Wild Heart Expressive Arts
Teacher Training Program Online 2025
With Chris Zydel and Tim Lajoie
April 26th through October 21, 2025
Dear Creative Sister,
Are you longing to claim and to celebrate yourself as a creative teacher and leader? Are you ready for a life changing journey where you will explore and express your creative nature and learn how to awaken it in others? Are you eager for a life filled with creative self expression, deep soul healing and being part of an exciting community of dynamic, creative women? Are you ready to combine the experience of having abundance on all levels with the satisfaction of deeply meaningful creative service? Are you ready to break through the internal barriers that are holding you back from manifesting your desire of successfully doing creative work that you love?
If you are you are a spiritually and psychologically inspired coach, trainer, counselor, artist or healer who answered yes to the above questions this program might be just what you have been looking for. If you are passionate about art and creativity and longing to develop your OWN bountiful and fulfilling expressive arts workshops this program can help you create what you envision and more. If you are hungry to bring powerful change and transformation to yourself and to the women in your community this training can allow you to make that dream a bright and shining reality.
What it Means to Become an Expressive Arts Facilitator, Leader, and Guide
Over the past few years we have been offering online information sessions where people can ask questions and get a taste of what its like to work with us. We have recorded several of these which you can watch below.
Make A Healing Impact!
About The Wild Heart Expressive Arts Teacher Training Program
It’s pretty clear to many of us that the world is in a time of massive change. And that we need to do things differently in order to facilitate and meet this change with a courageous heart and an open mind.
A big part of that change has to do with how women are being asked to show up in the world.
As leaders. As facilitators. As pioneers. As teachers. As wisdom bearers and visionaries. As artists bringing their creativity to the challenges we are facing. As priestesses channeling the spirit of the divine feminine. As healers holding the world in our arms and bathing it in compassion. As powerful women claiming our hard won mastery, authority and expertise on all levels.
It’s also important that women find ways to bring their many gifts into the world in a BIGGER way. Which means that we need to actively shift out of the old stories and old patterns that are ingrained in us around staying small, powerless and helpless. And nowhere is this struggle more apparent than around the issues of success and abundance in regards to livelihood and work.
Too many women are caught up in various archetypes that trap us into being underpaid, undervalued and overworked.
The starving artist. The long suffering, self sacrificing “nice woman” who gives everything away. The astrologer or tarot reader or bodyworker or healer who can’t charge for her services because it’s not “spiritual”. The good girl who won’t demand to be paid what she’s worth for fear of being seen as selfish. The woman who equates generosity with not having any boundaries around her time or money or energy.
We are caught in snares of shame and not enoughness that keep us from seeing the true worth of our gifts and the amazing value that we have to offer our communities. We need to learn that being of service is not the same thing as being broke. We need to break free of ancient structures and belief systems that have held us back and held us down for way too long. We need to heal our internalized oppression around money and livelihood.
We need to step back into our rightful place of feminine power and claim our creative capacity to remake and heal the world.
Dates
The training consists of 120 hours of instruction and practice spanning 6 months. Within this time there will be
- 4 weekend (Saturday and Sunday) online intensives.
- 22 weekly session on Tuesdays between April 26 & October 21, 2025.
- 2 week session breaks in July and September
All sessions, including the intensives, are in 2025 and will meet from 10am – 2pm (PST)
April 26 Intensive 1, Day 1
April 27 Intensive 1, Day 2
April 29
May 6
May 13
May 20
May 27
June 3
June 7 Intensive 2, Day 1
June 8 Intensive 2, Day 2
June 10
June 17
June 24 Vacation – No class
July 1 Vacation – No class
July 8
July 15
July 22
July 29
August 5
August 12
August 16 Intensive 3, Day 1
August 17 Intensive 3, Day 2
August 19
August 26
September 2
September 9
September 16 Vacation – No class
September 23 Vacation – No class
September 30
October 7
October 11 Intensive 4, Day 1
October 12 Intensive 4, Day 2
October 14
October 21
Location
Creative Juices Arts
Online Studio
Cost
$6,500
Connect With Your True Purpose!
About Us…
Chris Zydel, Trainer & Co-Founder of Creative Juices Arts
I have been supporting myself quite nicely for over 40 years, running my own business teaching intuitive painting and expressive arts classes, leading sacred circle women’s creativity groups and facilitating workshops and retreats in some of the most beautiful places in the world.
I love what I do. I have deeply meaningful work or, as the Buddhists call it, right livelihood. I am in alignment with my core values and I offer something that serves the highest good of my community. I am getting paid to be who I am. I feel like I am truly the creator of my own life. And I am comfortably successful on a practical, financial level.
Even after all these years, I wake up most every day filled with gratitude and excitement for the opportunity to work with dynamic, interesting and soulful women to support them in being all of who they are through the magic of authentic creative self expression.
Tim Lajoie, Trainer
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.
Learn The Fine Art Of Facilitation
This Program Could Be Exactly What You Have Been Looking For If…
… you are a coach, counselor, artist or healer who feels unclear and frustrated about how to make a living providing soulful, healing, creativity work that is a source of satisfaction and inspiration for you, where you feel you are of service to your community AND are still be able to make a good income.
……. hungering to be financially successful doing the work that you know you are meant to do, the work that is aligned with your true purpose but that feels so out of reach because your fear gets in the way.
…….. a psychotherapist who has been in private practice for a long time and is burnt out from dealing with insurance companies that force you to focus on what is wrong with people and who is ready to have the joyful experience of nurturing other women to grow and change through the positive power of creative self expression.
…… a woman in midlife, children grown or close to it, someone who has been devoted to your family and now wants to do something for yourself, who is ready to offer your gifts and hard won wisdom to the world AND get paid for it.
……. a younger woman, just starting out on a career path, who is excited about the power of the expressive arts and creativity but who needs a compassionate, supportive and savvy mentor, someone who will enthusiastically guide you along the path towards becoming who you are meant to be.
……. an artist who has been devoted to your own creative process and wants to share what you have learned about the power of creativity with other women in a healing context.
…..a woman who comes from a difficult or abusive background, who has made a serious commitment to healing herself and becoming more whole and who is longing to bring her knowledge and expertise to other women on the journey of transformation.
…. going through a career change and ready to do something that you find exciting and fulfilling, that feeds you on a soul level and that also pays the bills.
And we would love to share all of what we know with you so that you can become part of a growing circle of women artists, healers and entrepreneurs who are touching and transforming women’s lives using this expressive arts process.
We can say with great conviction that participating in this process will transform you in ways that you can’t even begin to imagine. One of our students talks about how at the end of her training every woman in the circle appeared to have grown at least six inches taller and was a beaming light of joy and confidence.
We can also say that we are 100% committed to you if you join us for this adventure into becoming a group facilitator for creative awakening. We are over the moon enthusiastic about supporting you to gain the belief in yourself and the skills you will need as a teacher and a leader to run your own expressive arts groups and intuitive painting workshops. And we will also work with you around your marketing efforts so that you can actually begin making some money doing this work.
That is one of the reasons we are keeping the group small. We will be devoting ourselves to your success and personal unfolding over the next 6 months, because our deepest heart’s desire is to see these expressive arts groups and intuitive painting classes available in communities everywhere.
And to lovingly nurture you into the powerful feminine teacher and leader that you long to become.
This program is designed to teach you what we know, which is how to use the process of the Expressive Arts, Intuitive Painting, Group Process and Sacred Sharing Circles, Body Sensing, Sound, Meditation and Movement to create a healing environment via classes, workshops, and retreats, to encourage people to manifest the best of who they are through the power of creative self expression.
This is a professional training and the purpose of this program is to produce teachers. Our intention is that you come out of these six months feeling confident to teach intuitive painting and expressive arts classes and to run your own workshops. This is not a survey class. It is very hands on and experiential. However, part of your training includes your willingness to do your own personal work through the group process and intuitive painting, because you can only lead people to places that you yourself are willing to go!
About the online format…
We will be meeting in our own private online conference setting. You will need a computer or device and a good internet connection to attend the sessions of the training. The structure of the training is quite intensive, because we want to give you a lot of information as well as opportunities for deepening your own personal expressive arts practice and developing various facilitation skills by stepping into the leadership role within the training itself.
The training consists of over 120 hours of instruction and practice spanning 6 months. Within this time there will be
- 4 weekend (Saturday and Sunday) online intensives where we meet from 10am – 2pm (Pacific Time) each day.
- 22 weekly session on Tuesdays from 10am – 2pm (Pacific Time) between April 27 – October 22, 2024.
- Session breaks in July and September.
The weekend intensives will be a balance of teaching material, group sharing, Q&A, various creative processes including artmaking, writing and movement, and hot seat coaching sessions. We have designed these intensives to be not only a rich learning environment but also a place where you can connect with your classmates forming strong community bonds.
The weekly sessions will be a combination of teachings and experiential activities. They will include plenty of intuitive painting time where you get to engage in your own personal creative practice, observe how we work with students, ask questions, and also get the opportunity to take on the role of facilitator, leader and guide while being observed and coached by us.
By the end of the training you will have completed:
- 120 hours of instruction and practice
- 2 opportunities to facilitate your classmates in the intuitive painting process
- 2 opportunities to lead a meditation
- 2 opportunities to lead a movement experience
- 4 short writings on a variety of topics that you can use to build your business
- 2 videos about the creative process
In addition, you should plan on spending an extra 2 hours a week reading articles from the Wild Heart Expressive Arts Teacher Training manual, journaling about your experience, and doing your own creative practice.
What You Can Hope To Receive From The Wild Heart Expressive Arts Teacher Training Program:
You will experience the transformative power of intuitive painting and the expressive arts through deep immersion in your own creative process, which leads to powerful creative and spiritual breakthroughs on a personal growth level.
You will gain greater confidence in taking on the role of teacher and leader by being encouraged to think like a teacher and to act like a leader.
You will learn how to create a strong and safe healing container that supports people to open fully to their own creative process by discovering your own strengths and competencies as a facilitator.
You will be empowered by being part of the magic that can only happen in a bonded, dynamic, creative community of women who are devoted to each others growth and success, as well as laying the groundwork for an ongoing sisterhood of support that will sustain you in your continued expansion long past the training.
You will walk away with increased confidence and experience in designing your own expressive arts processes through offering workshops that YOU create to the other women in the training.
You will be given practical nuts and bolts information about how to set up an expressive arts workshop or studio.
You will develop a strong grounding in the conceptual underpinnings of this work which includes learning how to talk and write about this process in your role as teacher.
You will grow through the hands-on experience of facilitating a class with feedback from your peers.
You will flourish as you receive the unconditional support you need in order to go out into the world and actually teach.
You will be inspired to devote yourself to your creative practice as your soul feeding spiritual practice.
You will prosper by learning some basic marketing tools, identifying your unique marketing style and even learning how to make marketing fun so that you can make your classes and workshops a success.
You will be part of a growing community of Wild Heart Expressive Arts Teachers.
Some general topics in the curriculum will include:
A deep dive into the core principles and practices of Wild Heart Intuitive Painting including trusting the process, following the energy, listening to your intuition and working with the inner critic.
- Developing powerful creative facilitation skills.
- Working effectively with the shadow, trauma, shame and difficult emotions as they emerge in the painting process.
- Patterns of creative resistance and how to challenge, intervene and transform those patterns.
- Understanding and reclaiming emotional and intuitive wholeness.
- The healing power of embodiment and how it is essential to the creative process.
- Developing the capacity for holding space and the healing magic of being a grounded, witnessing presence.
- Delving into the question of what is healing and what are we healing from that includes exploring dominant cultural systems of internalized oppression and how creativity can be a potent force of liberation.
- True attention, sacred recognition and releasing the need for approval
- Heart centered leadership, claiming your power, group dynamics and creating a solid container for authentic transformation.
- How to build a safe, brave and supportive creative community
- The power of unconditional positive regard, deep listening skills and compassionate, empathic attunement.
- Honoring and embracing full emotional expression as a doorway to creative flow.
- Releasing the need for problem solving, giving solutions or advice and fixing your students
- Creativity as a spiritual practice.
- Pleasure, play and creative expansion.
- Facing fear, creative risk taking and creative courage.
- Meditation as a tool and pathway to the inner world of feeling and imagination.
- Facilitating diversity and honoring each persons unique being and expression.
- Trusting in your own wisdom as a teacher, leader and guide.
- Leadership, boundaries and self care.
- Values, vision and creating the world you want to live in.
- Facilitation and teaching as a personal healing journey.
- Learning how to teach both online and in-person.
- Releasing the need to perform and breaking the good girl rules as a portal to true creative freedom.
- And so much more….
Program Participants
This training is strictly limited to twenty very lucky women in order to allow everyone to get the full attention, mentoring and nurturing needed that will guarantee your success! When we offered this training the first time it filled very quickly and unfortunately we had to turn some people away. If you are interested in attending please contact us soon to guarantee your spot so that you, too, will soon be running your own expressive arts classes and groups!
Of course, the final question is this: Are you ready to take this step towards creating your future as a teacher and leader using the power of art for healing and transformation? Are you finally ready to make this commitment to yourself? Are you ready to open the door to manifesting your dream?
If the answer is YES… if this program feels right for you please sign up for a half hour long interview with us by phone or Zoom to make sure that this program can truly work for you in the best possible way. And if you are not quite sure, if you still have some questions or concerns, we would also love to hear from you and see if we can help you gain some clarity about your needs at this time. AND… if you know of anyone who might benefit from or be interested in this program, please pass the word along. We look forward to hearing from you.
From Our Wild Heart To Yours,
Chris & Tim
Wild Heart Expressive Arts Teacher Training Program!
Enrollment: We require a half hour interview with new Teacher Training applicants so that we can get to know you and you can ask any questions that you have about the program. Please schedule a complimentary session below. We’ll be asking you about your personal and professional background, what is inspiring you to take the training, and what you intend to bring into the world through this work. We look forward to hearing from you and getting to know you.
A Few Words About Commitment…..
The Wild Heart Expressive Arts Teacher Training Program is a full sixth month commitment which includes all three week long intensives and the 18 weekly practice sessions. If, for any reason, you choose not to continue, you will still be liable for the full fees for the program. This is due to the nature of this training. A FULL commitment is needed up front. This is not a program you ‘feel out’ and then drop out of or come in and out of at will. That undermines your success, my ability to support you and affects the spirit of the group.
Because of the intimate nature of the work that we will be doing together over the six months your full commitment is essential. Since this is not a ‘join anytime’ program, your space cannot be filled once we begin.
If you are not 100% sure about your passion to be doing this type of work we highly recommend that you participate in one of our other workshops or retreats before signing up for the teacher training program so that you can get a better sense of the nature of this expressive arts process.
What previous Wild Heart Expressive Arts Teacher Trainees have to say about the program…
Many thanks to my intuitive painting teacher Chris Zydel who magically appeared in my life at the time I was making the goal of writing my book, The Right Brain Business Plan, real. The teacher training program and the dedication to an ongoing painting practice helped me to paint through the upas and downs of the writing process and to allow me to get BIG with my vision for this book. Chris is so full of love and generosity. I’m thankful for her guidance throughout this training and for the special magic she brings to the intuitive painting process. I loved gaining a deeper, more intimate understanding of intuitive painting and expressive arts and appreciated developing more skills to facilitate this internal creative journey for myself and others. The biggest take-away for me, though, was fully owning and embodying leadership from the get-go. After having done CTI’s leadership program back in 2004, it was super empowering for me to experience how much I’ve stepped into leadership since then. Just like being face-to-face with my paintings has helped me to see myself in new ways, participating in this program has helped me to see how much I’ve grown and continue to grow as a leader and a creative being. I continue to be in awe of how the creative process provides such valuable insight and opportunity for self-development. What a gift! Here’s to more painting!
Transformation is a tall order and the Creative Juices Studio Teacher Training Program rises to the challenge: It has truly changed my life. I have been fortunate enough to be part of this program twice – once as a student and once as an assistant and each time, loved seeing how the teachings inspire unique individual expressions beyond ones wildest imagination. I attribute my continued journey as a teacher and commitment to the art of this magical work to Chris’ brilliant mentorship. From the beginning, she welcomed me into the community with open arms, bore witness to my process, coached me through my barriers to confidence and encouraged me whole-heartedly to birth creative ways to bring the gift of intuitive painting to both the communities I care about and integrate the practices into my own life. It is an honor to part of the growing movement behind building leadership and reaching a broader and more diverse audience deserving of the profound impact intuitive painting has to offer.
Chris Zydel’s Wild Heart Heart Expressive Arts Teacher Training program has allowed me to live my Heart’s dream. I always wanted to find a way to “make a living” from a Creative avenue, but didn’t have the courage, strength and belief in myself to take the jump. The joy and enthusiasm expressed on Chris’s website was contagious and I knew immediately that this was the program I was looking for. This program took my dreams to reality. The equal emphasis on my personal practice, lectures and community support make this program invaluable- personally as well as professionally. Chris shared with us everything to have a bona fide professional expressive arts studio- with extensive handouts, recordings, photographs, a class NING site and HER BIG OPEN HEART. This training mirrored for me the lessons of courage, strength and belief in myself to open my studio and to take my heart’s desire out to the world. Chris created a community of trust, safety and joy; which allowed me to grow, expand, go inward and find my true heart. With Chris’s loving guidance and the principles that I learned in the painting process, I now have an intuitive painting studio armed with all the tools to live my dreams and LIVE a creative- filled life, including students!
Chris… you are my friend, my colleague, my mentor, my girl buddy, my painting mama, my kick in the ass, my soul sister, my Wild Heart Queen. For years I have been blessed to have you in my life, first as a business colleague as we supported each others work. Then I found my way to your Ghost Ranch retreat where I picked up the paintbrush again after 10 years of not painting. You gently held my broken artist’s heart as I tenderly explored expressing myself in painting again after letting go of it during my MFA program. As it turns out, glitter makes everything better and I do have a lot to say in paint. You nourished me with sacred women’s circles and a week in the high desert. I was all in. I began to realize how deep and vitally important this work is for the world: to empower women to fully embrace all parts of themselves and to let those parts shine bright. You provide a safe, nurturing place for the deep wounds we have carried often without even knowing it. And a process for finding and remembering those delicious aspects of the divine feminine within ourselves: radiance, joy, giggles, strength, power, love, passion, sensuality, community, self care and more. You guide, teach and model what it is to a life of a fully expressed powerful woman who has answered the call to bring forth the living, breathing divine feminine because she is so needed right now. I am beyond grateful… truly there are no words… to be one of the lucky women in your world. I heard your call and I am following your light. Your year long teacher training has prepared me and empowered me to share the light, love and healing that paint, glitter, sisterhood, laughter, tears and trust bring forth. I am both walking in your footsteps and creating new ones of my own. I know you are always with me as well as my sister who were in my 2014-2015 training. We will always have each other’s backs for love, support, ideas, accountability and camaraderie. You, my dear Queen, are a life changer in the truest sense of the word. My life is bigger, brighter, pinker, more authentic and juicier because I have been your student. I love you mama and I would follow you anywhere.
I knew I was meant to be in Chris Zydel’s teacher training program from the moment I searched for expressive arts teacher training programs on the computer and the mighty internet would only show me Chris’s program! So I immediately called her with a gazillion questions. She reassured me that this would be safe place for me to be exactly me… no judgment… so I signed up. And OMG it was quite a bit more than I had bargained for! Not only did I process some long forgotten memories through the painting process but the most amazing and miraculous thing was that I had been having a bit of a pain flare up from an immune condition I have before the retreat. And to my astonishment a few days into the workshop, the pain completely disappeared! In fact I was able to take a fast paced back-packing tour of Europe a few months later still without pain. At first I didn’t believe that just paint and paper and Chris’s guidance could have been the reason for this amazing recovery until I brought this process to some of my students who also had a variety of pain symptoms and witnessed their relief. I am writing this from the last days of the teacher training program. And when I look back at that person I was just one short year ago I am amazed at the strength and power I have claimed through the magical transformative power of this program. I now know that there are other expressive arts programs out there but Chris brings a number of unique qualities to her work. She has a deeply caring and compassionate energy that she generously brings to both the group work and her one on one interactions with her students and models a powerful feminine leadership style that is both deeply wise and wonderfully challenging. But that’s not all. Since I was completely new to starting my own business I benefited greatly from Chris’s many years of marketing and business experience. She taught us everything she knows from how to set up a studio, building easels, where to get supplies and how to get the word out in the most effective way about my OWN classes and workshops. And Chris’s husband Tim Lajoie is also available to walk us though our fears around anything having to do with computers including help out with setting up our own websites, developing a logo and how to begin blogging and getting familiar with marketing our services via the internet! This is just such an unprecedented program! Chris and Tim together are a powerhouse wealth of information, inspiration, guidance, patience and love. There is no other expressive arts training like this anywhere. And believe me … I have looked.
I am singing dancing and painting the praises of Chris Zydel and the Wild Heart Expressive Arts Teacher Training Program. Chris Zydel is the most genuine, generous and compassionate teacher that I have ever known. I feel I have been given the secrets to living life in full bloom. Through the practice of process painting and all that I have learned while moving towards becoming an Expressive Arts facilitator, I have all the tools to create my life, just the way I have always wanted it to be. My own studio has become a safe place for people to come and find support and explore their inner world just as I did. My sincere wish is to take all that Chris has given to me and pass it on. Chris Zydel is the real thing! If you are interested in living the juiciest life imaginable, all it takes is a willing and wild heart. Chris will show you the way.
When I discovered Creative Juices web site and read about Chris Zydel’s, Wild Heart Teacher Training program, I knew I had to attend. As a psychotherapist, I was looking for more creative avenues to address the places in my female clients’ hearts, where they were stuck, wounded, or clueless about their own needs. The training intensified my personal creative passions as well as provided all the information, experiences, and tools necessary for me to intertwine the arts with my desire for women to grow. I returned home to Sarasota Florida and founded innersense arts studio! It has been amazing to watch the profound transformations in the women I work with as they become freed up through the simple tools of paint, brush, and paper. I am so grateful to have attended the Wild Heart Teacher Training program, Chris facilitates in an environment that is safe, calming, yet open for spontaneity and fun. It has influenced, literally, every area of my life and I am passionate about spreading the gospel of creativity!
The Wild Heart Expressive Arts teacher training program has changed my life.Yes, it gave me the skills to open a studio and, lead workshops, teach intuitive painting and launch a successful business. But it also totally rocked my world. I have grown so much- in self-honesty, in the ability to face my weaknesses and grow beyond them and in my deep sense of self love and self confidence. I am a better, stronger, more empathetic person than I was before I started the program. And the painting… the luxury of four week-long painting workshops was fabulous . Not to mention the joy of getting to know the other terrific women of the training so deeply and so well.. Chris holds the circle with such love and skill while at the same time challenging us to go to our edges and grow, grow, grow! I can’t thank her enough for this wonderful experience. If anyone is wavering about signing up… don’t. This is an experience that is not to be missed. If what you want is a combination of personal transformation and practical skills this is the training for you.
When you graduate from Chris Zydel’s expressive arts intuitive painting teacher training you will be fully equipped to teach intuitive painting…and so much more. Chris is an alchemist midwife. and YOU are what the alchemist midwife is birthing. the you that you only dare imagine, the you that is tired of waiting, the you that wants to take charge of her own life …and would benefit from a program that is designed for artist’s like you to do all of that and more. Chris’s bag of tricks includes light-hearted support, dance party, muse lessons, archetypal embodiment, process painting, group leadership, and accountability for applying these lessons in real life–all while you live in community with your tribe. in the teacher training you will make connections with women who see you in your glory and will be around to remind you of it if you forget after graduation. in addition, the training is pragmatic. you will learn how to set up a studio, how to create a blog, how to advertise your business. you will even leave the training with a handful of recommendations. this training covers it all. ..you will learn how to set up a studio,…YOU WILL EVEN LEAVE THE STUDIO WITH A NAME FOR YOUR BUSINESS AS WELL AS a handful of recommendations….. if you are thinking of doing one growth experience this year, growth that feels good and finally takes you where you know you could be, look no further. you found it. it is worth every penny. don’t let the nine month commitment scare you. the training works. I am no pushover. I have done trainings and workshops up the wazoo, just like you. I am a tough customer, an experienced customer, just like you. you won’t be sorry. I promise.
I attended the Wild Heart Teacher training with Chris Zydel and I feel she is the perfect teacher. She is funny, insightful, deeply wise and very experienced. She is very generous with her wisdom and experience and encouraged each of us, throughout the year, to look at and take the next steps to move through where we were scared or blocked. She was always very spacious and understanding while being gently confrontive, always holding the knowing that each of us could step into this role of teacher in a very strong and nurturing way. Her model of female leadership is very refreshing and she is always willing to reveal her own struggles and not place herself way above her students. She is refreshingly human and at the same time, she is intensely creative, brilliant and visionary. From how she writes and teaches, you know she has traveled many roads and explored her own life path very deeply and seriously. As I said, Chris is the perfect teacher for this: she made me laugh (damn hard), she made me cry, she helped me to clarify and strengthen my dream and vision of being a teacher of intuitive painting, and she has helped me to change my life. Brava!!!
I came to the teacher training thinking I wanted to learn the ropes of the facilitation process, take it with me and apply it to the other work I do. My mind set was based in workshop mode: listen, learn, and then apply. After the first intensive week it was clear the paint, the process, the group dynamic and the richness of Chris’s insights were what pulled me to the program; not me! The intuitive process was happening before I realized what I had entered into; a deep chasm of mystery and unrevealed potential awaited. Chris has the ability to create a learning environment that allows you to sink into your own healing space while providing loving support along the way. The complexity of the group’s strength and wisdom only furthered my ability to become more self-aware, and to challenge the ways in which I approach the process. It is a journey worth taking!
Chris Zydel has placed an amazing amount of her time and efforts into the success of the WILD HEART EXPRESSIVE ARTS Teacher Training Program. Chris’s program sets YOU up for SUCCESS if that is what you want to Create in your life! All the tools you need are there including Chris’s support (invaluable). What you want to bring is yourself with your Creative WILD HEART open to possibilities! The result is Creating an Inspired Life! Thank you Chris for the tools you have shared with me to Create MY Inspired Life! XO Kathye Conti Creativespiritsarts.com
Someone call the doctor. This girl needs to be resuscitated. We got to get the blood flowing. This girls soul is on the verge of going extinct. Someone call the doctor. The art doctor. This girl needs to breathe. I feel grateful and honored that the cosmos intuitively gifted me the healing number for Chris Zydel. She has the ability to see what lives inside my soul, and with a caring and nurturing voice, slowly entices my feelings and emotions to escape out. I am grateful for her guidance and the intuitive arts process. For transforming my “grief cave” into a vibrant world I can claim confidently as my own. Thank you for helping me discover me and realizing I am home and that all I need is within me. Thank you for gifting the wisdom and the expressive arts teacher training program to weave into my web of life that extends beyond and within me.
If you want to take a ride into the deepest parts of who you are, jumped into one of Chris’s ideals workshops. She fearlessly goes with you into all you’re curious, extraordinary, unknown and playful in our places. The depth and scope of invitation interpersonal transformation and her teacher training program is huge. Just imagine… if you’re willing to commit to that level of your own personal growth, feel into all the ways you can then lead others through the divine territory of transformation.
Chris Zydels creative juices are always flowing. I believe this is what attracted me to her website eight years ago. I feel so fortunate that I moved to the San Francisco Bay and found Chris’s weekly class in Oakland. Chris is a master teacher in the studio and in her Wildheart Intuitive Painting Teacher Training Program I feel honored and supported with my healing over the year we spent together. As I am celebrating my graduation, and becoming a wild heart expressive arts intuitive painting teacher, I am looking forward to creating a studio for women and children to come and play, heal and allow their creative juices flow.
Words are too limiting to express the experience I have had being a student of the Wildheart Teacher Training Program. Here’s a stab at it though… life-changing, gratitude, love, love, love, and more love, awakening, reflection, rebirth, miraculous, more love, brilliance, transformation. I so adore Chris to the moon and back. I feel like she has saved my life, rescued me from the ordinary and mundane and given me a glorious rebirth into the magnificent here and now. I feel inspired to change the world… and when I do Chris will be the one I can thank.
Chris Zydel… what a wildly wonderful and amazing supernova goddess. This woman, who is hard to even find words for, has changed my life. Since taking her teacher training program, I have been led on this amazing journey of discovery of being able to meet the greatness inside of me . And gain the courage to share it with the world. She will not accept anything less then demanding your light to shine, and does so with such a loving, caring, sweet and crazy grace that it astonishes me . The amount of wisdom that this woman holds is truly something that I highly recommend for yourself to experience. Well … only of course if you want to change your life and shine your awesomeness from the inside out!
Being with Chris in this Teacher Training year has been life changing. Her support, love, prodding, laughter and a bazillion other qualities have brought me to my edges over and over again. With Chris at my side I feel I could overcome any hurdle. Chris has the amazing ability to truly love so many with total genuineness and I feel so gifted to be a recipient of that love. Chris has mothered my creative spirit, and now I feel ready to fly. Of course I will be returning to her nest for replenishing feedings.
Chris Zydel, Wise Woman, Fierce Woman, Loving Woman gives you the keys to your heart’s desires with a paintbrush and a white canvas. She stands beside you as your sacred guide into the depths of your SOUL to allow you to retrieve the hidden gold within. Whether you are painting your shattered heart, flying with the eagles, lamenting the wounded feminine or dancing with the goddess, Chris is PRESENT. Intuitive painting with Chris gave me permission to be as bold, bodacious and to create as LARGE as my spirit felt. As I continued to empty the visions upon the paper, I felt as if I was one with all of creation. I felt as If I could do, be, create anything because I knew I was not alone, I had Chris Zydel as my powerful ally to enter into the mysteries of eternity! And the beauty of this teacher’s training is: I know what it looks, feels, taste, and smells like to become the sacred guide for women to enter into their Soul territory to bring back the hidden gold within. Chris Zydel showed me HOW.
Through Chris Zydel’s Wild Heart Teacher Training I’ve embraced a global energy that is my human experience. With my desire firmly planted, Chris’s training fed and watered my potential until an entrepreneurial self sprouted leaves. This year long supportive training gave me a foundational springboard and courage to achieve my business and teaching goals. The year challenged my assumptions and fears to build on skills I already had and tap into resources I didn’t know were there or assumed were unavailable to me. Within the first week we had formed a family that has grown and holds each of us to our highest potential.
I didn’t know that starting my own business was going to be so wonderful and magically. Now, I have my own brand and foster the intuitive process for students. I feel my purpose and worth with a clarity I’ve never known.
If you’re still on the fence about this, then I encourage you to take a leap of faith and open your heart to some Wild Heart adventures, great food, and a whole lot of magic!
Chris Zydel and The Wild Heart Teacher Training Program expanded my vision of what was possible for my life in every direction. Chris’s strong teaching and mentoring skills created a safe container for me to grow my wings and fly into living my dreams fully and without fear. The wisdom of her words, so present in every article and the practical information on turning that dream into a real life studio has been invaluable. I knew something special and alive was at work through Chris’s Wild Heart mentoring, but I had no idea it would come together so rapidly and joyously through the work of our fantastic group of women in Chris’s loving arms. If you want to swim uncharted waters, scale mountains, sing at the top of your lungs, leap into the void and fly, then join The Wild Heart Teacher Training Program and truly live your dreams.
Chris Zydel is a marvel and a force of nature. In 2013 I was fortunate to take Chris’s teacher training program. Every aspect of the training is well organized and thoughtfully designed. In addition to preparing me to facilitate intuitive painting sessions for others, I found the program personally transformational. As I started to paint in the training sessions I found wounds I did not even realize I had. Chris and my fellow students held me in such love as I explored and excavated these long held hurts. Chris created an incredibly safe space that allowed me to really face some things for the first time. By the end of teacher training I felt both freer in terms of my own life and well prepared to start my intuitive painting business. I got so much more out of the teacher training than I expected. I can’t recommend Chris, her workshops and her teacher training program highly enough.
Chris Zydel’s teacher training not only gave me the skills to teach Intuitive Painting, it also gave me the confidence to step into this new role. Chris is a gifted Master Teacher who nurtures and supports her students in profound and uncommon ways. She is passionate about and deeply devoted to helping her students believe in their own creative gifts. This program deeply enriched my work and my life.
Working with Chris Zydel has changed my life. She gave me the permission and the tools to free myself from limiting beliefs and habits. The Wild Heart Teachers Training was all I expected and much more. Every aspect of the business was covered, from developing my personal painting practice, to facilitating others in a class setting, to business and marketing strategies.
I now have the knowledge and courage to take my dream of having an expressive arts studio and making it a reality. Thank you Chris!
Chris Zydel’s teacher training program gives you way more than you expect. You think you are signing up to learn how to facilitate others in intuitive painting and the expressive arts process which of course you will. But you will also transform your life. From the moment I walked in I felt loved and cared for. Finally…. A place to be free and be me! You begin learning from the moment you arrive. You will learn about genuine love, honest connection and awakening your spirit. You will gain skills in how to offer this process to the world. You become part of a family. A family you always wished you had. Chris leads you through, gently and lovingly. She encourages you to feel confident, strong and brave. Throughout the year you begin to slowly facilitate components of the training so that you can practice what you learned. And of course you will paint. Paint like you have never done before. Chris provides an abundance of painting supplies so you can paint like the sky’s the limit. And your paintings might just reach the sky! You have tons of room to go big … and even bigger if you choose. By the last week you will be leaving with a manual to refer to when you get back home. You will also have ideas for a multitude of workshops. And you will re-enter the world fully prepared from top to bottom to share your knowledge. I am a better version of me since taking Chris’s teacher training. I am fully alive! Her training is invaluable, inspiring and life changing. Go sign up now before it fills up!!
Oh Wild Heart Queen and Angel from the heavens! I am truly so humbly grateful for getting trained as an expressive arts/intuitve painting facilitator under your leadership, your sacred heart-felt energy container and your encouragement. I have felt your unconditional love and appreciation all throughout, which has also inspired me to really play all out, in my power, in my heart and soul, in my workshops and in my life. I just can’t believe how far I have come in your year-long program, and how far I will continue to blossom, in huge part because of your driven desire that I live a “juicy” filled life. I love you forever and SO appreciate you! P.S. Your husband/partner in paint is pretty amazing too. Thanks Tim, for also connection with us and supporting us in a spacial way to help enrich our program experience. My confidence in creating magical promo videos to help fill my workshops has truly influenced me to “raise my bar.” Thanks for your magic!
Wow! Where to begin! The teacher training program with Chris Zydel is amazing and profound. Come as you are and experience total acceptance, love and support. Come as you are and flourish beyond your wildest expectations. Come as you are and have your gifts brought out into the light and then expanded upon. Come as you are and be enveloped in a sacred circle of women for healing and the deepest possible creative exploration.Just come! I did. And it was pure alchemical magic.
What a ride this last year has been! I thought I had a pretty good idea what I was signing up for in the teacher training. Boy,was I wrong! It was richer and deeper than I ever expected. More than once I thought “What have I gotten myself into?” But you have given me a house with numerous doors to walk through. When the doors are closed, countless windows are begging for me to open them, take a peek and maybe even leap through them into opportunities that will stretch me and bless others. Your love, generosity and kind heart are a treasure. Thank you for your encouragement, gentle nudging and faith that I have what it takes to guide and teach others. And thank you for introducing me to a wonderful circle of women with whom I can share my heart and soul.
Nurturing + Daring + Bold + Creative + Goddess = Chris. A healing pioneer.
My first experience with Chris was at a dance and intuitive process painting weekend workshop. I didn’t realize when I participated in that workshop that it would lead me to realizing a precious personal dream. I was in tears as Chris shared with me that she had a Teacher Training program where I could learn to facilitate the expressive arts process. All of my dreams were coming true. First to experience a spectacular woman who held me in such divine loving space and second to be in art studio for women to grow and heal. This had been MY dream and Chris had the means to allow me to attain it. Her Teacher Training for me became an internal dive into my dreams and my own healing process through breast cancer. One month after I signed up for the training I was diagnosed and I decided to stay committed to my dream. Chris provided a space for me not only to empower my dream as an expressive art facilitator but also to face the reality of my breast cancer. The training provided a place for me to build my confidence and face all my greatest fears and successes. I grew not only as a person but as a women who ended up feeling whole in body, mind and soul.
The Wild Heart Teacher Training has prepared me to facilitate intuitive painting and opened me up to new realms of exploring and leading the creative and expressive arts. Chris has a confident and big-hearted teaching style. She shares her experience and wisdom of being present and open to intuition. She creates a safe and supportive group environment and wisdom circle of women. She encourages us to be in our space, hold our power, and to be and explore who we are. And while this is happening for each of us, she models how to create a rich and supportive circle of strong women. Chris has prepared us to facilitate intuitive painting and lead workshops. Her teaching methods are experiential, she has us doing and teaching from our own Wild Hearts and her students step up. We have learned so much from each other that we are bursting to take it all into the world and share intuitive painting and the creative expressive arts in our own communities! Personally, The program has challenged me to move beyond outdated personal belief systems, move toward embracing leadership roles to create and promote creative arts experiences.
This training was able to be all things to all participants. To those who needed self nurturing , those who needed gentle guiding to their inner wisdom, those who needed affirmation of their leadership abilities and those who needed practical information – this teacher training had it all. The support provided is strong, loving and available.
Painting from the Wild Heart teacher training has offered me an opportunity to explore the depth of my creative soul, giving me a voice that speaks through my created images. It has brought me to places unknown and helped me to recognize and embrace my muse, the Traveling Sage, who clearly has her own ideas of where I should be going next…to be discussed at a later date. The teacher training has awakened my creative spirit again and has brought hope for a future that was only a dream and now has real possibility. It has lead me to deepen my spiritual path in new and exciting ways, breaking out of the traditional box that has kept me stifled for far too long. Chris has such a gift for inviting you into a world of creativity which is full of color and paint, movement and dance, community and powerful women, and most of all love and tenderness. She walks with you into those places where we dread to go and holds you in until you are ready to fly on your own. Her own intuition is a force to be reckoned with as she often knows (before you do) exactly what needs to come next, asking just the right questions and prompting you towards your “greatest aliveness” and making it look like it was all your idea…how does she do that? Chris has such vision, passion, and joy for what she does and all she wants to do is share it with others. She wants to lead you to a place of power where you can flourish and stand firmly on your own two feet (in your own Intuitive Painting Studio).
Chris is a fantastic teacher! I have never had a teacher that is more compassionate, nurturing and accepting than Chris. Her positive spirit is infectious and her laugh is too. She inspires you and believes in you every moment. I have just finished her first year long teacher’s training and it was a fantastic experience. I went in not knowing why I was there or what my goals were and through her encouragement and coaching came out confident that not only could I teach intuitive painting and expressive arts, but start my own business as well. She knows what she’s teaching and she’s willing to impart all of her years of experience and knowledge to you. I highly recommend her classes and workshops and her teacher’s training. You’ll love her!
It’s been my great pleasure being Chris’s student for several years. The painting process works magically under her guidance, her nudges to keep us going, her humor, and her genuine compassion for our process. She opened up all sorts of personal doors for me. I wouldn’t trade my experience for anything. So…I signed up and then graduated from her year long Master Facilitator Class. Chris’s Expressive Arts Facilitator training is MARVELOUS. She covered everything we’d need to be successful facilitators. Very professional organization and implementation. Chris generously shared many of her articles as examples that entice and inform participants. She set challenging goals that took us to the next level. We always painted, we laughed, we learned marketing and were gently kicked into action, we practiced the painting process and merited from her feedback. We discovered from each other new ways to bring this to life. We created life long friends and colleagues. We were and are a cohesive, supportive, cheering group ready to lead and spread the process. We had fun. We owe it all to Chris!
I first got to know Chris through an online art journaling course. Then through her website, blog posts and videos. I knew immediately what a wonderful mentor she would be. After a conversation with Chris that sealed the deal, I signed up for the Wildheart Expressive Arts Teacher Training. What a life altering experience! I knew it would be wonderful, I just didn’t fully grasp how transformational it would be. I learned how to facilitate intuitive painting. But, much more than that I learned how to step into my gifts. The ones I was born to share. Like a lot of us I spent a lifetime hiding the deepest, most true parts of myself. Not consciously, but out of wounding, for my own protection. But what I didn’t see clearly is how those protective measures were robbing me of the most authentic parts of myself. And claiming those parts I immediately began sharing those gifts with others. And what joy that brings. I have had many A-ha moments in this training, not the least of which is “To be truly seen and heard, I have to fully show up.” Through the Wild Heart Expressive Arts Teacher Training, and in Chris’s guidance, I have begun to do that. Chris has a huge loving heart that she generously shares with all who come across her path. You know that you are safe, deeply seen, heard and held. That creates an atmosphere of security through which you can grow to your fullest potential. Attending Chris’s training was one of the best gifts I have ever giving myself. Though I have already begun to teach through the support of the program, even if I had never done that, it would have been worth any cost to truly step into myself and learn to fall in love with who I found there.
Chris is the embodiment of the goddess compassion. Queen of empathy, Chris will stand with you through the storms and the good times alike. Her relentless trust in my process has helped me to build a deeper level of trust within myself that has transformed my relationship to art and life. After painting with Chris for 6+ years and completing her teacher training program I feel more alive and connected to my intuition. I finally identify as an artist! Chris encourages rebellion and cheers on the exploration of what is taboo. Without this generous permission, I may not have grown into the level of self-acceptance I experience today. Thank you for creating the wild, Juicy, Heart centered and enchanted world I was so yearning to find. Thank God for you.
Chris Zydel embodies fierce compassion and crazy wisdom! She is totally honorable and trustworthy in her work and her roles as expressive arts diva and astrologer par excellence. She makes it irresistible to say yes to yourself and your own blooming.