About Us…
Chris Zydel & Tim Lajoie

Chris Zydel, how it all got started…

I’m Chris Zydel, Wild Heart Queen and when I was 24 years old I went to my mother and asked her “Is this all there is to life?”

She said “Yes” and I said “I want a second opinion.”

I moved to California and discovered to my ongoing delight that she was more than a little bit wrong. Since that conversation with my mother 38 years ago, I have devoted myself to proving to her and to me that life can be deeper, richer, more joyful and more meaningful than she ever had the privilege to experience.

How I Got To Where I Am

I came to my creativity pretty late in my life because I didn’t believe that I was a creative person. I was tortured by the inner critic, paralyzed by low creative self esteem and longing to be more creative but unable to make it happen. Now, it’s all I do. My creativity is my spiritual practice and my medicine. It keeps me healthy, sane, alive and whole.

I’ve also been a bit of a personal growth junkie and in my approach to creative restoration I weave together everything I have learned over these many years. This means that you can expect to experience lots of bizarre and fabulous things if you choose to hang out with me– one of the benefits of my obsessive need for constant transformation and healing.

What Gets My Creative Juices Going

My muses are love, mystery and magic. Color and music. Paint. Luminous language and wild, wiggly words. Turquoise jewelry. My various creative tribes. Glitter and glue guns. My totally supportive and completely adorable husband. Cowboy boots. The red rock desert and, as always, my deep and abiding connection with spirit and the sacred heart.

I also adore my work madly and I am never happier than when I am helping people to find their way back to their authentic creative source.

This Part Is Really About You

You are in the right place if you are creatively stuck, blocked and frustrated. You can find some solace here if you are ready to throw your paintbrushes out the window, put your camera in cold storage, hang up your dancing shoes, delete every word you’ve ever written, or donate your guitar to Goodwill.

Even if you’ve ever whispered to yourself “ But I’m just not a creative person”, all is not lost.

There is a way to believe in yourself again and fall in love with who you are through your own unique, one of a kind, never been seen before, creative expression. If you stick around here for a while I know that I can help you find that way.

What I sell is the creative unknown. I make it safe for you to explore the invisible realms of your imagination, to not know what you are doing or why you are doing it and trusting that it’s OK to do it anyway.

I give you permission to do away with limiting stories. With tired out explanations. With the booby prize of intellectual understanding. With justifications and with defending your desires. And with needing to answer the question “why?” I’m only interested in the Sacred What and the Holy How.

In this world of creative wizardry, feelings matter. Intuition rules. And I help you take the dream time seriously.

I invite you to make room for the unreasonable. I freely open the door for the irrational to come barreling in. I help you create spaciousness for whimsy and magic and caprice. I trust implicitly in spontaneous impulse, imagination, visceral instinct and the genius of your intuition and encourage you to do the same.

I will assist you in gleefully following the twists and turns of non-linearity, knowing that pure logic has its place. But it also has its limits. And that there is divine order in the most chaotic of situations. I will boost you into diving headlong into the creative rabbit hole where up is down, no is yes, and surrendering to confusion is the most direct path to true clarity.

I will guide you into realms where anything is possible and anything can happen. Where fish swim in the sky and the sun illuminates the ocean depths. Where you don’t have to be constrained by what you think you know or what you should or shouldn’t do. Here you have the freedom to explore the outer limits of the immense and verdant imaginal realms that reside inside every cell of your being.

I am a champion of your creative liberation. I will shout halleluia as you take the risk to create freely on your own terms. Where you don’t allow yourself to be shackled by the need for external approval or the directive to copy something even if that something is in your own mind.

I will cheer you on as you exercise the courage to jump headfirst into the creative void simply because your heart calls you to do so. As you open to the willingness to try something you have never done before, simply because you are curious. And you want to. Badly.

I am an emissary of the wild energy of coyote. The creative trickster. My job is to turn you round and round until you are dizzy with divine inspiration and joyful wildness is pumping through your veins. And I do it all with love.

I am your compassionate tour guide to the mystery.

The place where there are no maps and the only requirement for entry is that you willingly let go of your need to control just about anything. Crossing this threshold offers you the possibility of divine connection through making art. Of deep soul healing through expressing yourself without holding anything back. Of awakening to your true self through the magic of creation. Of radical self acceptance through opening your heart to your most authentic creative source.

And Yes… There Are Credentials

I have over forty years of experience as a creativity mentor. Many of those years I spent training in various systems with a wide array of teachers and healers and I have more than a few credentials under my fancy, leather tooled belt.

I am most proud of the fact that I am the first woman in my family to get a Masters Degree, period. And I am even prouder that the degree was in something that I was deeply passionate about which is Depth Psychology and The Art of Counseling.

I am very interested in the mind body connection and so my background includes a certification in hypnotherapy and various kinds of bodywork.

I am also thrilled to have had the opportunity to study Person Centered Expressive Arts with Natalie Rogers, Process Painting with Michelle Cassou founder of The Painting Experience, The Enneagram of Personality with Kathy Speeth and Evolutionary Astrology with Steven and Jodie Forrest.

If you made it this far it means that you are someone who is very interested in creativity and personal growth so I’m sure that I would enjoy getting to know you better. I love the idea that we are all part of one, big, creative family so please come and visit me on my blog or stop by Twitter (I’m @wildheartqueen) and say Hi!

Tim Lajoie

I am a healer, artist, and maker who has been creating my entire life. As a child I would spend hours with pens and paper creating magical worlds and going on grand adventures in addition to building model airplanes, making forts, and painting whenever I could. I believe deeply in the healing and transformative power of creativity that flows through all of us and connects us to a deeper sense of self.

As the other half of Creative Juices Arts, I have worked with Chris for 20 years co-creating everything from workshops, art studios, and the Creative Juices Arts Expressive Arts Teacher Training program. For the past several years I have co-taught the Teacher Training with Chris and love supporting women to step into their own power and strength. I am trained in the Hakomi method of somatic psychotherapy.