I have been in the healing biz practically my whole adult life. And since I've been hanging around this planet for quite a while that means I have been doing this for a very long time.

I started out my career as a massage therapist, went on to include emotional release bodywork as part of my practice and then incorporated hypnotherapy and psychotherapy.

Seventeen years ago I added intuitive painting teacher and workshop leader to my repertoire. Seven years after that I tacked on professional astrologer to my business card. And my latest iteration is exploring the world of shamanism and indigenous healing practices.

Which I haven't yet built into my professional identity. But given the way I have traditionally operated, just give me a few years and I'm sure that at some point that will also be part of my over burgeoning tool kit.

All of these approaches have one thing in common, and that is that they are designed to help people find their way home to an inner state of wholeness and health and balance.

Which is really the goal of any healing modality.

There are a few reasons why I have devoted myself to life in the healing lane all these years.

The primary one, first and foremost, is totally personal. The bottom line is that I'm not a big fan of being only half alive. I want to be joyful as much as possible. And engaged. And to live a purposeful and fulfilled life.

Since I am on a continual quest for my own holy wholeness, I have used every one of these methods for my own individual growth and development and I continue these practices as a way to keep myself in the happy ... or at least reasonably happier ... zone.

I am also well aware of all the ways that I can get out of synch with my best life and use all the tools I can get my hands on to keep me on the path of being at least somewhat more awake.

The reason that I offer my services as a personal growth practitioner is just as selfish as the first. I LIKE hanging around folks who are being real. And authentic. And growing. And mindful. And crazy alive.

I absolutely love it when people feel the safety and permission to emotionally and creatively express from their deepest soul. When they are joyfully and surprisingly and quirkily themselves.

This thrills and delights me beyond all reason. Largely because it allows me to be more real. But it's also way more fun and interesting than the alternative.

So one of the ways that I can guarantee being in the presence of folks when they ARE simply being who they are, is by setting up shop through my various healing businesses and creating the space where that is much more likely to happen.

Which has worked like a lovely, magical charm.

But being in the healing biz has also taught me a lot about what healing really is. And isn't.

First of all healing isn't about being broken. The hunger for wholeness doesn't mean that there is something wrong with you. That you are fucked up or damaged or fundamentally impaired in some way.

Healing isn't about fixing yourself or making massive improvements to your psyche. In true healing nothing needs to be repaired.

Real healing has more to do with clearing out what gets in the way of the shimmering strengths, awesome capabilities, goddess given gifts and genius brilliance that we were born with.

And that no matter what has happened in our external life, have never really left us.

Our true and essential self is like a gorgeous, magical treasure that we have somehow learned to shut out of our awareness and ignore. It's just quietly hanging out in a dusty corner of our basement, attic or garage, patiently waiting to be rediscovered.

Maybe we had our memories erased by an evil sorcerer. ( I've been reading way too many fantasy novels and fairy tales lately). Or maybe we were given a stinky, secret potion that causes us to conveniently misplace the things that matters most.

But for whatever reason, we have a blind spot about the treasure and have simply forgotten that it even exists.

The good news is that it is right under our nose. Hidden in plain sight.

It's always there. It's just gotten completely covered with junk. Buried under containers filled with ancient Christmas ornaments, boxes of moldy magazines and books, broken umbrellas, mismatched shoes and old clothes we have been meaning to donate to the Salvation Army. And of course dust. And cobwebs.

This treasure is made of a type of fantastic, indestructible, otherworldly material. Like that adamantine stuff that covers the Wolverine's skeleton and makes him super, over the top powerful and durable.

Except it dances. And it's sparkly. And it doesn't have any weird par-military overtones. Which means that it's unassailable and inviolable. It's sturdy and strong and unable to be harmed. We can't ever destroy it.

The only way it can die is when our body dies. And I even have my suspicions about that.

So healing means simply remembering the truth about the reality of the treasure and doing the sometimes crappy work of cleaning out the basement.

The second thing I have learned is that no one can do your healing for you. No one but YOU can actually bring you back to your true source which is why I never call myself a healer. I can't ever, ever make that journey for someone else.

What I can do is to remind you that the treasure exists. Over and over again if that's what it takes. And to help you get some clarity when you have a hard time figuring out exactly what needs to be gotten rid of.

I have some nifty cleaning tools. A huge wheelbarrow for carting stuff away.

And I'm a great cheerleader.

But it's up to you to do the heavy lifting.

And to eventually claim the treasure AND the holy wholeness as completely and solely your own.

One of the most wonderful things about the Internet is how many amazingly fabulous creative folks are to be found there who are delivering the message that it is possible for everyone to live a joyfully creative life.

And one of the brightest lights that I have ever come across in the online world lives across the water from me in Prosperine (named after Persephone) Australia.

She is a magical artist, a bona fide medicine woman, a genius business gal extraordinaire and an inspirational role model for the sacred goddess in us all who is known the world over as Goddess Leonie.

And she has the most incredibly gorgeous, golden flowing mermaid hair!!

I am also fortunate enough to count her as one of my personal friends. Even though I AM old enough to be her mama we are "turquoise sisters" of the soul and spirit and energetically we are sooooo alike that I swear we were separated at birth... only 30 years apart!

In this video I am interviewing her about her life as a new mother, her cosmic job description, her work in the world as a vessel for goddess energy AND an exciting new development in her business.

To watch the interview and participate in the turquoise goddess love fest, click on the link below.

Chris Zydel and Goddess Leonie Interview from chris zydel on Vimeo.

"Your task is not to seek for love but to seek and find all the barriers that you have built against it." ~Rumi

A year or so ago I found myself feeling that something was sorely missing in my life. That what I was longing for was to fall in love.

And I didn't mean falling in love with another person. I'm more than happy with my marriage and am blessed to feel in love with my husband every day.

What I had lost was a sense of being in love with life itself. And not just in some abstract generic sense. But to be in love with my own day to day experience.

Externally things were good in so many ways. I knew that my life was enviable even, to the outside observer. But I just wasn't feeling the goodness.

And it was no mystery to me why that was so.

The previous ten years had been filled with a variety of stressors. A roller coaster struggle with menopause that left me drained and depleted. Cataract surgery at the ripe young age of 53. Losing my mother, buying our house, the joys and hassles that come with building a business, providing emotional support to my brother and his family as his wife slowly deteriorated and eventually died from the nightmare of ALS.

Loss. Change. Pressures of various sorts. Even when it was positive it was still stressful stuff.

And something inside of me had just gotten tired. Worn down and kind of worn out.

It was an understatement to say that I wasn't exactly thrilled with my lackluster mojo. What I really hankered after was a greater sense of sparkiness and magic. I wanted to experience more joy. More heartfelt exuberance. More wonder and awe.

I also knew that what I didn't need was some thing to fall in love with. I didn't need a new car or a vacation to Italy, even though those things would be really, really nice.

I didn't need or want to add anything external. I had a pretty good sense that as they say in AA , this was an "inside job."

Of course, it took me awhile to grant myself permission to honor this desire. I mean come on... Sparkiness? Magic? Wonder and awe?

Who was I kidding? I'm a grown-up for crying out loud. I know the score. Common wisdom is that we forfeit our connection to those more blissful states of being when we take our irrevocable steps into the adult world. So who was I to think that it was reasonable or realistic to want all that again?

But this desire just wouldn't let go of me. It was always in the background, popping it's head up from time to time to let me know that it was still there. And I mostly tried to ignore it.

I should have known better than to think that something so hungry and relentless was simply going to just disappear because I didn't know how to embrace it.

Because of course, it was constantly on the lookout for some means to reopen that door to that long ago remembered sense of enchantment.

I eventually and somewhat inexplicably found my way into a modern day medicine woman's living room and began a shamanic spiritual practice with her as my guide, not realizing at the time that this work was going to give me the key to that seemingly locked door.

Through her guidance I was able to open to a direct experience of spirit more deeply than I ever thought possible. But this practice that I have chosen has one major and serious drawback. It comes at a price. And that price is a need to surrender... over and over again.

Which I wrote about in my last blog post as NOT being one of my favorite activities.

Through that continued practice of surrender I found myself softening some of those hard and dried up places inside of my heart and psyche.

And through an even MORE continued practice of surrender my life has become incredibly sweet.

I am also learning that surrender is not a partial thing. It's pretty much all or nothing. It's kind of like how you can never be just a "little bit pregnant."

The big surprise is that I did get what I asked for and now I am falling in love with everything in my life. And I do mean everything. Even the things I don't particularly like. Which is totally and completely weird.

It's not that I don't regularly feel gratitude for my life. Because I do, I do!! But that gratitude has always been reserved for those things that I think of as beneficial and positive.

It's a total no brainer to be continually thankful for my amazingly loving and creative husband and my work in the world as an intuitive painting teacher and guide. I can easily celebrate my many wondrous friends and my beautiful and colorful home and the fact that I can both be of service AND make money doing something that has such resonance and meaning for me.

But one day, as I continued to explore this completely altered state of openness and vulnerability to the true loveliness that is my life , I felt a twinge of sciatic pain in my leg... and thought ... oh my goodness, but I love that too. That too is part of my experience here on this planet.

And in that moment at least, that experience of pain that I usually shrink from or wish were gone, became something that I was able to cherish.  Of course, it WAS only a twinge. I haven't been tested yet by any serious pain while in this state!!

As I stepped into this place of such tenderness in relationship to myself and to the world I had another realization about why I wasn't allowing myself to be more open to ALL of my life.

And it had nothing to do with being burnt out or stressed.

What I began to see with greater clarity was that experiencing my life .... and LIFE period ... as precious also meant I was more in touch with the inevitability of loss.

There is that moment to moment, day to day experience of loss as things continually rise and fall, die and are reborn, morph and change.

And as I get older, It's becoming more clearly apparent that it will ALL have to go away at some point. Sure as shit ( as my beloved grandmother used to say) I am someday going to lose this life that I now absolutely adore. This life that will never be again.

Staying closed to your life and not surrendering to the love and magic that continually surrounds you gives you a weird feeling of protection from that ultimate reality of loss.

But it's a false economy.

Because you ARE going to lose it all anyway.

There is no protection.

Only the choice to be open.. or closed.

And at least for now... no matter crazy it might seem at times or how much it might scare me... I'm doing the best I can to stay on the side of open.

One of the most delightful moments for me as an intuitive painting teacher is when my students discover how incredibly BOSSY the creativity goddess can be.

When they truly begin to give themselves over to their intuition and to the power of the creative process they are always so surprised when the Mother Of All Creative Juiciness steps in and begins to tell them, in no uncertain terms, exactly what to do!

This was expressed in a recent Wild Heart Painting workshop as a battle cry and a question from one of my students which was "Are you, or are you not, the Creativity Goddesses bitch?!!!"

Once she gets it that you are finally willing and ready to get out of the way she has very precise and no nonsense instructions about how to proceed. And it doesn't matter one little bit whether or not you like or want what she proposes.

Maybe what she wants is for you to paint a sheep with red lipstick and red galoshes or a weird arm sticking out of an alien creatures head. Or maybe she needs for you to make a total dripping mess. Or put exquisite precision and care into an image that you thought was impossible for you to render.

And she asks you to do these things because she wants you to step out of your old, tired story of who you think you are and claim yourself as the true creative force in your life.

The thing that cracks me up about this whole intuitive painting process is how it is a total bait and switch. People come to my classes because they want to be more creative. That is their hearts desire.

But they also want control.

And even though it says very clearly on my website that this approach to art is all about the process and not the product that is just so much blah-blah as far as most folks are concerned.

They see those words but they translate them to mean that they will actually get MORE control over their creative expression. What they are often struggling with before they get to me is that they are unhappy with what they are creating. They don't like the outcome of their creative efforts very much.

They are hopeful that unleashing their unique creative style will immediately lead them to manifesting the painting that they have always dreamed about. The painting that will finally bring them fame. Or get hung in the MOMA. Or make them lots and lots of moolah.

But what they get instead is an invitation and opportunity to surrender control to the seemingly flighty and capricious Goddess Of Mystery And Magic.

And as any self respecting caterpillar can tell you .... while  being dissolved in the gooey chrysalis of transformation on the way to becoming ( hopefully ) a glorious butterfly ... Surrender Sucks!

Not to mention being horribly messy and terribly sticky.

And the worst part about this whole process is that it DOES NOT STAY ON THE PAPER. That is another thing that is not advertised on my website. Once you innocently invite The Goddess Of Change And Evolution into your life through a little paint and the flick of a brush, she just takes over.

Completely.

And she IS a mama. Make no mistake about it. A very powerful, fierce and devoted mama. And like any mama she wants what's perfect for you. She wants you to be happy. And fulfilled. And to have the absolute best.

And she won't rest until you do.

So she asks that you surrender. She demands that you give yourself over to her guidance and wisdom. To put your trust in her.

Almost all of the most incredibly wonderful things that I have in my life have come from my willingness to surrender.

So I have learned over time that as much as it might suck to actually give myself over to the next thing that the goddess has in store for me, it does eventually have its up side.

Without being willing to give up control and the need to always have the future totally mapped out for me I would have never said yes to a relationship with my MUCH younger husband or walked away from the path of professional licensure to found my intuitive painting empire.

But being willing is very, very different from WELCOMING surrender. That is still something that I have not yet achieved.

My first response to being confronted with the next thing that I know is going to change my life is along the lines of "AAAARGGHHH.... you have GOT to be kidding" or "Oh No... not this. I'm not up to this. I can't do it.  This is too much to ask of me. Don't make me !!!" And finally " I HATE THIS!!!!" said with a whiny pout and a petulant foot stamp.

There is an experience of surrender that is presented to you as an invitation. By responding to it you are answering the call for expansion and greater aliveness. This form of surrender involves apparent choice.

It's a type of surrender that you THINK you can actually say no to if you so decide.

For example, when I turned 50 a few years back I had my actual birthday at my Wild Heart Painting workshop in New Mexico. And there were many of my long time students in attendance there.

They surprised me with a wondrous birthday celebration and a mind blowing proposal. What they proposed as part of that celebration was for me to strip naked so that they could paint my whole body with tempera paint.

Which of course immediately set off the predictable cascade of inner whining and a screeching halt "NO!!" of anxiety. This proposal was just so shocking. So outside of my comfort zone.  So ding dang WEIRD.

But also incredibly intriguing. And totally in the spirit of creative risk taking that I try and foster in my workshops.

So I compromised by saying that I would strip to my waist for my 50th birthday and go all the way when I reached 100.

Through this process I was invited to step into the archetype of the Goddess Of Painting Surrender via the hands of my students who totally respected and adored me.

And proceeded to experience the most amazingly transformative birthday ritual in my life.

And in the words of my husband who was brought to the studio to see the fruits of their handiwork once they had completed their painting ministrations "I see they gave you a taste of your own medicine."

What I have learned that is so SCARY about surrender is that what you are ultimately surrendering to is some form of love. You are opening your heart to something that is going to change you.

Which means that you make yourself vulnerable.

When I fell in love with my husband, I couldn't, and still can't imagine life without him. Before I was with him I was involved with a lot of guys who couldn't commit.

So all I wanted was someone who would and could make a serious commitment to me. Who was capable of opening as much to me as I did to him.

And my husband has done this. I trust his bond with me completely.

But even if we stay married for the next 40 years we are not going to be together forever. Someday one of us is going to die. This surrender to the vulnerability of my heart also opens me to the inevitability of change and loss.

THAT is what all that whining is really about.

If I say yes to what I really want ... if I allow myself to be transformed by love ... I am also saying yes to the certainty that one day my heart will be broken open by that love.

Which I am FINALLY learning is at the core of true transformation.

So, if you're willing to have your heart pummeled by tenderness, expanded through joy and stretched by devotion in ways beyond what you can even begin to imagine, let the goddess have her way with you.

She really does know EXACTLY what she is doing. After all, she has been at this metamorphosis business for a VERY long time.