There’s a lot of different ways that people unconsciously shut down their creative flow. But one of the more popular methods is by believing that you can only create when you are in a particular frame of mind. Sometimes it’s a belief that you need to feel inspired, or...
Creative Juices Arts Blog
Welcome to my blog page! I love writing about the healing power of the creative process. Here you will find a collection of all of my writing from all the way back to 2005! Enjoy!

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An Invocation To The Glories Of The Unknown
What I sell is the unknown. I make it safe for people to explore the invisible, to not know what they are doing or why they are doing it and trusting that it's OK to do it anyway. I give people permission to do away with stories. With explanations. With understanding....
Some Notes & Musings On The Creative Process
I’m pretty sure it will come as a surprise to NO one to hear that I spend a lot of my time thinking about creativity. I’m endlessly curious about what it is, how it works, what gets in the way of its full expression and what helps to keep us in creative flow. So today...
Radical Self Acceptance: The Key To Creative Freedom + Flow
When people come to work with me one of the first things I tell them is that this intuitive painting process is an exercise in Radical Self Acceptance. And everyone who hears that invitation nods their heads in agreement. I mean, who WOULDN’T give a huge thumbs...
The Art Of Choosing Yourself When The Stakes Are High
One of the things that I am deeply committed to in all the work that I do with the women in my life is to help them to recognize and eventually release old patterns of self sacrifice and always putting others needs ahead of their own, otherwise known as being the Good...
Trusting In What Makes You Happy In 2021
As we leave 2020 behind and step into whatever 2021 has in store for us I’ve been thinking about happiness. In fact, the word that I have chosen to guide me through this next year is joy. 2020 was hard. There were many losses, some of them tragic, for so...
INTO THE DEEP CREATIVE PROCESS WITH CHRIS ZYDEL
Over my winter break I had the pleasure and the honor to be interviewed a couple of different times by some amazing creative women. And the first interview was with the wonderfully soulful and powerfully insightful psychotherapist and podcaster Rebecca Wong for her...
What I Learned About Trusting The Process In 2020
As we approach the end of this Year Like No Other, I find myself ruminating on the issue of trust. Knowing what to trust and how to trust when the world has turned completely upside down, the road map of life as we have known it is gone and nothing is going to...
Things I Know For Sure In This Time Of Uncertainty
Things I know for sure in this time of uncertainty: Even in the best of times, life is a scary, confusing, overwhelming shitshow threaded through with tendrils of grief and disappointment and heartache. Even in the worst of times life is a beautiful, amazing,...
Generosity As A Portal To Creative Flow
Generosity and Creative Flow Helping people become more creatively expressive is my mission in life. And I've learned a few things about what works to keep your creativity, which is really another way of saying your life force, operating at its full and fulfilling...
Love Your Body. Free Your Creative Soul.
I was working with a woman student of mine not too long ago and when I asked her how her painting process was going she said that she was having a hard time connecting with her creative source because she was obsessing about something else. She was going to be in a...
INTUITION and The Invitation To Adventure Into The Unknown
Our rational, logical and linear mind is more limited than we are led to believe. There are many times in our lives when we need to make choices or decisions and just don’t have enough information from the visible world to take confident action. And...
Learning To Trust Your Intuition As Your Own Personal Oracle
Greetings to my beloved Wild Heart Creative Community, I have another round of my online intuitive painting class, Painting With Fire, coming up in a few more days and as much as that class is about claiming the freedom to make art in your own way, it’s just as much...
Your Intuition Is Your Portal To Your Inner Wisdom
Greetings to my beloved Wild Heart Creative Community, I have another round of my online intuitive painting class, Painting With Fire, coming up in a little more than a week and as much as that class is about claiming the freedom to make art in your own way, it’s just...
Is Your Relationship With Your Intuition All You Want It To Be?
Greetings to my beloved Wild Heart Creative Community, I have another round of my online intuitive painting class, Painting With Fire, coming up in a little more than a week and as much as that class is about claiming the freedom to make art in your...
The Practice Of Radical Self Acceptance During Times Of Radical Upheaval
There’s no right way or wrong way to respond to the tragedy and destruction, turmoil, crisis and devastation that is our world right now. Some of us are prayers. Some of us are doers. Some of us respond with startling immediacy. Some of us need time and space for the...
Some Tips On The Messy, Challenging Process Of Dismantling An Old Life
I’m getting to the end of the dismantling process with my Creative Juices Arts Studio, ( i.e. The Mothership ) as the world around me goes through it’s own process of disassembling and breaking down. Which I am finding weirdly comforting, because I feel so much...
How Long Have YOU Been Putting Off Your Hunger To Create?
I recently had a conversation with a beloved long time student who I hadn’t seen in awhile. We were reminiscing aout the first time we met about 15 years ago when a friend of hers brought her to one of my weeklong wild heart painting retreats. And she shared...
Inner Critic Got You Down? Here’s Some Tips To Help You Find Creative Freedom Again
In all my years of teaching the intuitive painting process and helping people get more creative, the biggest ongoing issue I’ve seen that keeps folks blocked, stuck and unable to be creatively free, is the inability to deal effectively with the inner voice of...
The End Of An Era: Saying Goodbye To My Creative Juices Arts Oakland Studio
Twenty-five years ago in May of 1995 I was going through my own private world shaking time of upheaval and change. I had just ended a long term intimate relationship, made a professional decision to not pursue licensure as a psychotherapist after...
Astro Wisdom: The Wild Planetary Death and Rebirth Ride Of 2020
Greetings my beloved wild hearted creators, As many of you know I’m an astrologer which means that I use astrology not only for my own personal growth but also to track larger cultural trends. And in December of 2019 there was a conjunction between Pluto ( the planet...
A Compassionately Creative Guide To Doing Your Shadow Work Around Internalized Racism
Greetings my beloved wild hearted creators, My creative mission this lifetime is devoting myself to the process of engaging in ongoing inner psychological, emotional and spiritual healing work. And the core of that work is a commitment to facing my unconscious...
However You Are Responding To These Times Is MORE Than Enough
Greetings my dear and wondrous creatives, Once again I am writing to you from this wild place of so much uncertainty and a radically transformed world. As always my heart goes out to you wherever you are physically, emotionally and spiritually and sending love and...
Astro Wisdom: Taurus As An Invitation Into Sacred Embodiment
As spring explodes in a riot of color and growth and the sheer exuberance of living things it heralds the season of the astrological sign of Taurus. Taurus’s evolutionary purpose is to reconnect us to the sweetness of life on this luscious green and blue planet. To...
Creative Wisdom: How And What To Trust When Your World Turns Upside Down
Greetings, Dearest Wild Heart Creator, I’m writing to you from my wildly colorful home, five weeks into the sheltering in place directive with another edition of Creativity In The Time Of Quarantine. I think of you all often and hope you are navigating this weird and...
Wild Heart Teacher Spotlight: Becky Fowler
At this point over 100 amazing women have gone through my Wild Heart Expressive Arts Teacher Training Program. I love them ALL so dearly and, like the proud creative mama that I am, want to show off their incredible wisdom, power and creative genius to the...
The Space Between Worlds: Activating Intuition and Navigating The Unknown
It’s been almost two weeks since the shelter in place order was given to those of us in the San Francisco Bay Area. And my first response was to launch into a flurry of activity. Offering free Creative Courage webinars. Putting my weekly in-person classes on a digital...