also wouldn’t recognize the delight right away, because your mind wouldn’t let you.

Gillian Ferrabee 27:33

Yeah. And even when you’re saying it, I remembered when I was dancing it: at one point the word added “vivify” — vivify Kite Parade. And as you’re speaking to freewriting, I can’t tell you where it came from, no other word came, what I mean by… Someone asked me, “What do you mean by ‘came’?” I was like, it...I mean, one of my friends would be like, “Well, do you hear it in your head?” Well, I don’t really hear it... Or do you... you know, it’s sort of inexplicable in those terms. And then I thought, for like a day or two, I was like, “So what is vivify? Like is it... is that one of the words?” And then I went back to dancing it in an open space, a studio space. And then I was like, “Wait a minute: vivify means bring to life, bring to life.” And I was like, “Oh, bring to life Kite Parade.” And that was when I understood, my body’s saying, this is the name to bring to life. So it’s, I mean, now I feel like, my brain is literally saying anyone listening to this is going to think you’re crazy.

Sarah Selecky 28:29

Well, I mean, kind of, but not. I mean, first of all, the people who are listening to this are all writers who have all put themselves in various stages of trance, are working there in and out. This audience is not like other audiences. So nobody here thinks that sounds crazy.

And that’s the sort of stuff that happens in our writing all the time with language especially, where it’s not necessarily that we’re trying to name a company, but naming a character. When there’s so much randomness, and when there’s nothing but options. You can either think it through, like, okay, I’m gonna relate this to this historical character who was named, you know, I don’t know, George, or I can like to play with George. Or I heard the other day that there’s a protagonist in a Neal Stephenson novel named Hiro Protagonist, H I R O. He’s from Japan, his name’s Hiro Protagonist. So there are these mental ways that you can trick a name. And that’s, like, valid and great like, it’s valid to have that history baked in. And then there’s a whole other way where it’s like, “Where did that word come from? Where did that name come from? Why did I think of that as a town name?” I don’t know where any of it comes from. None of us know where it comes from. And what you described with that word play also makes me think of dreams, and being in dreams, and coming out of dreams. Often there’s wordplay in the dreams, where...

Gillian Ferrabee 29:53

Yes!

Sarah Selecky 29:54

Where it’s like... I often do that. I had a dream recently where something happened with this dog, with a dog’s paws. And the image of the paws was so visceral and it wasn’t until I wrote it down and then told a friend about it that I saw that what I was saying was pause, like, take a pause. It was, it was a whatever, a homonym I think. It was my mind playing word games. And all of that stuff is just baked in. It’s like, it’s in there. It’s subconscious, it’s unconscious. So when you’re dancing, I imagine you’re just loosening the faucet of that. Or like, you get to take off the lid of that box. And it’s a little bit more readily available to you. It’s part of your process. It’s so beautiful.

Gillian Ferrabee 30:39

Yeah, even what you’re saying about wordplay when you said that, because I’ve had that in dreams, too, very clearly. And the thought I have is that that’s, that word play is like a boat, a ferry that crosses between our conscious and unconscious. You know, it’s something that can work as a fun way to direct. Because if you just had a dream about, “Hey, it’s time to rest,” some of that wouldn’t make sense even. You’d wake up and go, “Oh.” You wouldn’t even think that that was a, you know, an important dream, right? There’s something about the play. And so for me, I think dance is also a bridge between different parts of my mind or brain or, like somehow I access that less controlled thinking through movement.

Yeah, you know when I said your writers might think it’s crazy, I actually don’t worry anymore that people would think it crazy. I was letting them know that I do think that. I have the thought. So, and that’s how, you know, and when I was first doing this, I would tell myself, so I can’t be crazy. Because when you’re losing your mind, you generally don’t think you’re losing your mind. And at some point, it just becomes the quiet voice. I don’t know if you experienced that. But when I’m talking and I’m hearing, people are gonna think you’re crazy. I’m like, thanks for the warning. You know, from my rational mind, I realize that part of your job is to worry about my protection. But I’m really just on the call with Sarah and if I say this, nothing terrible is going to happen to me. And I’m going to say it. And that works creatively as well. You know. For sure.

Sarah Selecky 32:15

It seems like you practice, you’ve spent so much of your life, practicing building this trust, and this relationship with that insight and intuition creatively. And every time we speak, I just feel the benefit of that. I feel how you’ve been steeped in it. And you know, maybe not in solitude: part of the feature of working with dancers and in productions and on teams and collaboratives is that you’re sharing some of that. So that sense of writers sitting at a table together, I mean, that’s almost as close as we get to working together. So being in our own minds, and trying to understand our own processes and trusting when the inner voice interrupts us and says, “Oh, you sound like you might be crazy here. This does not make any sense.” You know, there’s some vigilance that is required to continue on the path of trust.

So I want to talk about Kite Parade a little bit. One of the things that I loved that you introduced us to, our team, were the eight play archetypes. Can you just briefly go over them and let people know maybe they see themselves in a few of these?

Gillian Ferrabee 32:16

Yeah, I think they’re called officially the “play personalities.” And it’s work by a man named Stuart Brown, you can find his TED talk and the history of it. It came out of a 20-year research project: a global research project on play. So it’s almost never been studied before, in and of itself. And the research study was: how do people play in different cultures? And I think he was an anthropologist, originally. And so that was something that he saw being studied, the differences between cultures. So he wanted to look at what the similarities are across human history and all cultures. And what he came away with were the eight ways that people play. And I’ll tell them to you in a moment. And just for your audience to remember: most of us can do all of these things. What he points to is that most people have a favorite three. And so the way to wonder which might be your three — because as I say them you’ll probably go, I do that, I do that — is if you added this personality, or it’s more of a way of playing, to something that was neutral, would it make it more fun for you? So the play personalities are the ways that we play. And then later you can decide they’re helpful for seeing, which is actually my favorite way of playing. And I think it’s really important in creativity, because creativity is essentially play. It’s what we call play as a grownup, because “play” the word sounds childish to some people. They say, “Oh no, I’m being creative and innovative.” But from a literal, logical brain point of view, it’s the exact same process. And like children, you imagine something and then you play it out as a kid. And so we imagine life and then we play it out. It’s what happens a lot.

So who they are? There’s eight of them. And I’ll give you like a phrase for each.

So one is called the Collector. And from my experience working with people for five years, I would say, it’s people that, when they love something, they like to have a lot of it, regardless of whether they’ll use it or not. So somebody who has 300 pairs of shoes, or 5,000 albums. People will say, “Well, you know, you’re hoarding because you’ll never use them all.” But a collector is somebody that if they love something, they like to have a lot of it. Of the object, it’s a matter of base for the most part. And then they like to organize it sometimes too, you know, by colour, or letter, or... Some people collect other people, like a big circle of friends in a Rolodex. And they keep in touch with everyone since kindergarten. And so they love people, and they like to have them, you know, reachable at all times, if you like. So that’s a Collector. And archivist, librarian, scientists, these are jobs that if you’re doing what you love, and you’re a Collector, you might end up in one of those jobs.

Competitor is people who, I mean, I can compete, but it doesn’t make things more fun. And occasionally, it makes it less fun. And I’m not talking about the dark side of competitive people who are just like, you know, maniacally have to win. It’s adding competition. So competitors like measurability, if we’re counting points, it’s more fun. My husband’s one of those. And it took me a while to understand how it makes it more fun, but it does.

Okay, so Director is the third one. And that, simply put, it’s not someone who needs to make decisions or boss other people around or those ideas. It’s someone who if you have the full overview of something, it’s more fun for you. If you know who’s involved and what their roles and responsibilities are, regardless of what yours are. It’s more fun for you if you have the big picture at all times.

The next one’s an Explorer. Sarah and I have that. And that’s people for whom, I’ll put it simply, the unknown is actually their comfort zone.

Sarah Selecky 36:57

Yeah.

Gillian Ferrabee 36:58

When you say to creatives, oh, you know, we all hear this as creatives, to be creative and innovative you have to go outside of your comfort zone. And that’s a little confusing for Explorers, because for us when things get set and formatted, and sure and certain, we start to get uncomfortable and bored. So Explorers are people where being in the unknown, not knowing what’s going to happen — the kind of writing you’re describing, Sarah, particularly — that is our happy place, it’s more fun than if we know. It’s more fun than if we have a map. So we like not to know: that’s our comfort zone. And be confronted with new things that don’t make us uncomfortable that might make someone else uncomfortable.

Next one is a Maker or an Artist. And that can be an engineer, or an artist who makes things with their body and hands. So it means, it's really a 3D, people who like to play in 3D. Take, you know, a bicycle apart when you’re a kid. Take things apart and put them back together, but very much in 3D. So people who like to knit, people who like to paint, you know, crafting all that kind of stuff. That’s one of Sarah’s.

Sarah Selecky 38:03

Yeah (inaudiable).

Gillian Ferrabee 38:07

Yeah, you know. Storyteller, all of you will understand that. And all of these, if you are doing your play personalities in your life, they really become how you relate to life itself. So Storytellers are sometimes people who professionally tell stories, but they’re actually people who experience life as stories. So some of you might relate to this. I have memories and I remember them like in a three act with a punchline. That’s how I remember them. You know? None of my memories are like this happened and then that happened and I went skiing, and it was fun. No, they all get shaped.

The next one is a Kinesthete. And that’s people who very much experience the world through their body and senses. And you don’t have to be athletic or a dancer. But you might work with essential oils and smell. You might be a musician. You might, you know, work with babies in the neonatal because you have other play personalities, but babies are so tactile. So it’s someone who, there’s a predominance of sensory, somatic relationship to the world.

And then the last one is the Joker. And that doesn’t mean you have to be like the class clown. It’s that you experience the world through comedy. So Seinfeld is one of the strongest examples because his comedy is all ordinary life that most of us wouldn’t find initially, you know, ha ha funny. So these are also the lenses with which, if you’re happily playing through your life, your top personalities will be the lens of perceiving life. And so the Joker is someone for whom humour is not just important, but actually how they see life. And you know, anyone who’s a comedian knows that can be touchy, because you don’t always know where the line is for other people. But for you, everything’s funny. Everything can be funny. So that’s where when comedians say, I don’t know if you guys know, they say “too soon,” like, if some tragedy happens and like they make a joke, it’s like, “Too soon? Yeah, too soon. Another week for everybody else.”

Yeah, so those are the eight. And you can read about them online. Maybe I’ll just say one other thing that when I stumbled on these, I mean, I’m very playful by nature. And I feel that play is kind of the biggest plus column in life after love, I guess, or along with love. And it’s also essential to creativity. Because if creativity is your profession, and we’ve talked about this Sarah, you know, it takes tremendous resilience. And you have to have that stick-with-it-ness. You have to cultivate momentum, and dedication, often. And so if you can design your creative practice around these play personalities, play gives you renewable energy. It’s fun, and fun is a source of renewable energy for our bodies, because our bodies are built for us to be happy, you know, all our endocrine systems are to favour positive memories. To favour the things that keep us in homeostasis. So play is one of those. And I’ll share that my top three are Kinesthete, Storyteller, and Explorer. So you can understand why for 13 years, I was happy and healthy at Cirque, even though there were tremendous challenges, and failures, and interpersonal relationship stuff. But every day I go to work, and I’m going to be playing at some level. And so that’s a sort of anti-burnout panacea to be in a state of play.

Sarah Selecky 41:20

Right! I did just read that in Flow.

Gillian Ferrabee 41:23

Sorry, that was a long list.

Sarah Selecky 41:24

No, it’s beautiful. Thank you so much. And it’s just really, really useful. The information is really golden. I love how you describe it. And I have read recently that being in flow, or play, like they have a lot in common, is the antidote to languishing, which is, you know, a cousin to burnout and depression. It’s where we can… it’s actually medicinal for that state of mind.

We’re coming to the end of our hour together, but coming off of what you just said so beautifully, I have one more question about that. Because you did talk about, if we can design our lives, if we can organize our lives more in this way, so we feel more play, it’ll just be better for us professionally, it’s better for our work. But there are so many mundane things that we have to do also. You know like, as artists, you have to do grant applications, and we have to submit and then, of course, there’s the rejections that come up. And there’s the, you know, depending on what field you’re in, or what genre you’re working in, there’s a lot of admin, and a lot of weeds, and a lot of stuff, you know? Is there a way that we can do that stuff with more flow? And like, that’s (a), and (b), is it even worth thinking about trying to live in flow all the time? Is that a reasonable goal?

Gillian Ferrabee 42:50

That’s everybody’s question. Seriously, it really is. I mean, in my experience, that’s everything that we’re looking for in life is a layer or a version of that question. No, really. So it makes total sense that you would ask it.

The first question, maybe it’s not a romantic answer, I would say, with the mundane at some point in time, when you’re able to financially, really as soon as you’re able to, even through barter, is to find people for whom those activities are play if they’re not for you. And an example is one of my very dear friends, we have a lot in common and we met working at Cirque, but we don’t have in common is she’s a Director, a Collector, she’s a person who is more interested in the systems that support that flow, creative state, and in the follow through. So you know, tying the bows up afterwards, she’s not a person that needs to be in production or needs to see the thing being made. She likes to support a system when you’re in the conceptual stage. And then you can go off and do it. And then when you need all the expense reports tied up. And she literally finds this fun. She wrote me last night at eight o’clock and said, “I’m so happy after all my emails today that I finally have time to organize the Dropbox. I’m having so much fun. I have so many questions for you. And I’m just loving this.” And I texted her back, like “You are the most awesome, ever, because this is fun for you. And you even make it fun, the things you need from me.” So you know, and for years, I was like, well, I don’t, I can’t afford it. But when you find it, and she worked for us part time on barter, and now she’s on paid hours and, so that’s the real answer. And then if I were myself 10 years ago, I’d say okay, “What do I do before that happens?” And one way is if you’re a mover when I used to do my taxes, I would put the piles in different places on the floor. So that I had to stretch and move around. And I do love meditation. Some people do it, you know, for health or relaxation. I just love what it is all about. And so I would use those things too, because I would constantly want to be somewhere else I’d be doing my accounting and just my mind is saying, “how soon can we leave work? Can we go?” Like a German Shepherd who wants to go outside and play, “Can we go? Can we go now?” And so I would say, “What happens if I feel my hands holding this piece of paper, and if I breathe?” And what would always come up is, you know, life is short, life is short, life is short. And so I would say, well, this moment is full, whatever I’m doing, if I choose to be present. So I would use that until I could hire someone. I would not say I would... you know, there was a lot of stuff I was doing that wasn’t in my flow state. And so it wasn’t enough to, you know, it was too much. So I didn’t need to meditate that much every day. So that was my combo, like, aim to get somewhere. And we’ve talked about this, Sarah, you might even notice that the things that you dislike doing, I had a block finding people at first because I could not imagine that anybody would like it. So I felt like I was giving somebody this horrible, you know, task. Like, they’re a British chambermaid, and I’m like, “Please, you know, like, zip up my dress for me…”

But then I realized over the work that I do, that it’s remarkable, but there’s people who love everything that there is to do in the world. And they might not be there. And maybe they’ve got other problems that, you know, it’s not a perfect science on a daily basis, but it is true, and so everybody can get there. And that’s a lot of what my company is about. Let’s all get into that place.

And then to answer your second question. Yes, we can. There’s about well, taking sleep away from the hours in a day, there’s about 5 to 10% of time that just, I mean, we have to eat, we have to do other biological things that aren’t I don’t think in anyone’s flow state, like, in any sort of exciting way. They are physically in a flow state. So there’s like a 5 or 10% — that is Gay Hendricks you know, who wrote The Big Leap says — that, that’s just stuff that has to happen, you know, travel. And he divides his week into alpha, beta, and I think theta, theta being sleep and stuff. And alpha is high flow state. Beta is, if you’re going to New York for an exciting trip, you have to fly. And there’s a lot of things about getting on a plane that aren’t, you know, aren’t particularly unique to anyone’s flow state. But everyone needs to do it to get to New York. So that’s the beta of functional stuff. But I would say it’s 5 to 10%. And the rest of the time, you absolutely can be in a flow state all the time. Good news.

Sarah Selecky 46:22

Yeah. That's a great answer. Thank you. It’s so definitive and mathematical even, there’s like precision to it. I love it. Thank you. It’s a great place to end our call also, because everyone who’s listening is gonna be like, “okay, how do I find Kite Parade and find out how to make that happen? How do people reach you? I know that your website is kiteparade.co. Not com. But C O. Kiteparade.co.

Gillian Ferrabee 48:08

Yeah.

Sarah Selecky 48:09

And what’s going on? Yeah, how do people find you? Where should they go?

Gillian Ferrabee 48:12

They can also find us on Instagram, we just started so it’s kiteparadeco all as one word, you know, kiteparade stuck together with C O stuck to that. And there’s a Linktree. And the first thing on the link tree is to get our own email list. We’re just starting. We’ve been B2B [Editor’s note: business to business] for a long time and working with existing networks of clients. And now we’re just starting to do the activities to open all that up. I’m one of those people that I don’t know if other people experience this, I get scared to market because I think I’ll have too much. Too many clients.

Sarah Selecky 48:43

I understand why you would think that.

Gillian Ferrabee 48:45

Yeah. And now we have the right container for that. And should I say just like a couple of sentences about what we do?

Sarah Selecky 48:53

Yes, please.

Gillian Ferrabee 48:56

We’re a centre for conscious leadership for the creative world. So that’s creative industries, creative cultural organizations. And when I say conscious leadership, leadership of self, of your creativity, of team building, of collaboration, not sort of the old one where the leader is like, you know, our old model of the singular person at the top kind of model. And we do that through general trainings for the, you know, general public can sign up at any time individually. Then we also do custom workshops for particular groups or organizations. And then we have a development support lab, if you like, for innovative projects, when people come with an idea. And we’re particularly in the development stage of kind of what we’re talking about: that seminal, liminal, early stage of creativity.

Sarah Selecky 49:41

So delicious.

Gillian Ferrabee 49:44

It’s been really fun.

Sarah Selecky 49:45

Gillian, thank you so, so much. This is such a beautiful conversation. I can’t wait to share it with everyone. Thank you. Thank you, and we’ll talk again soon.

Gillian Ferrabee 49:57

Thank you. And if anybody, I’d love to hear how people feel about it. So if you get any of that kind of feedback, please share.

Sarah Selecky 50:03

Awesome. We will, we will. Okay.

Gillian Ferrabee 50:06

Okay, Take care.

Sarah Selecky 50:07

Thanks Gillian. Bye.