The Antidote To Overwhelm | 090

Oh, Sheila, I couldn't sleep last night because I was so excited to talk to you, because I love your book so much. Thank you for this beautiful offering, this gift that you've put out into the world. I've started sketching, and it's really changed my life. So I want to start with this. It

has to be me moment where you left your corporate job and you started sketching to process life and explore your inner landscape.

Yes, it's, I love the name of your podcast, because that is the that was the invocation, invocation of starting sketch poetic is I had this dream. This is way be before I even started to try to address my mental health, which is what I describe in the book as the genesis of sketch poetic.

But what many people don't know is it actually started with a dream that I had, and this dream felt so real, and I live near the beach, but I felt like the tsunami was coming my way and but it felt like an energetic feeling, and that I was meant to be part of this, this wave of energy, and it had to be me,

that it had to be me being part of this collective movement. So I immediately felt the call for me and the we at the same time. Now it wasn't till six months later that I decided I have to address my fear of flying, which is the conduit of all of it. But it was that feeling of I'm being called, but I'm being called as

part of a collective call.

Well, those are the most powerful coins, aren't there, aren't they, when the I and the we becomes right the sea, it's really amazing. I love this metaphor of turbulence that you talk about in the book. So take me inside of that where you'd gone to therapy, you tried journaling, you tried all these

other ways to process conflict within you for want of a better expression, and you did have this fear of flying, yeah, so take us inside of that. How that's part of this story?

Yeah? Well, first of all, the people that usually have the fear of flying have many different reasons, claustrophobia, heights, mine was specifically turbulence, to be very clear, the takeoff and landing was fine, but what was happening is I had a couple of really turbulent flights where

my entire body felt that weightlessness, that feeling of lack of control. And there's two parts of the way I would answer this. There was the conscious fear, and then there was the unconscious fear. And it was the unconscious fear that I believe I was really called to address, because that unconscious fear

was the all the times in my life that my life had been turbulent. And I never used that metaphor before. I just thought challenging, traumatic, you know, trials and darkness. But never once did I use the word turbulent. And so when I'm sitting on that plane, and every part of my body doesn't know

when it's going to happen, how long it's going to last, and how severe and intense that turbulence is. That was my life. I never knew those three things were always at play in my life. And so, of course, when turbulence hit, it was my body that was feeling at first, and that was how disconnected I was

is. I didn't understand my how my body was responding way before my mind and spirit were even called to to listen and to hear it. And so, yeah, that's how I would describe it. As turbulence was really the physical expression of all the ways I had not been acknowledging myself.

So you're very open about this in the book, yeah, about how living in a household with an alcoholic father and abuse and being a little girl in your room, hearing the screaming and not knowing what was going to happen and being afraid and things not feeling safe, never feeling

safe. Yeah, we need safety, don't we? To allow ourselves to be seen, to reveal, to not to be, want to be seen, but not feel exposed. Yes, we have to have that safety. So all the therapy that you'd done, what was the connection point where you you connected the turbulence and that feeling in your body

that was getting triggered by that physical feeling of the drops in altitude or whatever, how? What was it that helped you make that connection?

Yeah, well, I feel like there were multitudes of ways to answer that, because the healing journey of addressing that under underlying foundation of safety, I think that's the most crisp and clear way to describe what I was really struggling with, and you mentioned my alcoholic father and the abuse when I saw

the hypnotherapist, I've never actually done therapy. That was the first time I've even done therapy, and it was just because my cultural upbringing as a Filipino woman, we never talked about our emotions. Let alone go see a therapist. In fact, there was a stigma around it. I think I would venture to say a lot of

cultures. When you see a therapist, and I put that in quotes, you've got a problem.

And so it's not just Filipino culture. I'm sure you're sitting there going, hello, I'm not Filipino. There's a deeper associated

exactly, because I feel like that's such an important part to bring in, because I didn't go to address my mental health. I went to address my fear of flying, which felt very different.

Oh, so do you don't feel safer to you, I've just got a phobia. I've got to get a phobia. It's not because I, yeah, exactly.

And of course, I called in the right hypnotherapist, because all she does is she got me to feel she had me do exercises where I was screaming in a pillow. She had me, you know, do a meditation and call back in my childhood. So the way the question you're asking is, when did I connect sketching

with turbulence? It first had to connect with the fact that I could use sketching as a way to connect with turbulence if I didn't even understand, how is that even possible? Which is why my whole purpose is, is arts and healing? Because I did not know that through the art and through the act of creative expression,

I could even tap into those parts of my body and parts of my memory and experiences that made me feel safe. And that is, you keep bringing up safety. There's something in the act of drawing and playing and and being in creativity that made me feel safe. I was able to hold both.

So it was by the process of sketching, because I was actually asking you how you mentally made the connection. But it was through the sketching, which you talk about a lot in your book, that it was through the process of embodied sketching, was how I interpreted, you know, interpret

your practice. When I was reading your book, it felt very somatic to me. And you know, listener, I've interviewed a lot of somatic therapists, and I do somatic therapy, it felt like an embodied practice. Yes, it is, yes. So had you had experience with somatics of being in your body? You had not done that, and

sketching was a way that you found a real into a relationship with your body, body, listening,

yeah, what's really mind blowing? What's what's mind blowing to me, to me, Tess is that I live in Los Angeles, which is very much into wellness, yet I had never, if you let it in, if I had, never,

yeah, thought about, I feel like a lot of people are doing a facsimile or a rendition of wellness in that way, yeah? But there's so many nuanced layers, isn't it? And you don't know until you know, right?

Yeah? I mean another great way, another great metaphor of what you just said, is our connection to nature. You know, how many times I would go camping, but I never really connected with nature. I could be camping and I could be with the trees, but I never talked to the trees. I never was with the

one with the nature. I was like, camping, yeah. Similarly, I have a body. I have a body. It supports what I need to do, but I was never in attunement or in connection with my body. It was part of the experience of my life, but it was very much an extension of me. It was never a part of me, and that is how I

always engage with my body. And the more I created, the more I sketched. And all sketching to me is take out the take out the pen, take out the movement of the hand. It is a portal for me to allow the unconscious to be seen. That is the soulful way I describe it. It is, you know, Carl young talks a lot about it

in in the psyche. It's, it's basically taking our dream liminal state and putting it on paper. That's what it feels like to me. And then the other reason it became so playful and inviting is people that have had trauma or challenges in their life, or have had to survive their life, are always in their

head. And so we kind of look like walking heads. If I visualize society, it's just all these heads, no bodies, right? And then what ended up happening is, as I was sketching, I was genuinely feeling like I was if I used another metaphor, my whole body was full of ink, and I was pulling from the well of

my wisdom and my knowing. And that's how I started to feel my body is I started love, trust, right? That that idea of wow, my body's holding more than just trauma. My body's holding more than just memory. It's holding something that I haven't even had any capacity and understanding I even could hold

because I was so busy trying to survive. And I didn't even call it survival, I just called it living. And it wasn't, I wasn't living. I was I was just in this act of doing all the time. I was doing a lot, and I. Was highly successful at the doing, might I add,

yes, you were, yes you were I. I loved the part of your book where you talked about when you're in college doing computer science, and you would pass an arts art major and you say, correct me. Please correct me, because I could be butchering this. But the way I remember it from my heart was

you, you saw them and it was somebody you were. You remembered that you forgot.

I didn't say it that way, but it's a beautiful reflection. The essence of it is exactly how you describe okay, I can, I can viscerally remember it all, because every time I saw a person with an art box. It was that life is the life I really wanted. It was the life that passed by me like a cloud in the

sky. It's the thing that I thought, what if I and again, these are thoughts I'm having in reflection, but in the moment, it really did feel like I was seeing a ghost of myself passing and now in the soulful realm in which we walk, in the way that I see the world that that was simply an expression of how I

was feeling I needed to see, that I needed to feel that that was me, whether it's a child or a person with an art box, there are people around us that reflect the parts of us that we need to see, that we're not seeing, and that just happened to be a student with an art box, and that gave me the courage. It

was probably the first brave act in the journey before, before, before I even knew what Awakening was. That's definitely one of the moments I was starting to awaken to being who I was.

And I loved that moment in the book. It really pierced my heart in this really beautiful way, because our heart always knows what we want, and then our mind just steers us away from it, because of you know, you're very open about it. You didn't think your mom would accept it, but there's that

beautiful moment in the book where you finally told her, this is what I'm doing, and her reaction wasn't what you feared

it would be. No, no. She had that first initial disappointment, yeah, but then that lasted maybe a few minutes, and then she goes, if that's what makes you happy, do it. And I'm like, oh, gosh, if I had known that,

that was such a great example of how often the fears and the constructions by which we are living by aren't even true.

Yeah, and who knows where she was in her psyche at that moment in time, she may have reacted different if there was a different point in time in which I had brought that to her, but for whatever reason, and I believe this on a soul level, her soul was able to give me that reflection because she was

ready to do that if I had done it any other time, which is why our soul paths are what they are. Yeah, she might have reacted differently if she was in a state of fear, she clearly was in a state of love, thank goodness.

But also you were in a different state, as you point out. So you were both meeting in different places in that moment, which is so wonderful, and when we show up with courage and truth and love. It's extraordinary what presents itself. So when it was suggested to you that you perhaps draw and

sketch, take me inside that moment where you took you back to your childhood that you talk about in the book, where you went, Oh, every time, oh, I was actually drawing, and the difference between your childhood and then how you you met the sketching in your adulthood.

I love the questions you're asking me as you're you're asking these questions to us. I keep hearing the observer and the creator happening at the same time, so I'm going to answer it from both those perspectives, right?

Please. And I love that part of your book by the way, that every, every one of the 21 chapters you are in, we're

invited to sketch from these two perspectives, yes,

and the observer. So thank you. I mean, first of all, I wrote that book so long ago, so I would butcher myself for reflecting it back to you, but

being so gracious. Thank you for being so gracious.

But, but, but, going back to the genesis of daily sketching, it was the Hypnotherapist. Her name is Linda mallerstein. She still does it.

Thank you, Linda, thank you, Linda, yeah, but she

she made an innocent she asked an innocent question, and I had an innocent response. She said, was there a point in time, is there anything you ever did that helped you to express your emotions. And I said, I used to draw all the time in my as a child, even in the turbulence of my life, I said,

but I did it to disconnect. And she said, Have you ever thought to draw to connect? And I remember hearing those words going, huh? Like, curious. Like, I didn't even give it a second thought at the time. It did. It didn't even hold the gravity with which it holds now, it was something she said that held

curiosity for me. Like, Huh, interesting idea.

No, isn't that a delicious word to just curiosity dwell in possibility? Yeah.

So I share that because not every Aha. Moment is that, like, sees a parting. It was a curious response. And I'm like, that's a curious thought. Walked out of that office, and then I realized, like, I'm going to quit this high stress job that was creating a lot of some of the turbulence for me, and then

I'm going to find a job that is really well, well, well balanced life, and I'm going to commit sketching every day to connect, but she used the word Connect. That's what really tuned into something special there. And so there's that part of it. But again, I did not anticipate, truly, I genuinely didn't it is

the curiosity that led and I believe, if there was one emotion that I felt that has been through line, my entire journey has been curiosity. And I say this in the book, curiosity cannot live in judgment with judgment and criticism, because the moment you are curious, you are not in

that state because you're too curious. So there's no, there's no, no way judgment, well, it

becomes something else when a judgment is attached to it, correct? Yeah. Then it has a gender,

yeah, oh yes. Oh, good one. I love that. Yes. Love that. Yeah.

I want to ask you about this, this moment where you were, you looked back and you thought, oh, as a child I was, I was sketching to disconnect from the turbulence or the abuse or the the aggression, or whatever it was that you were feeling from your father and the dynamic in the

family, but now that you're older and you are in the realm of this beautiful awareness and freedom with your expression and and really chiseling your ability to connect with your inner landscape as you have done and beautifully Shepherd others in doing. Would you look back now and say, Oh, I was

disconnecting from external stimuli, but I was always connecting with my inner landscape. I just wasn't aware of it.

I'm going to say girl, because beautiful when you even said that to me, we, you know, during our earlier conversations prior to this, when you said that, that really deeply resonated with me, because what you're bringing up is consciousness. I was not conscious that while I was

disconnecting from my body, I was actually connecting to my higher self, the entire Yes, I just didn't have the language I was so I was also very young. I didn't have the languaging. I didn't know what that was, so the answer is a definitively Yes. I did not know I was already having those

conversations with my higher self or with God or with spirit or whatever, the faith or bigger the thing, the energy bigger than ourselves, was happening. So yes, definitively that. But I also want to touch on drawing versus sketching. Please. When, when I first heard this idea of like, oh, let's draw to connect,

I said, I definitively remember saying I don't want to draw on a sketch. And it's because, in the art world, sketches are fast and loose, and they're not usually seen like if you go to retrospectives, artist retrospective is often the sketches people love to watch. Like you go see a retrospective

of Salvador Dali, and you look at his sketches, you're like, Oh, those are the sketches, the hundreds of sketches that led to his incredible work, and what that does, and what that did for me. And again, this was all guided. I didn't I knew something. I mean, listen, in hindsight, I'm like, clearly all

the languaging, the choices of sketching versus drawing, was being guided to me, because I knew deep down that the reverence and the intention in which I did it was part of the healing. So even just calling and sketching was very profound.

Do you know what's coming up for me? As you're saying this to me, years and years ago, I went to an exhibition at the Tate in London, and it was all sketches from Picasso and and obviously we know a lot of Picasso's work, even beyond the Cubist part of his work, that is the most

famous part of his work. Sheila. I was mesmerized by these sketches because the psychology they were done later in his life, when he was impotent and sexually frustrated. These sketches and the psychology behind what they revealed to me anyway, as someone who was looking at them, I was just, it

was like a labyrinth. I couldn't stop looking at these sketches. They had to kick me out

of the museum. I was the last person in there. It was just, so anyway, I'm just

having a visceral response to you saying that to me. So thank you for opening that portal for me, because I had never thought about it like that. The difference between drawing and sketching

very different. And by the way, your response just now that visceral, embodied, like full body, yes, is why you connect to my book in ways other people don't always connect you because you feel into my book.

You're and I. And I go to a somatic practitioner like your mom. You know that that we were talking about you and your mother having that conversation at exactly the right moment. Had you ever had I read your book 20 years ago, I would have had have a very different lens on it, like the

way that I was reading and feeling into your language and your book and your offering and accepting the invitation and the gift would be so different. So, yeah, thank you, because your book came to me at exactly the right moment as as things always do,

it does. We surrender to it. That's truly I had, you know, I ritualized a lot of things that are sacred to me, yes, and I remember, when I got the I forget the term for the book. When you get the initial, you know, with the term, it's before the book is printed, it's

yes, yes, yeah, you prove it. Proof. I got the galleys and yeah, I

got the galley and the proof, yes. Went to the beach, which is one of my Happy Places. I put my hand on the book, and I said, very much. What you just said in reflection. I said, Wherever this book lands, let them let let them be ready to receive it in their own time and let it stand the test of time.

Is all I asked. Let it stand the test of time because I knew definitively, because I've had many books like that that sit on my bedside. It holds energy, and I don't pick it up for a year, six, six months. Sometimes I never pick it up, but because I'm not ready yet. And I so I knew that feeling, and I wanted

the same which is, it's okay, it's not meant to be, it's and also, that is the healing journey. That is the healing journey, we must be ready until we're ready. I can, I mean, I'll give you a great metaphor in my workshops that I do. This is the metaphor I give. You're on the edge of a cliff, right? And your

hands are there, and I stand on on the on top of the cliff, and I say, test, let go, take the leap. And you're like, what the f Sheila? What am I? If I let go? What am I? Where am I landing? Where what's going to happen. And that's faith, that's trust, that's all of the things I can't tell you to let go,

because I can't tell you what you have to feel ready to let go. So that's the metaphor often use. So when I guide people on that very first sketch, when I guide people to do that very first prompt, we often start with the breath, because the breath is the first leap.

I mean, that is one of my favorite chapters of your book. Is sketch into breath. Is breath? The chapter about breath. Well, it really spoke to me. The chapter about surrender spoke to me. I mean, I could do a 21 series podcast with you and dissect each chapter with you. Seriously, I

really could, because that's how much I love this book. What's there's so many things coming up for me, so let me just spew them out, because I just don't want to lose them. Want to lose them. Because one of the another thing that I love about your book is you are a beautiful writer, and you have a great command of

language. And so the language is there, because that's how we understand the written word, obviously. And yet, at the same time, your book transcends language and the practice by which you are inviting us to participate in and to ritualize to use your word, we need to let go of the language, and we need

to somatically listen to our bodies and Let the pen go where it goes. So when you're guiding people actually, let me just ask you this, because this was coming up for me as well. One of the this is another part of your book I absolutely loved, was when you talked about the genesis of of the phrase Let go.

Can you take everybody inside of that? Because it was very interesting to me.

Oh, you're talking about the, the history I don't exactly remember about the dam, yeah, just the,

just the, how you understand the concept of letting go.

I mean, letting go is, for me. I mean, again, I'm not going to focus on what exactly I wrote in the book, because that's okay. That's okay. But letting go is the act of surrender. Is really an interesting thing, right? Because what it's for me, it was about having a crisis of faith,

and things building up in this idea that you must let things, you have to hold it before you let go. So that's how I'm going to answer them letting go. There's this perception, and certainly conscious and unconsciously, that I had to hold on to something, to let go of something. So the more I held

on, the more I had to let go. And that pressure, this constant tension, and that is what it is. It's energetically, this tension, this resistance. And then on the other side of the letting go, you're like, What am I letting go to, right? So that idea of, like, Okay, once the dam is released and that, and

then, by the way, that is one of my prompts is the Pandora's box in my workshops, because I talk about this idea of, we believe that the letting go is an act of releasing, but really. And go is the act of accepting what's already always been there. The Pandora's box was always inside of me. It was always opening and

closing. I just wasn't recognizing that. In fact, I thought my job was to get the box out of my body. I'm using that metaphor for a reason. Get it out of my body. Be brave and courageous enough to open it and let the Pandora's box, and then we know from the mythology that the other side of it is hope,

that ultimately it gets you to hope. But none of that was at play. All I knew is contain, contain, suppress, push, keep it in, keep it in. And my house is the body, and I just held it all in. So the idea of letting go was such a scary proposition, because that's how that's how I held it. It's like, if I let all

hell is gonna break loose.

You see? The way that I think of letting go now is, I don't think it's possible to completely let go of things. And why would we want to let go of the lesson or the gift, however we're holding it, I we are being called to build a different relationship with it, and that that's not static. We

can have a different relationship with something every minute of the day, if we choose, and we're holding these apparent conflicting or oppositional forces in balance together. And so many of your testimonials are about this from your students. I love how you've got it set up where someone

gives their their shares their experience with sketch poetic and with one of your classes, and then you see their sketch, yeah, some of them brought me to tears because I just wanted, I wanted to know more about their story. And then I thought, Oh, I actually get to interpret it now. I get to imagine where they

are in the world, sketching, or at least

that's that's what I did. Maybe I'm just because I'm an actor, I just, that's what I know you're beautiful.

And so many of your students were talking about how they were learning to hold these different pieces of themselves together, and that they can all be part of this beautiful tapestry and part of the creative and the source together within them. And anyway, again, I'm probably

butchering their language, but that's how my heart interpreted it take me inside, how the invitation from the hypnotherapist to sketch took you into daily practice of nine years before you, you know, well, you know, during at the same time that you started the business and started helping

others come into this, yeah? Like, how's that whole how that take me inside that evolution? I'm going to sketch once. Oh, I like this. Okay, now I'm going to sketch every day,

yeah, well, the commitment of everyday sketching was the initial promise to myself, Okay? Because I knew so my background is corporate business. I've been in the corporate field for 25 years, so I understood that repetition is always a way to solidify any sort of behavioral change. So

that was just something I knew. So my commitment to sketch daily was more of a promise to myself to commit to something so that it would stick. That's the first thing. What I did not anticipate is when I would go to this coffee shop. So the place that I selected, again, soul journey, held a very I've gone to a lot

of coffee shops, but there's this one coffee shop in in West Hollywood. I do believe the land must have some sort of indigenous thing, because

I have to know the coffee shop now, because,

yeah, it's called verb on third, but yes, you know it, yeah, verb on third. But there's the people. I've been to other verb coffee shops. It was this one because it was just this interesting microcosm of people. But so when I was doing it, I remember six months into it. I remember six weeks into the

daily sketching. I said out loud, do people know art heals? Because I could. I started noticing my breath like I started noticing when I held my breath. I started noticing how shallow my breath was, and in that noticing that's when the comment was, Do people know our heels and my background is

training, facilitating workshops with executives with Fortune 500 companies. So what happened is I was meant to go through that journey because I was easily and quickly able to take my skills and this kind of like emotional, spiritual, soulful journey and bridge the two, because I was able to deconstruct, because now

I'm, I'm wearing a workshop facilitator hat, and I'm going, Okay, how do I deconstruct this for an hour? Right? And that's, that's so I was able to then take what I was doing. So then I became not only an observer my sketches. I became an observer as a teacher, an observer, as a facilitator, and so I started to

notice, and again, that journey was not a coincidence, because by looking and observing it that way, I held a lot of compassion for myself, just even in that act, because I took myself out of the equation and started thinking about the collective. This is the i and we, again, the I and we has been at play since.

Day one, of course, of course, something that was going to heal me has to heal others, because that's the way. Not only was I wired as a Filipino woman, that's just in our nature, but that tsunami I talked about earlier, that is the we they're like Sheila. We never invited you to answer this call for

yourself and only for yourself. You were supposed to be part of a collective and now plugged into many people like yourself that do this work in our ways that we supposed to do it and

express it in the ways that we are meant to do it absolutely. So then you started teaching classes correct and inviting other people to participate in that, in this beautiful practice. So take me inside that evolution, yeah, of learning how to shepherd others.

I love this. I love this. Actually, you're bringing up an interesting full circle moment. I never considered. I never started by myself, because I didn't feel confident yet.

So I partnered. Tell me a bit more about that. Yeah, so I

knew that I wanted to go in the realm of mental health and healing, but I was new to the space, and I didn't feel like I had the credibility. Like, who is this pasta imposter syndrome, right? I my first workshop in person was with this beautiful woman. Her name is Geeta Novotny. She Thank you,

Geeta, yeah, she's a sound bath healer voice team. Yeah, I do sound baths. All the time. Oh, so yeah, but she's also an opera singer. She was a former opera turned into interesting.

So she was familiar with accessing the back cavities of her body, correct.

Got it also very, very smart so she understands, okay, got it the science behind

him, and she was, and she was already well versed in breath and using breath and sustaining story. Yeah, gotcha.

Okay, so the answer is, I co created and collaborated with someone first, that held the energy in space. I was both watching her and seeing the expertise of, how do you hold space, but also trying to navigate to your point like, how do we do this dance together? Do we put the sound bath first,

then the sketch? So we experimented. And one of the things that I've always called myself, even in the corporate world, is an innovator. Because in innovation, you take risks, and this idea of failing doesn't really exist, because you can't, in be an innovator and not and not fail, because that's part of

innovation. So it's failure. Yeah, there's no failure, but that, I'm just saying that word doesn't even register, meaning, that's what was so Geeta and I were innovating the entire time together, and then I got you just exploring. Yes, you were playing. I love saying that we play together. And then, of

course, eventually I got confident enough to do it on my own, and then I started to experiment and play with other, you know, wellness, breath work, facilitators, energy healers, all of the above. But then it became more of an orchestra, conducting this, this beautiful symphony together, versus,

Ooh, I love that metaphor, and it's a dance I love that you've got the Michael singer quote in your book. All the quotes, I'm like, Ah, let me write that one down. Let me write they were just so perfectly curated throughout the book. And a lot of the people that I read and and love, I just

went, Oh, of course, she's got a Michael singer quote in there, just at that right moment. Oh, what have you learned from from teaching others about about this practice.

The first way I will respond to that is we're always a student, even

a teacher.

Always know when you're holding that, understanding that as you are. And this is as parent, I feel the same way my daughter teaches me as much as I know she is watching So, so the first thing I would say is it's taught me to hold the ability to guide and be guided at the same time. Yes, it and because I hold

that resonance, I am very, really confident with ambiguity and really confident in trusting the process. So I don't just talk the talk. I walk the walk. I have a my workshops have a structure of sorts, like I'm going to start here, we'll do these three prompts, but I do not go into it with any feeling

of what I believe it's is going to happen because I make room for magic, is the other way I would respond. It's part of the creative process. Because when we make room for magic, which I never did in the past, I was one of those people that getting point A to point B, I got there. Let's move on to the and that's

the other thing you asked me, What else has workshops and teaching people? What has it taught me? It's taught me not to move on too quickly. When somebody else has an aha moment. We because I used to do that, I'd have a moment of aha or a moment of success, or a moment of like I got it, and then I'm

ready to move on to the next thing. What I believe I do in a way that feels. Makes people feel held is I notice the ahas and I acknowledge it and go, that was big. Do you know how big that was? I hope you can sit in that bigness, because Please don't move past that too fast it and the more that keeps coming

up for me, I keep hearing integration, integration, integration. It's one of the areas of my work that I really focus on whether it's integrating with the psychedelic community or integrating with the wellness community, or integrating with corporate America. You can do my workshop,

but that's only part of the journey. The journey is, how do you integrate the moments of awareness and consciousness into the world and make it your own? That's the invitation. And so even in so that I have to model that to say you just had this huge aha moment. You've had this huge breakthrough. Don't bypass

and just make like, oh, that's done. No, let that bigness of that moment sit with you for weeks, months, if need, need be, and then allow it to be integrated into your life. That is the invitation.

There are a lot of invitations in your book, and some of them I found easier to embrace than others. As everyone who reads your book and accepts your gift would say, because we meet the moment, how we meet the moment? So for somebody like me who picked up the book and went, Oh, I love this concept, but I

can't draw. I can't draw a stick figure, I can't play hangman, I'm so bad, right? I'm your target person, because what this book teaches you is that it's it's not about being a good draw or creating beautiful art. It's about being in the creative process and surrendering to what your inner landscape wants to

express right now, or how you're seeing things or feeling things, just breathing into it and allowing the flow to carry you, is how I would express it, yeah. How would you express it? Well, first

of all, thank you. I just love talking to you, because the way you reflect back. I mean, how could you not feel so much love in the way you received my work? So thank you. I just had to

acknowledge thank you for the gift that allows me to reflect back. But, I mean, it is a very, very, very special book. I don't know they're not just words. I My heart gobbled this book up.

No, I feel it to what you just said is the most common response I get before we even start in the workshop. We're getting the book. I'm not an artist. I don't know how to draw a stick figure.

What I don't even enjoy it is what I would have said to you, that's how I want to spend my time. I'm not good at it. I can't do it. I'm frustrated. I don't have the patience. It's gonna look crap. I mean,

this is like all of these things, when I hear those words, you said it earlier, and let's expand on what you said, because it's very profound. What you said, it transcends language. So those are words. Those are just words. And I see just words. Take the word just out. Those are words. But what

are those words really saying? It's saying. Here's all the reasons I don't want to do it because I need there's resistance. Here's all the reasons I don't want to do it because I hold reverence for art and artists. Here's all the reasons I don't want to do it. I Oh, here's another reason. Is I

put it out there so to set your expectations, because I don't, you know, I don't want to feel judged or criticized. All I feel is energy, and all I hear is, here's all the emotional reasons why you want me to know as the person hearing those words, why you might not succeed at it, or you might not be good at it, or

so all I'm hearing is protection. All I'm hearing is here's all the ways that I have to say out loud why this might not be for me, whether you're doing it for me or for yourself. That's all I hear. So what I do? I do, I just pour love into it and let me just deconstruct everything and say why it is an

art for me, I believe that my entire life experience was what it allowed me to do, is see beyond the art, and I started to see them as marks being made that were speaking to me. So a line, a dot and I and that's important, because if you looked at my sketches as a child, they were, they were considered what

they call picture perfect photographic art, where I my entire goal test was to make it look exactly the way it looked. And by the way one vision is coming in is I remember going through my seeing my Instagram feed, and somebody posted it was horrifying to me. I genuinely was horrified. Is in China. It

was a warehouse full of people artists trying to get into this college in China. And they were all painting the same painting and and there were people judging, saying. Nope, nope, nope. It was exactly the reason I abandoned my art. It is exactly the reason I'm half Chinese, and so I knew

ancestrally that was my ancestor is like, how can you look at 1000 artists painting the same exact image and say, Nope, yes, no, yes. Because they're looking at it as technical skill. They're looking at it as this doesn't look exactly the way it looks. I guarantee you, they're not going God, this made me feel

something, while this artist's energy is so connected to spirit source, God, they're not looking at it like that. So that visual came in for me, and the way I'm answering it for you is it's not art, because in the intention. Intention is everything. My intention was never to create art. My intention was to address

my anxiety, my my intention was to finally face the things that I had been suppressing. It was my intention was to do it in the active place I could hold darkness. It was never about the art. It just so happened that I found a tool that allowed me to do it. And now, if you ask me what this tool is, it's a wand.

If I pick up a pen right now, it like, Whoo, I'm like in another world. So it didn't start off as a wand, but it is a wand. Now it's magic.

Well, isn't that interesting? Because tools can be weapons, depending on the intention. To your point about intention, it is all about intention. And when you invite us to leap, as you say at the beginning of the book, leap into this with me, and it is an act of courage because you're

leaping into the unknown. But if you understand through the course of your book that we can hold the known and the unknown together and feel safe Yes, and feel seen in a way that we desire to be seen, whether somebody else sees us that way or not. But so there is a there's a really beautiful

journey there take me inside the it has to be me to write this book, to go beyond workshops and actually put pen to paper in a different way.

No, it had to be me. Because what, everything you've been speaking to Tess speaks to why me. And by the way, that question of it has to be me, which I love is, it takes it, gives it this beautiful tonality of love and compassion. Because if you said it has to be me, somebody could hear ego like it

have course it had to be you.

Well, it's funny you bring that up Sheila, because when I was naming the podcast, that was my deepest fear that somebody that looks at it, that comes in cold as a stranger, would go, Oh, God, that's some girl waxing poetic about how she's so great, or it's all about her, like a

narcissistic kind of a thing. And I really struggled with with doing the intro to explain what it was succinctly, you know, so can we just No,

can we just put Can we just extend on that? Because it's going to answer the question. I had a moment similarly with the word unseen. We were, we're ahead of our time. We're ahead of our time. It has to be me. Is a statement of claiming it is a statement of sovereignty, it is not a

statement of ego. And you knew that, because you carry that energy. So f, what the critics will say, or f, what somebody is perceiving it to be that's on them. You knew the energetic torch you were carrying and the light you're so just going back to that, because I felt that with unseen, I'm like, Oh, the

moment I describe this as unseen, I'm going to lose my audience. And you know what? I took the leap because I had to honor that unseen to me is not just thoughts, emotions, it's energy, it's spirit, it's all the things that for whatever reason, if you have any sort of visceral response to that word.

So I'm glad we talked about that, because it's

no thank you. Thank you for that offer that's I take that into my heart,

and I just lost the question we were talking about because we went down to the, yeah, no.

The it has to be me moment that that's me. I'm sorry I derailed you with that. The it has to be me to write the book.

Yeah, well, it has to be me, because my life's work led to the way it was written. It had to be me because during the process of writing the book, I hit a major writer's block, as we all do, as we all do.

There's that old saying, I would have written you a long letter, but I didn't have time. I love it, but this sorry, I would have written you a short letter. Sorry, courage and presence to write, yes, but the writer, sometimes the block is there, and for a reason now,

but the writer's block is going to answer definitively your question of why me? It had to meet me when I had the writer's block, and I was panicked because I had to submit my manuscript. Script. And I was panicked, like I had the timeline against me, and like I had to meditate and pray. And I

said, Why am I hitting this block? And I heard very clearly, Sheila, you're writing this for everyone, because it was true. It's I was bringing in all the PEEP students. I was thinking about the veteran, the homeless youth, you know, the domestic violence victim, the child. I was writing it for everyone,

Tess and so I prayed and meditated and I said, Help me get out of this block. What in the in the and I don't remember the exact process and journey that got me there in that moment, but I do remember the outcome was, write it for your 15 year old self, because the 15 year old self is the time in

which I had, I was having severe eating disorders because I was hiding all the emotional pain I was in. But I was also the first time I abandoned my artist self. I stopped, I stopped creating art, and so I knew if I wrote this to her, which I did, that's, that's what got me out of the block, is I was trying to

write for everyone, but I needed to know where the block was coming from. So I already intuitive. I was already being guided. So yeah, that book is for my 15 year old self, and for all the reasons it had to be me, is that 15 year old carried a lot of wounds and trauma that universally are carried. It's

universal.

Yes, a lot of things are coming up for me as you're speaking, but as a writer and and as an actor, when you're you know you're, you're, you've got to pick a very specific person that you are speaking to, and once you do that, you channel your intention in a Very, very specific way, but it

allows you to, with laser focus, communicate your message, and then it can be received by many other people, because my 53 year old self right now is telling you, Sheila, you wrote that book for me, but I

probably wrote it for another, for your inner child at an age where you abandoned yourself sometimes Exactly. It wasn't creativity you abandoned, but you abandoned yourself some at some point in time, exactly.

So I would also say and tell me what, what comes up for you as I say this to you, but it felt like a love letter. Felt like a love letter to your 15 year old, but it felt like a love letter to your name, a to your grandmother.

It was, it was, and I want to touch on that, because, yeah, we I touch on in the book. But my fear of flying got so bad that I didn't go to say goodbye to her and I didn't even recognize that. That's how bad my fear got. I rationalized like I don't want to see her that way, but honestly, and it was

honest, and I was filled with shame. I talk about it in the book, but the idea of being on a 14 and a half hour flight terrified me so much, because it was at the height of my fear of flying that I couldn't even I just to this day, I'm shocked, because I would never make that choice now, but my heart was

overruled by my fear, which is the ultimate lesson where we are in the world today, that's why it's coming up now, is we look at the world around us and we could we have many reasons to to be paralyzed. I was paralyzed, but that's because we're in fear. I if I were in a state of love. I would never have made

that decision, but I needed to make that decision. I needed to learn from it. I needed to be filled with shame, because the shame I was allowed to process through that act, I have a lot of shame in my life, but actually it was the shame of not saying goodbye to my grandmother that really opened the box of

shame and the box of what is really shame mean to me, and how, how do I transmute that feeling? And one thing I will say as I say that there's no emotion I cannot face now, I'm not a person that's all about love and light, and this is all I'm only ever going to sit and stand in that that emotion, I

believe every emotion is T is a teacher for us. And I will have waves of these emotions flowing through me all the time, and they're just teachers. They're all teachers.

Yeah, let's talk about emotions for a little bit.

Let's let's do that often.

They're words, which is why, you know, I was telling you this right before we hit record that consolations by David White, sits by my book. I sit, sits by my bed. And when I read your book, I felt like it was the sketch version of that book, where every you've got 21 chapters, and we sketch a word,

or our understanding of that word, and you help guide us into many different understandings and ways of holding that concept, or where that emotion sits in our bodies. But if we can't identify it intellectually, mentally, but also somatically, physically in our body, where? Where does it

activate in our body? And that's one of the beautiful things about your book, is in the reflections piece of each chapter, you ask the. Same questions, and one of them is, how does it feel in your body? Because it's coming from your body and your spirit, your sketch. So take me inside the

choice to put that, the diagram of the emotions, the emotional wheel at the front of the book.

It's at the core of the why of the book, and the why it had to be me is, externally, I was very expressive. I'm a very expressive person. Even my hands are always like a metallic you like, just very expressive.

And you and I had smashed glasses together at the coffee shop.

But, but interestingly, and this is I and I share this, because to me, emotions and feelings hold three different layers. There is the feeling of the emotion, which is the embodied experience of it. There's the expressing of the emotion, which is putting what we feel out into the world. And

then there's the meaning of it, and that's more of the rumination, the philosophical, the invitation to speak to the highest self, the spirituality. Those are all the layers. When I'm sketching, I'm dancing on all three of those. Sometimes I'm only dancing on the feeling part. Sometimes I'm only dancing

on the expressing. Sometimes I'm only doing it to find meaning. And sometimes I'm at all three right there, like waves of attunement. That's why I do see it as a soul journeys there. I'm attuning to which wave or current I'm supposed to be sketching into right now. And that is why, because it is what

makes us human tests. It's the body is always feeling into soul

emotion. We're walking, we're walking ball of emotions.

And it is what it is. It's so fascinating to me that I spent what, 42 years I've been doing this, almost nine years, yeah, 42 years of my life, not knowing that at first, I didn't have a language, like you said. The reason I put the wheel in there is, if I asked you what my my emotional vocabulary was

probably that of a five year old, angry, sad, you know, Joy. I didn't know the nuances of why I was angry. I was angry because I felt abandoned, or I was angry because I, you know, I felt like I was manipulated. These are all different types of words, but there was so many layers to anger that I was feeling or

shame, and that's why it's emotion. Part of the reason I put the feelings wheel in there is to help people like us, that me at the time that didn't have an emotional vocabulary, to just show you the complexity and the layers that exist within any emotion,

and to be able to identify what it is that's swirling around and that it doesn't just have to be one thing. Yes, we want to put things in static boxes, because that's apparently easier to understand, but actually more difficult if we don't allow everything a seat at the table.

We want to exile certain parts of ourselves that aren't particularly comfortable or pretty or, you know, to speak to your point about shame, we all have shame within us. Yeah, exactly using that word or not? Yeah.

Well, there's an aspect of it that I just want to add, because it's important to humanity, is it's relational too. Oftentimes we keep our emotional vocabulary simple because we believe that's the only way we'll be received. We believe that if we show any sort of complexity, or if we show any

sort of vulnerability in the layers of us. One, we don't feel safe, but again, relationally, we might. We don't think we're going to be received or loved.

We're not going to be enough, or we're going to be too much, exactly so. And we think they're in opposition, but they're actually part of the same coin Exactly.

And if there's a through line in our conversation, I keep bringing up is, this is the i and we conversation. We think it's a solo journey. We think we're having. And again, that's also you were talking about being self conscious of what, what the name of the podcast. I'm very

self conscious, not in self conscious in an uncomfortable way, but I'm very self period conscious period of how much I talk about my inner healing because it's like, oh, heal yourself. Heal yourself. But what, what I want people to understand is, when I heal myself, I heal the world. That's

how I hold it. I don't think of it as I'm just going to heal myself and I'm doing the robot voice. I'm not healing myself for the sake of being egotistic. You know, ego driven or individualistic, driven. I'm not even wired that way, my languaging, my book, my work, my the way I speak is always with

the I understanding. I go in, it comes out. I sketch on my page. I see the world as my canvas. It is constant dance of the I and we, always I and we, I and we. It is there, which is why languaging matters.

Oh, let's talk about this co creation aspect of this

whole practice. Yeah, yes, yes, I love it. I was you asked it earlier, and when I said to you, it was a profound reflection you gave that I'm still holding with with love. Is I was not aware. I was always co creating with my higher self when I was just connecting to my body. So I was always co

creating there. I was unaware that when I'm sketching, even with an audience in mind. So when I was sketching for others, because I was focusing more on what other people think you that is a co creation, we just don't realize it, because we're co creating with a perception of somebody else's eyes. So again,

the languaging is very compassionate. Now, before it was like, Oh, fu gallery owner that doesn't want that piece of art, or fu art buyer that doesn't want this, right? Because, because I'm holding that judge and critic too, not just them, right? So there's all these ways I think I believe in

my whole heart, sketching, daily sketching and sketch poetic just taught me the language of love and compassion. What does that really feel like? What does that look like? How does it sound? What are the words? And yeah, it's the co creation. To me is, is a an extension of that? When you're co creating with someone,

what you're really saying is you bring something that only you and I could ever create together, this thing, this apex, this Keystone, could never have existed. This podcast conversation would never have existed. That in energy vibration, the message had to come together for us. We had to

co create it for it to be heard by one person. And that only takes that one person to hear it, the way you and I and how you're facilitating this is meant to be heard. That's the power of co creation. So it's always, there's always that third energy that is it, and we're also co creating. I mean,

listen, whatever your belief is, we are the creator, we are the creation. So we're in that dance all the time. We're both creator and we're being created. So that is even just an act of that it were co creating. So it's just fascinating to me. It's really a beautiful

it is, it is, and the acceptance of the energy that exists within us and around us, and allowing your pen to find its way and that you don't even need to know. You just allow it to flow. So take me inside. Why we have to use a pen? It can't

be a pencil. It cannot. Let me tell you, when I read that piece, when I was getting ready to sketch,

I went, straight away. I had anxiety. I had to just do a somatic practice. I went, Ooh, what's that bringing up for me? Oh, then, of course, you answered. I was your person. So I, you know, you

answered all of it. I wanted to erase it. And, oh, my God, what if I make a mistake, and it has to be perfect. And, you know, yeah,

I mean, there's a, you know, there's the practical answer is exactly what you said. I knew I couldn't erase it. I also knew the nuance of drawing and sketching. So when I used to draw, I would always draw with a pencil. So when I started sketching, because I was very purposeful about this. I keep

touching my ear because it was, it was guided sketch. Don't draw sketch. And so I'm like, Oh, if it's got to be fast and loose, I've got to do it in a way that can't get attached. And I knew if I did it with a pen, I'm just going to have to really suck it up buttercup. You're going to be very, very, very, very

uncomfortable, and you're going to hate it, and you're going to be uncomfortable. I wanted to be uncomfortable, and I knew that that's when the readiness came. I was already uncomfortable. I was experiencing severe anxiety flying so I was already uncomfortable. Might as well give me, give myself a form of

discomfort that was pleasurable in the sense that it was something I was familiar with. So the pen was exactly that. And then, of course, the soulful, guided part of it is it forced me to address my perfectionism. It forced me to to confront the people pleaser in me. Because the people pleaser in me is

like, if somebody sees this right now, I'd be so embarrassed, right like they Sheila, you're an artist, or Sheila used to be an artist. So it forced me to sit internally and externally with this idea of perfection and people pleasing, which were the two as a, you know, psychologist or somebody

that does therapy, those are my the two ways it showed up in my life, of my my is that I had to be perfect to keep myself safe. If, if everyone loved me, the people pleasing is every everyone loved me, no one would hurt me. That was the languaging. If I'm perfect, no one's, you know, everyone's

going to love me. And if I'm pleasing everyone, no one's going to hurt me. And that. But that was, as you know, very flawed. It's just

and, but, but, we all keep chasing it.

We do so the pen is was very purposeful, and it is the thing that makes people very uncomfortable. And also,

Pen Set me free. Good, I'm gonna tell you, because the the other thing that was coming up for me, all the things that you just said, came up for me because, you know, in our program. And we have a mantra of good, better or best, not perfect, and that it's all about surrendering to the

imperfection and the glory that comes within it. And yet I can accept that in my head,

I still gram seven with a very, very powerful eight swing. And I'm a one to one subtype, right? So I'm just head, head, head, right? And I got to remind myself that my heart's there.

Hello, hello, you know, yeah, but, but what was so interesting about the process of sketching in the way that you teach is that, oh, when you, when you accept it, and through the process of doing it, like my dear friend, Jess, my editor, who says we don't, we don't have to understand things to do them.

We understand them by doing them. Yes, thank you. Thank you. Jess, but he got given that by somebody else you know. So thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Right? And then he gave it to us on the previous on another podcast episode. But it's so true. And in the process of doing and being and breathing

and loving and all of the things that you teach in the book, and then when you get through, you know, towards the latter parts of the book, you go, by the way, the sketch does. It's not ever done. This isn't a snapshot that's done and dusted and you can't come back to it, and you can't continue playing with it.

And just that reminder is so beautiful and and it really did just go, I'm sticking everything in pen now. Well, just because, why would we want to erase and undo anything that gets layered into the tapestry of who we are and who we can become, and is part of the possibility out there.

Oh, can I here's an interesting oh my gosh, something just came up that's so fascinating.

Please, please share. Touch your ear again. It seems to

work very well for you. Does because we're intuitively just talking and channeling at this point impermanence. It is by design that something so permanent as a pen taught me impermanence.

Yes, it's this holding of the two seemingly opposing forces that you teach so beautifully in your book. It's permanent, and yes, it's impermanent, and yet it's impermanent,

but, but see how if, if you'd walked, if you walked by someone and you said, if I do a pen sketch, and it's impermanent, they wouldn't understand what I'm saying. Yeah, yeah. But the journey of again, did not go into this like it's we're talking nine and nine years later. Of this, none of

this. These are the the inner knowing that we're talking we always talk about you and I talk about the knowing has always been there, but you learn and remember what you know and the time you're supposed to remember it. Because, again, I just had that moment of aha, like, of course, yes, of course. That

pen, a very permanent tool, a very permanent stain, would be the very tool I would use to teach myself impermanence and lack of attachment, of course.

Because, yes, I'm having a full bodied yes to this. May I add something to what you're saying, please. Yep. So what's coming up for me is, oh, my unconscious and my conscious knew. Now I'm giving myself permission to know.

Oh, okay, yes, put that on a t shirt.

Yeah. Because what's coming up for me is so I've got this beautiful niece. She's 16, and she gets very anxious and stressed, and she's aware that she does. But what's so interesting is she's got all these ways to regulate her nervous system, and nobody taught her to do it. Nobody told

her to do it. She just knew that she needed to do it. So one of them is when it's all too much for her and she's stressing about a test at school or something like that, or there's a lot of stimuli in the room, and she just needs space. She goes out and jumps on the trampoline. And when I first

moved back four years ago, because I just wanted to be with her and reconnect with her, I would go out and want to jump on the trampoline with her, because I thought that would be really fun, because I love jumping on the trampoline. Oh no, no, no. She wants to be on that trampoline by herself because,

and it's not about me or rejecting me. That is what she needs. That is a solo practice for her. And guess what else she does? She starts sketching. She starts drawing. And I could name other things, but, but, but And yet, and language doesn't do it for her. So when we start to talk to her and start going use

your words, you know, what do you need? Tell us what you need. It transcends language. What she needs to regulate her nervous system in that moment. And I'm thinking that down the road, just like you, because she's around that 15 year old that we're talking about, she's 16, but in that, in that zone we're

talking about, where you're becoming a woman, you're stepping into another frontier of knowing all the hormones are raging, all the things, right? I'm just thinking ahead and wondering now I'm going to scratch my ear and do what

you have an ear thing too. Yes, I

do. I know. Isn't it funny? We're both tapping our ears,

but how she will look back and think about oh, and recognize and celebrate that her heart and her nervous system and her being and her spirit, her soul, or whatever we call it, and her mind, always knew what she needed. I would add

one thing that is potentially challenging, one thing that you said, and I'll say this because I work, work with kids right now, yeah, she won't need to reflect back, but she already is in it the difference between our generation and her their generation. Tess, you and I come

from a different generation. We did not know about emotions. We certainly, I definitely, know when we were growing up, we were not about spiritual I mean, it wasn't like spirituality social media didn't exist. So we didn't have access to all the ways people speak about the soul and spirit, right? And we also

didn't have access for all the ways people talked about creativity. This generation has access to a lot of information, a lot of content, and what they're being invited to do is discern what's working for them. I don't think it's going to

be a Sheila discernment. Yes. So this is what's interesting about this generation, in my opinion, yes, someone that does not have a daughter, but here's what I see as a 53 year old. They've all got in for beesity. They're bombarded by stimuli and information, but I'm not sure if

the discernment is being taught? No, it's not. And it's a very, very big piece of this, and you talk about this in your book,

yeah, discernment is not being taught because that is the Language of Spirit. What is being taught is the language of the body. So they are already regulating their body because they have to just survive this world. They already intuitively not going to jump on a trampoline. They're trusting,

they're unconscious, or they're being guided by spirit, genuinely in the height of some of my darkest times as a teenager, I genuinely

giving me hope, because that is not, has not been my experience. No, I will tell you young ages,

yeah, yeah. No, I hope. I do hope. I give you hope because my daughter's about to turn 18, and she's one of the the beautiful youth that I have access to, not just because she's my daughter, but she is my, one of my, my great teachers. But I will say to you, you cannot be in the world today

and not hear the knocking of Spirit you cannot because AI psychedelics creativity. They're inviting us to see beyond our eyes.

They invite our sphere. Sheila, yes. In our sphere, yes. In this sphere, there is a whole other sphere where I feel like there are people that are choosing to be disconnected from their bodies, as you point out before, to come full circle that you were, you were, you're either actively

seeking out disconnection or you're actively seeking out connection. And we can do both at the same time in various parts of our lives and various relationships, we can be connected and disconnected. Absolutely, we are all in that soup, so to speak. But I do think that it is a choice, yes,

to seek that out and go deep and to drink from the well. To use your analogy earlier in our conversation, did do you see it that way as well?

Yeah, yes, and but I want to just extend on where I was going here, because where the danger for me is. So I'm not saying I will give you hope for the youth, because I please, but, but the danger in which I would describe and why I believe the arts and artists and creators are being called is our

children or the youth of the world? The children of the world are lacking in imagination because they're being told and forced of what it should look like. So that's what I'm talking about. If in the world of social media, television media, we are not inviting kids to be bored, period. And I talked to many

adults who are, who have, who have struggling with ADHD. And they, I know they didn't have ADHD before. It's because our world, to your point, is sensorily. It's like constant bombardment. But what we're really teaching, let's go back to the arts. Boredom equals imagination. A period. So what

really we're suffering from is the crisis of boredom. Like, when did we not become bored? Like boredom was our thing as a kid like you and I, I remember I was telling my my daughter, she couldn't get her she couldn't wrap her head around my upbringing. I'm like, Layla. My daughter's name is Layla. I'm

like, Layla, I would ride my bike at eight in the morning. My mom had no idea why I was for 15 hours come home, and sometimes I was just riding my bike. And I would sit at the park and look at the sky because I didn't have the internet. I didn't have a lot of, you know, just and she couldn't understand. But I was

bored a lot, so I would have to force myself to look for things. And I was very imaginative, very imaginative. So I'm saying that I think that's the part that I feel called to bring back into the to the to youth, when I work with them, is to get them to imagine again. And imagination is a lot of the things that I

want

to activate. Oh, activates a great word. I don't think I've ever been bored in my entire life, I have to say, when you say when you say that to me? Yeah, I don't know where to put that in my body. To going back to the emotional language piece of this, I don't get bored and I don't get lonely, or perhaps I'm

not recognizing that. That's what it is, to be honest. And I'll have to continue thinking about this long after this conversation is over, but I just dwell in constant curiosity. You know, if I if something's not interesting to me anymore, I find something else, you know what I mean. So maybe there's

this very, very small, little lull, perhaps, but I love the invitation in your book to play, to play in a childlike way with an adult and bring an adult consciousness to it, or bring your present consciousness would probably be be a more interesting way for me to explain it. How would you how

would you say that?

Oh, play is everything. But I want to just comment on what you just said. If I had to use a different word for for adulting, of what boredom is, it's rest is what rest it's the adult version of boredom. Oh, they got when

we're that lands for me. Well,

children, when we're children, we can be bored because we got our parents to take care of us. We have a community. Hopefully we're privileged enough to have love family, and so I say that out of privilege, yeah, but when we're adults, we don't have that, like, we don't have, like, a net

of two people, you know, any parent, anybody, that's so what we're having to do is we're adulting at that point, and rest becomes our challenge of, like, just resting. So for me, boredom and resting is that same frequency of energy, so just going

to that, yeah, all right, I'm taking up that offer, and I'm going to thank you for that, because that is opening up a whole other portal of understanding around that.

Well, I'll tell you the through line of boredom and rest that needs to be spoken about. I just wrote a substack about it. When did stillness not feel safe.

Oh, you bring this up in the book that that really, I didn't really know where to put that bit of, bit of your offer into my body.

That's that is stillness is boredom. Stillness is rest. So stillness was my issue. And I say my issue the thing that I was reckoning. So I'm glad you were honest and said boredom that doesn't sit with me, you're absolutely right. It's not sitting with you, because that's not the

right language for it. Stillness is the language. Stillness is I'm just, I'm just letting you know, working with children, boredom is the thing that I've noticed, but stillness and so I didn't even know, and this is why sketching was so potent for me. Yeah, for me, is it was the conversation with my marks and

the higher self where I started remembering. I just had a memory of my mom and father, mother and father fighting, and there was domestic violence and my and this is, I just have to be trigger warning. I don't want to get too deep into it. But bottom line is, there was a moment of stillness and silence, and that

was more uncomfortable to me than the noise. So unconsciously, I held that understanding of like, I don't like stillness, because it brings me back to this moment, and I didn't even know it was happening. So the substack that I wrote was the question is not, how can I not sit in stillness?

The question arised that, when did stillness not feel safe? That is at the root of it,

the stillness chapter in your book. It's very powerful to say, I mean, like every, every I love, that you start with, hope, trust, love. I mean to me, they're just the foundation of the whole shebang, right? The whole cake. And then we just keep going. And you can bounce around the chapters. You

don't need to read it in a linear way. You can just open a chapter and sketch to what speaks to you that day, and it, it's always, always takes you on a journey. I want to ask you about resonance. And you seeing these sketches as like, hieroglyphics?

Yes, yeah, I told you that. That's something I don't talk about publicly, and I'm glad you're inviting that in. It is about languaging. For me, I one of the things that you should know is when I was writing the book covid hit, so I was kind of at the edge of covid, I think it was tail end

of writing the book, and then covid hit, so I had to do my workshops on Zoom. And what that afforded me, thank goodness, because it wouldn't have been in the book, but what it afforded me is access to the global community. And the reason I say that is I got to see a lot of sketches. And when I would see

the sketches, I could hear and feel the culture of that person through the the sketching, because the expression. So for example, like, let's say we're just sketching the same thing. We're all sketching spirals right now, a spiral is a spiral is a spiral. But when I saw a spiral from somebody in Africa

versus Brazil versus Australia. I actually saw and heard and what was happening is I was connecting from the heart, because I was looking beyond the marks. I was hearing what they were saying about what it was bringing up for them. So resonance for me is looking beyond why. Again, it's going

back to the art the artist, like this is an art. When somebody sketches a spiral, they're not sketching a spiral. What I'm more interested in, what I'm more curious about, and what I model for the person, is look beyond the spiral. What came up when you were sketching the spiral? What unconsciously

memories came up? What is happening in your body as you're doing the spiral so the mark, it becomes the mark. It's not it's just, it's a vehicle. It's not even so the resonance for me is just the unspoken, unseen way to describe what marks are for me, and hieroglyphics is simply my, my the feeling. Okay, I'm going

to put myself out there a little bit. This is a vision I've always had. This sounds so wild,

but I love wild. I know you're wild, but

let's say, you know, I've been reading that, you know, there's been more spoken about aliens and, you know, beings of other worlds. I would always say at this vision that imagine an alien came down, or some out, you know, being from another galaxy came in and I would just sketch to talk to them, is how I

felt, because I knew, I knew that whatever the language was, I knew when I'm sketching that it's a vibration, a frequency, it's another language. And I call it the modern day, higher glyphics, because I don't see the marks as marks. I see it as frequency and languaging. And it's about it transcends

everything. And that is why I just describe it as modern day hieroglyphics, because there may be a point in time, in the future, whether I'm here or not, where we have to communicate with some energy or presence that doesn't speak our language, and how are we going to connect? Well, we're going to have to

connect in the unseen realms. It's just the way it's going to have to be. So that's what I mean by far. That's the way I see the world. It's like, oh, there's actually one other thing I wanted to say, there's this beautiful thing in indigenous communities that I love, that I hope we can adopt, is whenever

they commune or do something in their cult, in their community, they always think about their seven generations ahead of them. I forget the actual term, right? So beautiful. Like, I wish, I wish we

all thought of talk about the seventh generation. Always, like, how

profound is that I just reset, that I love it, and that I noticed again, unconsciously, when I say that knowing is that's exactly how I'm moving through the world. Now, I never put a number on it, but I've always said my legacy was never going to be my full legacy was never going to be felt in my

lifetime, never. And that also took off a lot of weight, the performer in me, the performance driven, academic driven, gotta get shit done. Person with the moment I was able to say my I don't even like the word legacy, my imprint, full imprint of why I was brought into this moment in time will not really fully be

realized in my lifetime and maybe seven generations from now, because that's exactly what seems to be happening as I'm being called, to do something that is going to require a long, long journey.

May I offer you something that's coming up for me, as you say, is that to to riff off of the invitation and the offers from your book that, just like the sketch that is never finished, your offering is realized in this moment and it is yet to be realized.

Yes, it's both. I thank you. Yes, both. Thank you. It's both, yeah, thank you. I appreciate that. I hear that yeah,

I want to ask you why. You resist the word therapy to describe your work? Oh, that's so creepy, yeah, because to me, it felt like therapy in the most spectacular way.

You're going to love my answer. Oh, please. It's out of reverence. It's not out of not out of resistance, because I don't want to call it therapy. My husband happens to be a clinical psychologist. My husband happens to be a creative expression facilitator. So I have seen the hours He's poured

into being an art therapist. So it's not because I don't like the word therapy, or that I just have such reverence for people that have studied it. I also Cathy melchioti wrote a testimonial, and she her books are taught, right? Her books are taught for to art therapists. So Kathy is a person I hold with

reverence. I would never say to her, I'm an art therapist. I would never because one, I'm not clinically trained. However, what I'm hearing you say is it was therapeutic that alone, I'm happy to say that it is therapeutic to do what I do. But would I ever call myself a therapist or do what I do as

therapy? No, because I have such reverence for the people that are studying it, getting their certification on it, and all the constant training they have to do to just to continue to stay so it's coming from a place of reverence and and respect, not for more resistance. Yeah.

You know, maybe this is just me, but from where I sit, Potato, potato, I don't care what we call it, and I feel like, again, I'm going to come back to the the other point of it's of language, and it transcends language at the same time, yeah? And so whatever the process of sketch poetic is for

you, yeah, does matter is how I know it. You know I completely and I fully, fully accept what you're saying. Yeah, in terms of your intention, about wanting to be clean about how you were representing your offering, yes, I was more wanting to get inside of that. Thank you. But also just the way to express how I

perceived it, which was, yes, that it was therapeutic, it was opening. It was revelatory. It was I could I could think of 1000 words to describe it, and it's I find myself in a different place with it every time I pick up your book. So that's what's so wonderful about it. It is a living, breathing

offer.

Offering is how well you know how we talk about being ahead of our time, you and I, like in the sense of your podcast title, what's coming up for me? If the other reason I have not called it therapy or therapy, you know art therapy, is I keep using the word healing, and healer you are. You

have all the tools to heal yourself genuinely. And when you see the evolution of Sheila Darcy and sketch poetic watch out, because it's really going to be more about Mother Earth, about spirit, about soul, about mystics, therapy doesn't even touch when I say therapy, the therapeutic world sometimes

doesn't want to touch that because it's you need evidence. You need measure where I'm going and where I am right right now. You cannot measure it. You cannot see evidence of it. It is transformative. It is life changing. It is soul, you know, it's alchemy. It's all of these words. And so part of it is, I

feel like, yes, it's a little limiting in the where it's I know it's going to so yes, I love what you said, and it is languaging, but that's also another thing that's coming into my heart is healing. And healer has always been but by the way, it's challenged me at the same time I've I know people have not

picked up.

I, as you're saying, those two words, I people want to say that to me all the time, and I would never call myself a healer. Ever you know, ever you know, to the 30,000 people that have done our programs, I just would never describe it's

because we're not the healer themselves. It's because

we conduit. You're offering a tool. You're offering a tool Yes, for somebody to explore what's going on for them. That's how I would describe.

I would never call How do you feel about that description? It is, it is a tool. I call it a tool. It's all we can give to people. We people I listen. The big reckoning I've had many times over is that conversation. I am not a healer. I'm not here to heal you. I'm not here to save you with my

family and my friends and my loved ones. All I can do is be witness, give you tools and accept that this is your journey and not mine, and it was. It's how do you feel about facilitator? I love facilitator. I call myself.

I do too. I do too for you. Yeah. Guide, yeah. I feel comfortable with all those words for you. How do you

feel? Very luminary,

all sorts of words. Let's talk about one of the beautiful extensions of this, of this offering. Let's talk about the living Canvas foundation. Yes. Well. Is that it has to be me moment.

Oh gosh, that one was thrust upon me. I did not plan to, I did not plan to start a nonprofit. Are you kidding me, especially when money wounds were a big part of my healing, like the ability to hold it and call it in and all that fun stuff. But what the nonprofit is, in terms of the way the

world perceives nonprofits to be is really, ultimately, I'm being called, and I want to be called to serve, to be in service of others, and do the thing that I do, but get out of my own way. There's a lot of people that that that do arts and healing. There's a lot of communities that need arts and healing. The

nonprofit came into my life, and i It's because it is the bridge that I want to create for those two worlds, the people that do it and the people that need it, but give make it accessible. You know, part of the hope, if of bringing funds into the nonprofit, is to have call in people that feel like this is an

important work. You know, that people do need the arts, and it's not like an after school program, or it's not a not a privileged thing to do, to sketch. It is a necessary thing as part of our livelihood or as part of our holistic health. So the the nonprofit, to me, holds that that resonance and that

reverence, because it really is just taking what I do sketch poetic and bringing it to the collective in a way that invites others in as well. But yeah, I call it living Canvas because it is, it is the way I see the world, that we're all masterpieces. We're all the Creator, we're all the creatives

and and we are just being invited to live out our art, live our live ourselves as artists. And yeah, I'm really proud of the living canvas. It's only been around for four months, and we've got some great things we're about to do around initiatives and and I really wanted to see us in schools, in

in systems that need to look at art differently, even museums, hospitals, things like that, areas like that,

and you have some wonderful people on your board, including Amy Stanton, who I've interviewed on the podcast, who connected us. So thank you, Amy. Thank you, dear, Amy. I have to ask you about the glorious sketch, and I would say piece of art behind you. It is it is art. It is art. It is an offering.

It, I could think of a lot of words for it. Tell me about about that, and tell me about your commissions. Yeah.

So there's the for profit work, which is sketch, poetic, and then the nonprofits live in Canvas. This is my for profit, like the thing that keeps my livelihood as part of it. And so I went, and

that's not a dirty word, dear Sheila, no, yeah. Thank god. I love that you're so comfortable with it now, when you know

I know I was it used to be a dirty word. I didn't call myself an artist turtle till recently, which is ironic, but yes, this is commissioned work. There's two ways I commissioned. There's the hands, which I'm known for. So I outline someone's hand, and I do Lean into the intuitive, channeled

nature of my work. I call myself a visionary artist for a reason, but the way I describe it as much like a filmmaker, what happens is I have to pretty much put myself in a state where I have three to four hours of complete space and time to tap into the energy of someone, and then I simply ask whatever is in

their highest good to come through. This is a big one. This was a big piece. So this one took me, like 36 hours of that. So it was very intense, but basically different images and different symbols, past, present, future I might hear it's very clear, clear, sentient experience, and all I do is

offer it to them. They can receive it however they want to receive it. But what it does is it gives them. You know, the way one client said it to me, you give, you give. You give voice to the thing that I have been feeling, but you do it in in such a beautiful way, like it can hang up on a wall, and it's

almost like their essence is being captured, and it is it captured in that moment. Because if I did this a week later, it would be very different. So yeah, this is, this is the channel the work that I do, the intuitive work, the visionary work that I do, I very much do it as word of mouth. I don't

advertise it. You won't see me doing ads on it, not because that's a negative, because I hold it that I don't necessarily want to do these back to back, either because it does take a lot out of me. So I prefer word of mouth. I prefer when somebody says you must check this out, or I think this is perfect for you

because it's already in resonance. Yes.

Well, listener, if you're listening and you're not watching this on YouTube, go over and look at this glorious piece, and I'll just share a little bit about what happened to me when I spoke to Sheila earlier before this interview. View. She was in front of this beautiful piece of art, and I

asked her about it. And because what was coming up for me was I had a vision of a similar piece to this that was going to hang in my in my living room. And I my heart, just kept seeing it for the last few years, and when she first came on Zoom, my heart just swelled, and I just thought, that's it's her. There

she is. That's it. That's what's been been coming to me. It was, it was a promise of what was coming, that that that was meant to be in my life for whatever reason. And so what I'll just say to you, just as an offer, is, if you're seeing and feeling things, just allow them to come in and out of you. It could be a

promise of what your heart is going to bring in or what the world is going to bring in for you, don't discount it, just trust in it and just allow it to present itself when, when it's going to so that was definitely a moment for me. So thank you, Sheila. I can't wait until until you do. Mine going to happen.

Thank you. Exciting. Look, I honestly just could speak to you all day long about this. I always close every episode with the same question, and I cannot wait to hear what you're gonna say, which is, when you have a dream in your heart and you don't feel like you have what it takes to make it happen, what do

you say to yourself? What do you do?

The thing that's coming up is you are enough. You are in your divine sovereignty. And everything that is and continues to be is the way it is meant to be like, basically the dream we are already in. It the only thing we have right now is this present moment and what a dream does. And I very much live in

the liminal world a lot, even in my waking state. So the word dream even holds such a interesting complexity and resonance. But when you are dreaming something, and you don't know how you're going to get there or what it's going to look like, it's actually an invitation to go inward and say,

Oh, I'm already in it. I'm in the dream. It's already happening. That's why the living Canvas name came up. I'm already in the masterpiece. I'm in the dream. It's just that right now, it hasn't been fully realized in the way you're you were meant to fully realize it. And the other thing that I will say to all of

what you just asked about that is, I actually think it's a good thing, because dreams are meant to be ever evolving, and when it's not looking like you don't know where it is. That is, that is actually a good thing because you're making room for magic. So all of it is by design. All of it's by design. You're in the

dream already. It's already happening. It's already happening.

And sketch

it out. Yeah, well, you know, I'm gonna say that sketch it out, embody it, you know, release it. Release any, any expectation around all of it. Expectation, by the way, was a big one for me, letting go of expectations.

Yes, and surrendering, it just came up. That's what my spirit was saying to me constantly. As I was reading your book, as I was sketching, I was just surrender, surrender, surrender, which I find, you know, I've got to constantly remind myself

exactly. I mean, you know,

I don't surrender and acceptance are in the same thing. Yes, they're one in the same to surrenders, to accept,

yes, yes. Thank you for this beautiful conversation, and thank you for the way you show up in the world. Yeah.

Same to you. Tess, thank you. Wow. I'm so happy that we met. Likewise.