Breathwork And Nervous System Resets with Michael Gazzo

The fastest way to kill creative flow is to turn art into an identity you have to defend. Nathan sits down with special guest host Michael Gazzo (@Michaelvgazzo), a coach, rebirth breathwork facilitator, master NLP practitioner, and platinum-selling music producer, to talk about what happens when external success still leaves you empty and what it takes to create from a more honest place.

We trace Michael’s path from childhood music obsession to major-label moments, touring, and high-pressure industry wins and then into the quieter work of rebuilding from the inside. Along the way, we unpack why curiosity and play create the “happy accidents” that make work feel alive, and why creative block often isn’t a lack of talent but a nervous system and heart issue. If you’ve felt stuck in perfectionism, overthinking, or the need to make something that “works,” this conversation offers a different frame: become a better receiver first.

We also get practical. We talk breathwork as a tool for regulation and deeper emotional release, how to redirect spiraling thoughts without bypassing your real feelings, and how journaling can become a direct dialogue with the work itself. Finally, we break down intention setting, focusing on a cleaner why, avoiding negative motivators that burn out fast, and serving the art instead of using the art to chase approval.

If this resonates, subscribe for more conversations on creativity and the inner life, share this with a friend who’s blocked, and leave a review so more artists can find the show.

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Make sure to follow us on Instagram here:
@justmakeartpodcast   @tynathanclark   @nathanterborg

Watch the Video Episode on Youtube or Spotify,

https://www.youtube.com/@JustMakeArtPodcast

Transcript

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Welcome And Guest Introduction

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome to Just Make Our Podcast. I am your host, Nathan Treborg. Ty is just getting back from his show in London, so we are without him today. But I have a special guest host, Michael Gazo, who I'm really excited to introduce you guys to. Michael helps people shed inherited identities and return to who they actually are. As a coach, rebirth breath work facilitator, master NLP practitioner, and platinum-selling music producer, his work helps people build real nervous system capacity through embodied presence, breath work, and emotional integration. So I'm going to share just real quickly how Michael and I met and why I'm really excited to have him on the podcast today. So Michael and I met in person for the first time. Was that three weeks ago the retreat was? Something like that? Yeah, about. Yeah. I didn't know much about you when I was uh when I was going. I did a little research, but it was one of those things when our mutual friend Michael Chernobyl invited me to attend. I was like, this sounds awesome. This sounds right up my alley, and just kind of showed up open for whatever the experience brought. My experience there was, you know, I had high hopes, but my experience at the retreat with you and with everybody else there exceeded every expectation I could have had. The word transformational gets thrown around, I think, free and loose these days, but it was for me a transformational experience on a number of levels. We'll talk more about that. But the things that not just the experience there, but what you helped us take home and apply in our day-to-day has been it's traveled. You know, I think that's oftentimes the experience, whether it be a vacation, whether it be a retreat, an intense experience. You know, we have these amazing moments and we want to try to capture them and hope that it actually travels, that it actually comes home, that we can actually apply it to our day-to-day life when it's most needed. You know, it's easy to be at peace and relax when you're removed from your regular world. It's another thing entirely to be able to come back and actually put that into practice when you know the bullets are flying and life gets real. And uh, since coming back home from the retreat, that's been my experience. And so I just uh I'll I'll share this and then I want you to share a bit more of your provide some more color for your backstory before we get into some art-related topics that I'm excited to talk about. But I would say if I to summarize what I've taken home from our time together a few weeks back, my heart is more open than it's been since I was probably a child. When I came home and I was trying to communicate to my wife and my daughters what it was like and just what happened, you know, while we were there. Uh the best summary I could come up with is that I cried more in those three days than I had in the previous probably 15, 20 years. And that was so cleansing, so healing, and so impactful, not just crying, but the release of a lot of things that I uh didn't even realize that I'd been holding on to. And so a big part of that was breath work. So, what we're gonna get into today, I'll give you all a kind of a preview of coming attractions, and I want Michael to share more about his backstory. But we're gonna talk about how to become a better receiver. Um, Michael's got a tremendous amount of background in the creative space, he's an artist himself. And so, how do we open ourselves more to better receive inspiration and give our best self and art to the world? We're gonna talk about how to set intention to really get clear about what story are we trying to tell, what are we trying to communicate with and through our work. And then lastly, we're gonna get into some practical applications and how you can apply some of these practices, some of these modalities in your day-to-day life and hopefully in your studio practice as well. So, with that, Michael, um, give

A Retreat That Opened The Heart

SPEAKER_00 3:40

me some more background. Tell us a bit more about your uh your backstory before we dive in.

SPEAKER_01 3:44

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Well, first off, it's an honor to be here, and it's great to see you again. Uh, last time we saw each other, we were on Michael's Land. Wow, what a just a powerful, miraculous weekend together, you know, as a group. It's really interesting to be on a podcast and in a conversation about the cross-section between creativity and what my life has been the last eight years. A lot of my life over the last eight years has been about investigating that cross-section. Let me start not from the beginning. I was born on no but really just starting from the beginning of my journey uh creatively. I mean, from probably the age of three, four years old, I was banging on pots and pans, singing karaoke at my family gatherings, and I I think my whole family knew, and I knew that music was going to be one of the focal points of my life. In the beginning, of course, it was just something I was super passionate about playing instruments and then eventually recording, you know, that th those songs and creating songs and songwriting and producing and all the things. But I was in every band. I remember at one point when I was 13, I was in a ska band, a metal band, an emo band, and a cover band, like a jam band. And talk about being confused on who you were, right? Like it was it was amazing. And also like from one band practice to the other, it was a very different crowd, right?

SPEAKER_00 5:02

You must have a few costume changes involved in that as well. Because you can't you can't fall between those crimes at that age looking the same.

SPEAKER_01 5:10

I know, I know. I I did my best to wear clothes that would be easier to translate, right? If I had a if I had a black shirt and then all I needed was a colorful bandana for the ska show, it's cool. Um but anyway, yeah, so mu music was huge, man, it w uh throughout my life. And and why it was so huge was not just because I was so passionate, but was because it was a way for me to express myself. I grew up with young parents who, you know, they fought a lot. There was a lot of problems in the home. There was a lot of problems internally and externally in my life, you know, with the home as well as outside with friends and all that, family things and you know, throughout my life losing people to overdose, losing people to all different sorts of things. And so music was the one place I felt I could be fully myself. Like I didn't need to be anybody else. An outlet for all the things, right? So I kind of rode that, and then all of a sudden, over time, I was like, oh, I'm actually pretty good. Even though that energy was there around like authenticity, it also became a way for me to be seen and to be acknowledged and to be recognized because so much of my other parts of my life I kind of felt less than, right? You know, I wasn't the most intelligent when it came to schooling. I just school never made sense to me. Um, as far as being an athlete, I was good enough, but I wasn't like really, really good at any of the sports, you know. Uh but music was a place that I could shine. I started producing music around 14, just noodling around on a PC and and having fun, and then went to college in Baltimore and started to fall in love with dance music at that time, started to produce dance music, and uh lo and behold, around two to three years into college, I kind of recognized like I'm here for the social aspect. I'm I don't give a shit about any of the schooling. I really, I it's it was the honest truth. And also my music career was kind of starting to jump off. So I remember sitting down my father and being like, Dad, I know that you want me to finish, but if I don't take this leap, I'll I'll regret it the rest of my life. I need to really give this a shot. So I did, and he supported that. And all of a sudden, a couple years later, I moved to LA, signed to a major label. Life was on like a trajectory, man. I was like, red carpet events, Grammy pre-parties, Hollywood Hills after I was like, this is it, I'm gonna be happy. And so at that time I was touring a bit, and then the drinking, the partying, the late nights just caught up, and I was like, I don't want to do this anymore, especially because it was DJing and I always wanted to play live music and it just, you know, it just didn't feel right. And I always wanted to really be in the behind the scenes of the creative process. So transitioned over to being a producer, had a really rough year transitioning because you go from front-end fees to kind of back end, and it takes a long time. Um, started working with Steve Aoki at that time. There was a song that I had produced and co-written for my own project that he ended up loving, and at the same time, he was phasing out one of his producers that I was also like really good at the crossover stuff, dance pop, indie pop, you know, those things. Worked with him, worked with Jordan Sparks, all these amazing worldly artists, Rage Against the Machine, uh, BTS. It was like rapid fire, man. And I was like, okay, yeah, this is where I'm gonna be happy and fulfilled. Meanwhile, meanwhile, I felt like nobody knew me. I felt like all of my relationships ended in a catastrophic fire. Like my romantic relationships, I was still drinking my ass off, barely able to really even touch what was actually happening in my heart. And it caught up to me. I remember uh I shared this story around the fire, uh, you know, 2015, right around the time where I got signed to the major label. I I I drank myself with the intention of wanting to not be here anymore. I I I wasn't consciously like I'm going to commit suicide like many people sort of make a plan, but um, I remember I was like, I don't want to do this anymore. So it was real for me. And I was really good at being a chameleon and hiding the shit out of it. Everyone's like, wow, Mike, I was the guy buying shots for everybody at the bar. I was the guy doing all those things of like, oh, Mike's guy, I want to be like Mike. And like, in meanwhile, I'm like, you do not want to be inside of here, right? And so I I say all this to set the stage because when I've realized that the thing that I thought that was gonna be the place of in innate happiness and fulfillment and the success that came along with it, you know, because I was relatively successful in that way with the re platinum records and exposure and and being a part of big songs and big movements in that way, big artists, enough for me to be like, this isn't where it is, so where is it? What is who am I and what is happiness? Right? What what is it even like who am I, really, is the question. And I thought being an artist like meant you knew who you were. And I realized after a while, I had just sort of lost my my sense of center from when I was a kid, right? That same level of openness that I had as a young boy. So I remember about eight, nine years ago, uh somebody was uh you know, subletting a room in one of our uh the place I was living in in Hollywood, and uh he opened the door and this guy was glowing, and I'm like, first, first thing I think is what are you on? I want to be on what you're on. He's like full of life. You know when you see people who have just so much life. Like you have when I met you, you had you have so much life in your eyes, you know, and some people carry that like like liveliness about them, and it's inspiring, right? So I was like, dude, what are you what what are you doing, right? I I need more of that. I just went through a breakup. I was like, all the things were happening. And he said, I just got back from meditation, silent meditation in Thailand. And two months later, I'm in Hong Kong, 10 days, 10 hours a day, silent meditation. And that began my journey over the last eight to nine years. The changes take a while because there's choices that you need to make when you go back home where there's all the same triggers and patterns and behaviors. So it took some time for me to really start to make the changes. But once I did, my life started to catapult in a very different direction and my calling shifted. And so since then, I mean, I've I've done darkness retreats, uh, you know, worked with many different indigenous communities with medicine work and dietas and um studies of uh Buddhism and Taoism and Christianity and uh Judaism and all the other isms, you know, Sufism, like even outside of the religious perspectives, the the traditional ancient ways of the Hawaiians and Aloha and the Hooponopono and NLP training and hypnosis training and breathwork training and theta healing and like just every I was gobbling it up, you know? Because what I realized, which kind of ties into maybe our first conversation here, is where is creativity coming from? Like what is creative energy? Do we own it or is it something else? And is it more important for us to get out of the way for something more profound to come through us? Doesn't mean we're not a part of it, right? But so much, so much in the in the creative spaces is this like owning, right? Like it's mine, mine, mine, mine, mine. And I was like, it never really felt like that. So I I've been investigating over the last eight to nine years, and it's been carrying into all of my creative work because I still produce music, I still work with artists. I'm working on eight different albums right now and and and a couple different like worldly projects. So um the cross-section happened naturally of what is happening when we meet ourselves in an honest way and allow all those emotions that we shove down or protect ourselves from feeling and the memories that are associated with it, how does that impact the quality of the transmission creatively? And it has been a profound investigation. The deeper I go in on it, the more my theory is uh strengthened that you know, emptying, right, emptying out all the stuff, right, is not only powerful to allow that divine creative inspiration to be expressed through you, but it also is a practice of allowing the art itself to be an alchemical transformation for you and everyone else. Right? For me, like it, and man, it's I feel like I've I've kind of lived so many different lives, even though I'm still so young in that way. Now, you know, I I coach a lot of people, I I coach men predominantly now, but I've worked with both men and women, actually mostly women, over the last five years. Once all the things we think we need to achieve and be are satisfied, there is a a transition period of like, okay, well then what's left after I've done the thing? I'm a mother, I'm a father, I'm a husband, I'm a wife, I'm a sister. Like when those roles are satisfied to a certain place, right? What's left? Who are you in the core of all that, right? I I got to climb a mountain early enough to realize it's not the it's not the mountaintop. It's just not these mountaintops we think where we're gonna feel the thing. It's really each step up the mountain because as soon as you get to the first peak, you see the next peak higher. Right? It's like, well, if you can't enjoy the journey in between the peaks and the valleys and all that, then you're missing ninety-five

Music Career Highs And Inner Crash

SPEAKER_01 14:30

percent of your life. Yeah. Right. So anyway, I'll stop there. I could speak forever, but uh that's kind of a little window in the into my story. And you know, now you know, now I'm in that space of continuous curiosity about this cross-section because creativity is the energy that birthed the universe in the first place.

SPEAKER_00 14:48

Yes. Right?

SPEAKER_01 14:49

Yeah so it's all connected.

SPEAKER_00 14:52

It's interesting. We I I've talked about this a little bit uh before, and just in sharing kind of my backstory about how I got to art fairly you know late in life uh or middle-aged, let's say, uh a lot really aligns with what you're saying. You know, I I can't remember where I heard this or who said it to me, but it's that moment of uh you're climbing a ladder only to realize that it's leaned against the wrong wall. Yep. In other words, to your metaphor of mountaineer, we get we get to that peak, and it's like, oh, is this gonna be the thing that's going to finally uh give me what I think I'm going to get from external praise, validation, you know, whatever, worldly rewards and realizing, and to your credit, realizing it very young that that wasn't going to be what was really going to you know fulfill that for you is I think tremendous. You talk about curiosity. This is something that is a uh reoccurring theme on our podcast for sure. I think that's if we had to distill down the characteristics that I think creatives and artists of all kinds have in common, that's really high on the list. It's this insatiable curiosity of what if I tried this? What about that, right? That childlike you know curiosity. Talk more about that. What's that been like for you and maybe what have you observed in some of the other artists that you that you've worked with where maybe that applies?

SPEAKER_01 16:25

If I'm being brutally honest with you about my creative expressions over the years, if I were to put them all on a board, right, and there's a lot, the ones that stand out the most are the happy accidents. Right. And the happy accidents come from a curi a curiosity, like exploring things that may not have been a part of your original vision. Because like as creatives, we have visions all the time. Like you're you're a visual creative in that way, right? So I'm sure in one way or another you visualize things, you feel it, you sense it. And I do the same thing in a different way with music. I I kind of can hear and structure it in a certain way before it's even created. And then the the quality of mastery is how efficient am I at getting it into a physical form, right? Yeah. Art can become very rigid quickly. And I learned that early because what was once a safe place turned into a job and an obligation. And, you know, it doesn't mean that you can't do what you do that you love and also be paid for that too. It's really a mindset. To me, I got so wrapped up in it as my only identity that every single part of it, whether it was good or bad, would affect me so deeply, right? Because I was so tied to it. And more importantly, as a just as a you know, product of the machine of the industry, there's things that are happening that you gotta, you know, you play the game and eventually you get played by the game, right? You're not playing the game, but the game is playing you. And so in my own way that happened. So I lost my curiosity, I lost my fire, right? I I stopped creating for the sake of creating and started to create for other things, external things, money, success, the same things we talked about, you know, getting the like, oh, you're so good, or like that's so epic, or you got a lot of money, or whatever it was for it, you know. And so the beginning of my journey spiritually, once I moved through like the stuff I had run away from that was like obvious I needed to attend to, like, you know, all the deep stuff I've been through, I shared at the circle, you know, my mother and my sister have been in and out of of hospitals for uh for manic episodes, and I had lost friends, I had been through things myself. Once I had kind of gone through and and really faced at least the first level of those things, the next thing to reclaim was the very thing that I fell in love with at the as a as a young boy, which was my creative expression. And I started to have to re-deprogram and then kind of reprogram or just remember what that was like. And curiosity and play. Like you you notice like with instruments, you we don't say we do music, we say we play music.

SPEAKER_02 19:09

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 19:10

Right? It's an interesting kind of play on words in that way. But if you really think about it, like when you're creating, like I know, I know you're the same way because I've seen you in a little pocket of it, right? When you were doing that that piece at Michael's. Once I'm in it, I there's nothing else.

unknown 19:27

Right.

SPEAKER_01 19:28

It's a it can be dangerous when we have a family and people that we love and want to spend time, you're like, oh shit, it's been eight hours. Right. And that's where boundaries boundaries come in, and and that's what I'm saying. If you're only identified in one thing, other things are gonna be sacrificed. So but the but the energy and the experience of it is pure presence. You are moving it with a flow of energy and exploring what is coming to and through you, what you're seeing and receiving in that space. And in order to do that, you have to be open, you have to be willing. That to me is like so a vision, if we talk like energetics, right? And and I don't mean this in in gender or biology, I mean this in energetics, masculine, feminine energetics. Masculine is the vision. It's the vision, well, it's the vision into physical form. So as soon as you have the vision and you start creating it, you're bringing something that is an energy, a frequency, just an idea, into a physical form. That's inherently masculine, right? The curiosity, the play, and the flow is feminine. So in order for you to be able to be fluid in your creativity, we have to be willing to be curious. We have to be willing to also be wrong. I can't tell you how many times I've like like I had this idea, I I flesh it out, and then I'm like, oh that's not it. And like it took years for me to go, that's not it. You know, took years to go, okay, it's okay. You know, like just kind of flow with it. On the other side is curiosity is the mystics path. Curio like artists are mystics, creatives are mystics, whether they have a connection to something greater than themselves, other than their art or not, at their core, they are asking a fill like a philosophical curious question about things that are unseen to be seen, right? So it's a mystics path. So that's why I was like, oh shit, what I'm experiencing in my spiritual path is exactly the same I experience in my creative path. They're the same path. And curiosity and asking either why or you know, peeling back the onion has been the the driver, the driver in and also what helps you to move through the resistance is curiosity, right? Like how many times are you speaking with your partner or anybody else, and maybe they're coming at you, and curiosity and play actually moves the direction of the conversation in a in a productive and beautiful way than resistance or force or like defensiveness, right? Yeah. It's that curiosity in that play that washes through obstacles, that washes through challenges and resistance points that is inevitable in the cause. It's you know, you get plateaued or writer's block or creative blocks because you're blocked. That's the that's the caveat, right? That's why this work is so translatable to the creative path. Because if you're blocked in your creativity, it means you're blocked in your heart. Period. Whether you realize it, whether it's obvious, it could be subtle, but there is a block internally because if you were fully open, it would pour out of you just like it did with the prophets. Yeah. It would pour out of you. It would be like you you were witnessing it just happen, which happens when you're in a creative flow.

SPEAKER_02 22:45

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 22:46

Right? So, and you know this very well. You know, we talked a little bit about this, you expressed a little bit about this. If I wasn't curious, I would not have regained my connection with my childlike wonder and imagination and and just enjoyment with the simplicity of picking up my flute in the middle of the day and playing it for no other reason than, well, can I make this a product? Or, you know, will other people like this? I don't give a f I don't give a fuck anymore about it. You know, I share from my heart, and I can only hope that others receive it from that place. And if they don't, it's all good. Yeah. Because I'm not doing it for the same reasons I did in my twenties, is look at me. Does that make sense?

SPEAKER_00 23:27

100%. Yeah. I wanna I want to talk more about this idea of receiving, and um, I'd like to we're gonna weave a couple of of art quotes in here because that's kind of the one of the only reoccurring themes of of the episodes that we do. But um uh you I don't know if you've heard this one before. Um, this is a said by one of my favorite artists, one of my absolute uh creative heroes. He's on my

Meditation Sparks A New Path

SPEAKER_00 23:48

my Mount Rushmore, which has more than four, to be to be fair. But so Leonardo Drew, he said, I think that you realize life, not just through your eyes, but through your pores also, your body takes in things. So all the things that I've gathered over the years that I've been on this planet, you're a receiver of information. If you imagine yourself as an antenna, it's like all this stuff has traveled through me, goes through me, and it has to come out. So I I wanna I wanna reframe that in the form of a question. Um, how can we become more open to better receive in order that we can better give our best self, our best art to others and and to the world at large?

SPEAKER_01 24:33

Listen to your heart and anything that is there, because what's challenging or where the bottleneck is is people are like, oh, I need to better be a better listener, so I need to listen to more people and shut the fuck up. Which is true. I I'm still learning that with my wife. And and and you know, many people have like, especially my wife, because I think that there's a tendency to want to fix and do things. But truly the the the thing that moved the needle was not reading about nonviolent communication or reading about how to open up your chakras or it was listening to the whispers of pain, the whispers of grief, the whispers of anger, you know, the parts of ourselves that are begging to be seen and heard, right? When you can begin to really listen to those aspects of because it's hardest to listen to the voice that says you can't do it, right? And when I say listen, I don't mean heed. I don't mean live through those words, but more so to let because it's just parts of us that are in pain, right? And I think in the beginning of any self-developmental work or personal, you know, self-discovery work, you kind of move through the obvious things first, you know, like mom wasn't around, or you know, uh, I lost my best friend at 11 or whatever. Like the things that are like have always been there that you that you actually don't need to talk about but feel. But there's subtler and subtler levels and subtler whispers of voices. And if you can learn how to be still enough or open enough to really connect with those parts of yourself, it's instant empathy and compassion can really hear someone else. Now let's blow that up into the biggest of inspiration, creativity. I believe that creativity is divine by nature, right? And however you want to describe divine, whether you want to use the word God or consciousness or universe, I don't really care. But what it is is a core principle energy, right? If you think about the birth of life itself, it it's a creative force, right? So to me it's a sacred force. And so I love that quote. I was like sitting with it for a moment and like kind of I read it first when you sent it, and then uh and then reading it and receiving it like this, it kind of like it feels so powerful and clear. When I say step aside and empty, I I don't mean deny your own expression, because I think each of us are here to tune into our authentic selves, right? Like who we really are, right? And some of that for for many is about enlightenment and and complete selflessness, and for many people, because that's like a high, high level of experience, is just about being who you really are and not like you know going against yourself and pretending, right? Just being who you really are. And so if you can get in touch with all the little parts of yourself that block you from your heart being open and live from that open place that you were describing coming out of the retreat, then anything that's filtered is coming from a deeper part of you. If this is the core of who you are, your your heart, your soul, whatever, a lot of people create from here. This is the pain. I'm gonna create from the pain. And so if you create from pain, it's magnificent. Like people feel that, right? At the same time, though, where where where do things move? Like how does that move people, right? It just talks about pain, there's relatability, people connect with it. If you're talking through your pain from the deeper part of your heart, then there's a possibility that what you transmit is not just relatable, but helpful in transforming that pain into purpose, right? Because when you speak from just the pain, you are the pain. When you speak through your pain, like you you you've done enough work and understand with the AA, all the things you've done in the sobriety as well as being a coach, and I know you said more in the business side, but just you're you've done very obvious that you've done a lot of self-developmental work, right? It's like there's a difference between someone speaking from an active pain and someone speaking about something that was painful that they've moved through.

SPEAKER_02 28:44

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 28:45

And there's an inherent wisdom in that, right? Like it is beautiful to s to witness people speaking vulnerably from their pain, right? It moves you. It's like, oh shit, like that that I feel that, right? But when you have someone that sp has already touched the vulnerability, move through, learn what they need to learn and speak about it like you did around the fire about many things, and many of the brothers did, there's wisdom there. There's a movement, there's a formula for that pain to turn into something of purpose in their life, right? So to me, when I when I when I think about receiving, it's both what we experience as an external receiver, like a satellite, as well as an internal receiver. Right. And and both are important. I think that what's most important is your internal receiver, right? Your your internal guidance system because it's very easy to get lost in the noise of everything else. And so as if you're clear on your internal guidance system, then you are properly filtering and properly dis uh discerning in what not only you're allowing in from the external world, but also what is valuable for you to open you to more in this life. And more doesn't mean more money, more success. It means just being here fully with your art, with your daughters, with your you know, uh parents, with your brothers, with yourself.

SPEAKER_00 30:12

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 30:13

That's a profound experience, right? That's probably the number one reason, at least I feel, and I'm only speaking from one person because I'm speaking about myself, but when I witness all these creatives, like the thing that gets us back into wanting to create is literally being in the creation place. Like that's the oh, how good does it feel when you're lost in your art? You're not needing to be anybody, you're not thinking about tomorrow's worries or yesterday's pains. You're almost like your art is you, right? You know that feeling. Sure. And that that is possible with you and everyone on the fucking planet, meaning you can have that same experience when you're sitting in front of a stranger, you can have that same experience when you're sitting under a tree breathing. Like it's all connected, and so the more that we can move through, first off, move through our pains, our grievances, our our history, right? And clear up space to receive from the inside and the outside, right? Yeah, the more that we're able to translate that into art clearer, cleaner, and more profound. Because it's like if we're transmitting from like our soul, right, the deepest part of our soul, that shit's timeless. That's not just Nathan and Michael's life. It's literally like, let it be, let it be. Such a simple song. But it's like, fuck, man, yeah. Like, yeah, I got it's because like the truths of life are quite simple. The reception, the vulnerability, the openness, like it's all kind of in a big Venn diagram in that way. Like they're all related, interrelated, interchangeable. I'm sure we could find a holy trinity in all there with three different words of like the things that create the cleanest and most authentic creator or artist. But yeah, that's that's kind of my perspective on it in the receiving end.

SPEAKER_00 32:13

When you when you think about I'm laughing at myself. I would here's how that sentence was about to end. When you think about listening to your heart, which actually leads into my question precisely. There it is. When you talk about the importance of just, you know, listening to your heart, one of my biggest challenges, something I've really been sitting with and thinking a lot about lately, is just less head, more heart, because I have found that that is the thing that prevents me from really being in that heart-centered space is my thinking, my

Curiosity And Play As Creative Fuel

SPEAKER_00 32:48

trying to engineer something that's going to work or look good, or God forbid, I start to think about the audience and what people might like. None of those, none of those thoughts have any have any place in the creative process. So how do we do that? Think about the fixing sort of compulsion, right? I want to fix what's going on in this relationship if I'm having an uncomfortable moment with the person I'm sitting across from. I want to fix this piece, you know, that I'm that I'm working on. How do we get to just more of that heart-centered space and sort of dismiss the head's role?

SPEAKER_01 33:26

Still piecing together a map. And I want to start out by just pointing out that we are born naturally capable of that, right? Our toddlers, our children, uh as they grow up, but especially zero to maybe 14, 15, are naturally able to be in their heart and their body all the time, right? Now, that doesn't mean that building psychology is a negative quality, because if our if our lives were run by a bunch of three-year-old conscious people, it would be disaster, man, right? So there's an inherent quality of necess it's a necessity for us to develop these ways of understanding and navigating through the emotional waves, right? Through what happens when we're fully open in our heart, as you would see a toddler experiencing pure anger or pure sadness, right? So there's a quality to that that's a necessity. But what we end up doing is we end up callusing all these protectors around our heart because it's really uncomfortable to be vulnerable. And our world isn't necessarily designed to honor vulnerability, especially in this day and age, that there is either you're incredibly too oversensitive or not sensitive enough. It seems to be that there isn't a model of balance, right? Whether that's conditioning from a person's childhood or their culture or just the world and the collective view, um, it doesn't necessarily matter. So my point is that we are naturally able to be heart-centric and we are heart-cent, heart-centered beings. Okay, so that means that anything that's happening now in our minds that brings us away from that is just conditioning. It's just conditioning. It slides on the on the on the projector, blocking the light of who you are to be expressed, right? So the first thing that anyone needs to do and cannot bypass is inner work. We have to allow ourselves to traverse the history, the memories, the traumas, the pains, however minuscule or however traumatic and horrific it is, so that we don't end up consistently in the pattern of overthinking, perfectionism, and projecting into the future fears, assumptions, right? That is a necessity. There's no way to bypass that. On the road to that work or in the process and the journey, because it's not like you get there. It's not like, oh, okay, I did it, now I can move on. It's like it's a it's a lifelong process because there's subtle, subtle, subtler and subtler parts of yourself that we tend to. It's it's disruptive strategies, right? It's it's changing the the environment, the energy, the thought process. And there's a lot of things that someone can do. You know, as simple as going for a walk, as simple as, you know, spending time with uh your pup, right? Uh it could be working out, it could be journaling, it could be meditating, uh breath work. It doesn't all need to be in the quintessential spiritual personal growth space. Um it could be calling someone that you trust to talk about it, right? And then maybe even if you if you know that they're skilled enough and open enough to guide you to an emotion, give you an opportunity to be vulnerable and express what it's really about. Yeah. What what's really behind the thought is an emotion and a memory. Right. And so what one of my teachers uh said to said to us a while ago, which I really connect with, um, and more and more in my life I realize this every single moment is an opportunity to open. That's what's available is an opportunity to open our hearts or open our awareness instead of close off and be defensive and resistant. So even when the the the thing you think is resistance comes up, there's always the opportunity to open in that situation. There's a lot of ways we do that, right? Uh something that I do sometimes when I'm feeling overwhelmed and overthinking in my head is I is I close my eyes, I take deep breaths, and I find in my body where it where it's located. Because it's always something that's tight and tense. And oftentimes I have a good cry out of it. And after I'm done crying, I'm clear and I see exactly what needs to be done, and there's no baggage around it, right? Yeah. So there's there's things that are that are applicable in slowing down in the very moment that there's there's a feeling or there's an overthinking. And then there's things that can help you to make sure that you don't go down rabbit holes, right? Because like that's equally as important as slowing down and feeling. If you slow down and feel everything, that art piece that would have taken you six months is going to take 60 years. Okay. So life is moving. It's not, it's never stopping, it's always changing and always moving. There's never a still, nothing is ever truly still, even in nature, as you see something still, is moving in the cellular function of every single thing that looks like the inanimate fucking rock, right? It's alive. There's aliveness to it. So if we allow ourselves to learn tools and frameworks that support a redirection, I call it. I do it with my toddler all the time. It's not about like distraction, it's about redirection. Yeah. Right? How do I redirect him either out, you know, away from danger or towards something that he is our was already focused on that we're we're both focused on, right? It's just redirection. So how do we redirect our minds from going down rabbit holes? And those are all the strategies. I always say to people, like, if you're gonna build a house and all you have is a hammer, you're not gonna build a very sturdy house. It's not just about spiritual tools, it's about all tools, communication tools, entrepreneurial tools, mindset tools, physical tools, like all the tools is about building tool belt and then understanding what each tool is and when to apply it, like what to put toward what, right? In some instances, regulation is is necessary, right? If my uh son is going through a deep pocket and I find myself frustrated and angry, it is not the time to slow down and express it. It is the time for me to find or lean into a tool that helps regulate and center me. And that's not that's not closing off, right? That's understanding your environment, right? I know so many people that have shared things vulnerably with people that were not able to receive it, and it ended up closing them off even more. So you have to be you have to be aware, right? Like what is your environment, your conditions, your your uh situation. And then there's other times where it's it's important to lean in, right? So you gotta know what tools help you lean in, what help what tools help you recenter. All of them help you recenter. It's just a different pathway because if you consistently regulate, you're never gonna grow. Right? If every time you got to the edge of your zone of you know exhaustion, even though like obviously getting to a nine out of ten, ten out of ten RP is good, it's like if you just move to the same edge every time, you're never gonna grow any muscle.

SPEAKER_02 40:31

Right.

SPEAKER_01 40:31

Or you're gonna be you're gonna be stagnant. It's the same thing with our mind. If we keep just learning the same thing, we'll never grow. So it's the same thing with regulation, is if we keep leaning into the comfort of safety and regulation as a means to get back into the pocket, then in a way, long term, we're blocking all the newness that wants to come out. So that's why having practices that open you and that you can lean into what's there as equal, as redirect, especially with the mind, right? Are all going to be powerful because anything that's in your mind comes with emotional information. It's easier for most people to be in their minds than it is to be in their heart. Sure. Because your mind can run. It's like a story, it's like wa watching a movie, you know? But your heart is like, you feel pain, and it's like every part of your body's like, no, I don't, it's not safe. I don't want to feel so again, it's like all of it, it's all connected. One one of the last thing I want to say about it is Ramdas used to say, We have a head and we have a heart. In this context is the eagle eye, perspective, context. And then there's the heart, which is the humility, the experience, the compassion, the empathy. Someone that's only in their heart, and I don't mean like their energetic heart, I mean in their shit, is just grounded in the 3D of pain and suffering all the time. Right? They have no perspective, no context. Someone that's in only context and thinking has no ability to connect, right? Yeah. What life is, is about understanding how to move between two effortlessly, right? To not get caught in either for too long and eventually become a master who is in the head and the heart at the same time. I see the situation from the highest perspective, and I'm also in the situation as a participant. So now there's empathy and wisdom. I feel like it's the same thing with overthinking. There's always something to be learned through our thoughts, right? But we get lost in them. There's always something to be learned through our emotions, but then we get lost in them. So what helps us to be in balance, which you know, the Hawaiians call Pono, to be in alignment, right? And so strategies, again, just to summarize it, is like work on your past shit that is creating the patterns of thought and clean that up and get identified in what that is for you so that you can choose differently and and understand, oh, that thought of what will people receive has more to do with me not being like seen at as a like a freaking you know, athlete or something when I was three. I don't know, whatever it is, right? And then equally strategies that are helping you moment to moment, experience to experience, to navigate the inevitability of resistance, of writer's block, of overthinking. Because we're human, we have a mind, right? And so that those two together as how we're able to move on our paths as creatives more effortlessly.

SPEAKER_00 43:34

Does that make sense? It 100% does. When you were using the example of a of a toddler, so we I just something flashed to mind a very recent experience. We had some family in town last week, and my my little nephew Wes is two years old. Uh so we were at our house, we were all just uh nice, beautiful, warm, sunny day, we're all hanging out in the pool. And he's just full toddler mode, right? Just you know, belly out, just

Becoming A Better Receiver

SPEAKER_00 43:58

stomping all over the place, picking up toys, throwing things all over the place. And um, he had a a little packet of fruit snacks, and one one of them fell into the pool. He was on like the the shallow one, but the very you know, most most shallow step. Dropped a fruit snack and I saw him look at it and you could just see the wheels turning. And what I should have done was tell his mom, hey, I think Wes is gonna probably eat that fruit snack from the pool. What I did instead was just observed him like 100% he's gonna eat that fruit snack from the pool. And I watched him just go, just lean over, pick it up, you know, and then um, and then to to the point of redirecting, you know, his mom was just like, hey Wes, you know, come over here, do you want to play with this instead, you know, or or whatever. But um, we are that, right? We still have that top lens that's just you know stumbling around and and following, you know, wherever wherever our belly leads us. And so speaking of those interruptions, those redirections, you know, that's something that I think is extremely valuable, again, in in life as a whole, but especially when we're in the thick of trying to do our best work. You know, one of the things that I try to really be mindful of, um, speaking of what you were talking about before regarding just checking in with yourself, I ask myself, am I am I creating out of compulsion or intention? Because when I get in that mode where I just have to get this done, you know, that's where the achiever means like, again, identifying way too much with what I accomplished to get my sense of self and and purpose in that moment. If I can get back to intention and it's those, it's those little moments, the the resets, the reframes, those intentional interruptions, I think of that as sharpening the axe. The old uh uh, hey, if I only had five hours to chop down a tree, I'd spend the first three hours sharpening the axe or however that however that axiom you know goes. But yeah, when I when I get in that mode where I'm just creating out of compulsion or doing anything out of out of compulsion, like I have to get this done, I realize, oh, I'm swinging dull axe right now. I've got to take a step back, sharpen the axe at a at a soul level. And for me, that looks like taking a walk with with my creative director Leo. Um, one of the big things that I've taken back since the retreat is listening to some of those guided breath work sessions and realizing that having two or three days in one, it really is like just five, ten, twenty minutes, twenty five minutes, whatever it is, you know, coming out of that like just refreshed, like almost the the the feeling of coming into the studio or or getting to work, wherever that might be for you, um rested and refreshed and ready to to take on the day, as opposed to carrying around the weight or the disappointment of maybe whatever didn't go the way that you wanted it to. It's such a valuable exercise. And having those tools in your bag before you need them is extremely valuable as opposed to, oh shit, I'm in a bad place. Now what? Right? Knowing what those go-to things are for you, I think is extremely, extremely important.

SPEAKER_01 47:01

Absolutely, man. You know, and one thing that I really appreciate about breathwork as one of those tools is that it can be both for a person, meaning it can be both a disruptor and a recentering tool as well as a clear of past stuff. Because the truth is, the deeper question around what you were talking about with the achiever is, well, where'd you learn that? Right? Because that's where it comes from, right? So no matter how many how much you disrupt the surface behavior, something's energizing it and powering it. It's equally important to do that work as it is to not get lost in the rumination and the story that it comes from, right? Breath work gives you both as an opportunity because you can sit with a practice, and many of the people I've served that didn't really I even if they've done breath work but haven't had a really deep experience with it, were blown away at what comes up from 25 minutes of active breathing.

SPEAKER_02 48:07

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 48:08

And how much they've like stored up, how much they've kind of set aside either by necessity of responsibility or by protection, or both, really. So when you are using a practice like breath work, whether it's a down regulatory or up-regulatory, meaning you know, box breathing, triangle breathing, uh you know, anything that's gonna help to relax you, and even the upregulatory, the intention is to upregulate, meaning activate to relax deeper. It's always aimed toward deeper relaxation and clarity. The breath practice, and of course, you can have different practices for different intentions too. There's you you you rarely are gonna have a profound blast-off experience with box breathing. You're gonna mostly have a relaxing experience, and some of that can be really profound too, right? But needless to say, having that as a practice and a tool for you to use in the middle of the day when you're feeling overwhelmed or you're feeling caught in your head, or whatever you're feel you're feeling or thinking in that moment can also open doors for you. And not just doors to get you back on track with whatever it is you're trying to get back on track at, track with, but actually start to deprogram what you've learned over your life that defaults you to worry, defaults you to fear, defaults you to assume, defaults you to push instead of trust. And that's why I I feel it's such a valuable tool, especially for creatives, in my spiel that I give every time is like what it really is doing is is is slicing through the surface noise. And that's your thoughts and stories, your beliefs and patterns, the surface feelings. You know, someone thinks they're angry, but they're actually really upset and sad and grieving, you know? Yeah. Um and so like it it helps you to in an efficient way like slice through what you think is the problem to get in touch with either your core, relaxed, peaceful, open-hearted self, yeah, or anything that's in the way of that to get in touch with your peaceful, open core self. It's all aimed toward the same thing, right? Right. So it's really what what you're needing. It has mal it has a malleability, right? And you've been working with the practice. So like I all my clients, like sometimes it's just like real nice, just a really relaxing reset. And sometimes they're crying for 35 minutes straight, shaking, and like unpacking some shit, right? It's just gonna give you whatever it is you need when you need it, but most people don't even know that it exists. I mean, with with Wim Hof, more people do. But the point is a lot of people uh maybe have a one-dimensional view on its on its potential. Like, you know, uh maybe that it's mostly for relaxation or it's mostly for focus, or but it's it's like malleable, it's its potential is boundless. And if you're willing to have curiosity to lean in to that feeling that comes up in a breath work on a random Tuesday where you thought you were just working on your overwhelm, and it's actually about abandonment. And if you don't go, no, no, no, I'm working on this, I'm working on this, and open to it, you may not need to feel overwhelmed as much moving from that moment on because you had you actually dealt with what it was about. Yeah. See what I'm saying? I do. So that's why I love it as a disruptor and a tool, is it can go anywhere with your process. And um and yeah, you know, like I do it, you know, I wouldn't I wouldn't r recommend this, but I do breath work in the car, uh, slow breaths when I'm feeling like a little even a little dizzy, or I'm feeling like I didn't have enough space between whatever it was I was doing before and wherever I'm going now. I'll just start to slow down my breath. By the time I park my car, I'm like, okay, cool, boom. It doesn't need to be a okay, now I sit with the breath and I gotta get my mask. You could do it while you're working on something. And you're like, focus on the breath, you're right back in it. Okay, right? Like, and then sometimes you need a kick in the ass and need to sit down and lie down and and and experience some things. So I really love it, and it's been a vital, a vital tool for me over the years, especially in the beginning.

SPEAKER_00 52:23

Generally, when I'm gluing something or using different whatever materials, I want to spend as little time as possible. Well, really doing everything. I mean, I'm trying to get work done, right? I had a moment the other day where I was gluing something together, and normally I would put sandbags on top to hold it in place and make sure that it fixes properly, or maybe clamp it down with some clamps. Just popped in my mind, like, what if you just held it in place and and just breathed for a moment? Like, it doesn't take that long, the material that I was using. What if I just what if I just held it and just and just sat and used those moments? My point is there's a lot of natural moments, uh, whether we're we're making art or just living life, where instead of standing in line, instead of always going to let me get in my device and pass this time by scrolling, it doesn't take much. It really doesn't take much.

SPEAKER_01 53:18

It's your anchor. Yeah. There's a lot of things that people uh lose appreciation for naturally, right? Uh the the fact that we have a very like the perfect amount of gravity that keeps us from floating into space. Yeah. The fact that our our sun and our moon are in the perfect places that life can exist here. Those are big things, right? And then small smaller things, like the fact that our breath is here, and not only is it here, but it's a signal and a tool at the same time. So many people, when they start to get angry or have anxiety, start to shallow breathe or breathe quicker. Their heart rate rate goes up, right? Right? The breath is an indicator of something that may be out of alignment or even inflamed in your body, as equal as it is a tool to work through that. That's what Wim Hof is proving with all of his breath and all the studies he's got going on, right? Is that everybody thinks this is just this, but it's actually all of it, right? So I love that perspective because like, man, like uh there's no shame in the phone. If you have a a clear relationship with what works for you, no judgment, right? I'm not like uh like a spiritual snob, like where, oh I don't I don't have Instagram, I never play, you know, silly games, I never watch TV. I'm not like that. That's not that's not realistic, first off, and second off, it's a whole other game. But my point is like, yeah, oftentimes like I'll catch myself and I'll realize, oh, that's it's a compulsion, right? It's a that like you said, that compulsion, that historic compulsion to run away from the present moment, whatever's uncomfortable, even if it's boredom, right? To be in that boredom for a second, and then just like kind of sit in it for a while. And all of a sudden I'll start to notice what's around me to the point of reception. Let's talk about that for a second, right? Those breaths help you to be in a more present state to receive the beauty of the life around you that inspires you in an artistic way, anyway. Hey, instead of being on your phone, you start to maybe people watch in a good way and notice that person over there and and what they're doing, what they're maybe they're crying. Man, that makes me remember this thing back in when I was uh you know twelve or last week when I was like really feeling it. I was I know what that feels. Now you're on a whole other inspiring thread that you can pour into the next piece that you have going on. So everything's here, it's all right here. Everything. And we we get to taste that when we're in our creative flow because we're so here in it. And if we can be more here in it in all the different dimensions of our life, our art will only benefit. It will only benefit because so much of that is gonna come through and pour through you when you're creative and you're kind of out of your mind. It's called the peripheral state. You're not concentrated and focused, but you're also not completely peripheral. You're like right here. It's called Hakalau in the Hawaiian perspective. It's like right here where you're like aware that the water bottles over here, the laptop, the window, but also I'm talking to Nathan, you're not overthinking, but your mind is active. You're you're here, you're here, right? You're not out there or so here where you're like nothing. You it's like a perfect space. Yeah. Right? And so if we can learn tools, even as simple as the breath, and start to like anchor them back into our default choices, right? Then we can learn how to get back in that space more efficiently. Yeah. So many of the squabbles with my partner have been avoided by some deep breaths and some 10-minute breaks. And so much of my creative expressions have been profoundly impacted in a positive way by simple breaks, simple breaths, and disruptors. More than pushing through has ever done.

unknown 57:24

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 57:25

You know? So I I love that, you know, uh around that perspective around like how can how can we slow down without playing a whole game about it? You know, like, oh, look at me. I slow down and I'm present. It's like that's a whole game. But like, again, invite ourselves to open into what is presently available to us. Where it's most difficult for most people is pain and boredom. Pain is really hard to be open to, right? Sure. Yeah. And boredom is just fucking boring and nothing's happening, and that's equally hard to stay with, right? Joy, a little easier. Play a little easier. Oh, yeah, I feel good. Oh, I'm gonna I want more of this, right? Yeah. So if we can, if we can, you know, start to look at even the moments where we feel out of it creatively as opportunities to be more masterful, to be in it, then the whole game changes that we're playing. Now we're not, oh, I did that trip again of like overthinking and assuming it's like, oh no, okay, cool. I have more more to learn, more to open into. And then you start to be curious. Well, let's see what breathwork does. Okay, well, that was good, but that's not quite well. Let me try journaling. Let me try a walk, let me try calling somebody that I can talk to that really gets me. You start to investigate with curiosity, and then you figure out a formula that works for as long as it will, and then sometimes you need to reform it.

SPEAKER_00 58:52

Right. I want to share uh I want to share a quote that that relates to this topic, and then I want to transition into something else I wanted to get into with you today. There's a quote by uh Georgia O'Keefe. And she said, I found I could say things with color and shapes that I couldn't say

Tools For Overthinking And Regulation

SPEAKER_00 59:08

any other way. Things I had no words for. I love this quote for a lot of reasons. I think it correlates directly to what we're talking about here because that is the beauty of art and the creative process, is being able to say things without words. Now, that's not a head-centered process. I got to use my head at least a little bit to speak properly. One of the amazing things that art has done for me is really introduced me to myself in a way that that nothing else could. Giving me a way to say things that I don't have words for. That's what I love about consuming and appreciating and enjoying art of all types is the way that it speaks to us, whether it be music, visual art, whatever moves you, but it connects us at a soul level to something for which there are no words. And that to me is, I guess to to summarize and put a bow on whatever that was, part one of our conversation, I think that that is the the best example that I could that I could find. I wanted to um I wanted to switch gears a little bit. I want to talk more about intention. What we bring into our work, knowing what it is that we're what that we're trying to say, what are some things that you would share regarding just how to set intention for ourselves, our life, our creative practice?

SPEAKER_01 1:00:37

Yeah, it's a great question. Intention to me is the conversation of why, right? The motivator, the motivator behind everything.

SPEAKER_02 1:00:46

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:47

And the the deeper in touch you are with who you really are, the easier it's going to be to understand not only what the purpose is behind what you do, how you do it, all that, um, but to also make sure that you're you're on the right path in your life. And that could be with your art, that could be with your relationships, that could be with your businesses. So to me, why is the most important question anytime you're building anything? There's two things that I think people sometimes don't fully realize about setting intentions. The first is short-sightedness. So short-sightedness whys look like material successes, look like accolades, look like physicalities. Some would say those are smart goals. And you need to set those. Those are like how you move. But they're also short-sighted because once you achieve it, then what? And that's why everybody's trying to make more money, make more of this, do this, blah, blah, blah. The second is a lot of people don't realize that their motivators sometimes are driven by a negative intention. They don't want something. So they're aiming towards something to relieve them of not feeling empty, not feeling, you know, not enough, like not feeling something. And those are also really good for short-term bursts and not very good for long-term success, right? This is something that we really, really got drilled into around NLP uh training was like anytime there's a negative motivator, it's good for short bursts, but it will not sustain over time. Uh if I asked you not to think of a blue tree, what do you think of? A blue tree. Don't think of a blue tree. I don't want you to think of a blue tree. What do you think of first? A blue tree. Correct? It's because our unconscious mind is wired to not it does not process negatives directly. So it has to focus on what it is first in order to know what it isn't. Our unconscious mind literally doesn't understand the not thing, right? Right. So it's not only bringing up the thing you don't want, right? But it's also in every way pulling you away from the thing you want. So I always say to people, focus on what you really want, right? So if you focus on what you really want, not meaning like achievement or whatever, that's it's a part of it too, and you're building something, but it's like I want to create this piece to be an expression of what it meant to move through depression when I was 15 years old and how it feels to feel so alone as a reminder that you're never alone. And I want this to positively impact anyone that this touches to tell the story that there is hope, there is light at the end of the tunnel, right? That is a po that's a positive. Even if you're talking about depression, it's positively aimed, right? When we can focus on setting intentions in a positive way and in a deeper way, right? Not just I want to make a song about this or I want to make an art about this, but like why? Why do you like that? Why are you even intrigued? It's start to investigate like what is the deeper purpose behind this? I learned this through playing music because for a while I was performing. For a while I was playing for everybody else. And then when I started to playing to myself, it it was like I'm just playing to play. And then at an eventual point, it's like I'm channeling something and I'm just observing the channeling. My fingers are doing the thing, my my mouth is singing the thing, and I'm just like, whoa, this is crazy, this is amazing. I'm just in it and observing it, and it's something more bigger than just myself, right? If you can tap into that place with your art, what you transmit is timeless. So when I think about setting intention, I think about checking in with yourself, I think about before you channel or put effort toward a piece of art, it's like, how do I feel right now, right? How am I feeling in this moment? While you're creating it, how am I feeling? After you create it, how do you feel? So what is your feeling throughout it? What does this mean to me? That's always a great question. What does this piece mean to me? Like what why is this important to me? You start with you first, right? Why is this important? Like what why why why do I need to create this for my own heart, for my own self? What this is a piece of me, right? Okay, and then what is the impact? What does this mean for everybody else? What do I intend this to be in the world? What is the impact that I'm looking to create? Once it's out there, you don't have any fucking control over it, right? But I find that the things that have the cleanest and deepest intentions still come with resistance, right? It's not about that, it's not about you know, fairy tale Disney Barney perspective of, well, I had a really good intention, so everybody needs to feel good about no, right? If it's real and it's truthful, it's gonna shake some shit up. And that's good because this world needs that. So the cleaner and the more honest the intention behind it, right? The more profound the impact. And to my point in the beginning, the emptier you are of self serving, like the art needs to be yours and it's about your story, and you're just fucking creating from bliss or pure grief or pure emotionality transcendent of just you, right? It's a selflessness in that way, right? You're you're talking about a pure transmission.

SPEAKER_02 1:06:11

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:06:11

That's going to cut through it all. Yes. Right? And that that was my theory with the Beatles and the Let It Be, is they did all this work, you know, the meditation, the even the LSD, all the different things they did to tune into the inner world, regardless of, you know, uh uh of any parts of the story, it's like, okay, it makes sense to me that they made some songs that we still to this day and probably will forever connect to. Yeah. Because they were pure. They came from a deeper part of ourselves. So how how I set intention creatively with people I work with, because I'm in a little bit of a different situation, but even for collaborations, I get to know them. Get to know yourself. You know, get to know who you are, what you're moving through, what's real, what's alive for you. And then pay attention along the way and listen as that evolves, and you'll be good. And focused on if you're making this because you don't want to feel the pain that's there, you're gonna create it and it'll make fucking $25 million and you'll still feel as empty and broke as you did before. It doesn't matter. It's like you have to not only aim it toward what you really want, but also be willing to be curious and open enough to allow it to transform you. Because the best art transforms you as as much as it transforms others. These songs I've created in the last five to six years as a testament is like they've moved me. The conversations moved me, the progressions moved me, they changed me. It wasn't just a product that I created, you know, with somebody else. It was uh an experience and it and it transformed and shifted. And I learned a lot through it, you know. There's that opportunity for each artist to have that process for themselves so that they can be a better service to their life and their art. And then also for them to intend for others, like to have that experience. Like I don't know if Boston, the band, you know, made more than a feeling for a seven-year-old who was afraid of thunderstorms, but that's what it was for me. That's what it was for me. My dad would give me a cassette player anytime there was a thunderstorm. I don't know what age it was, but I remember that song. I always think of, ooh, that feels safe. I don't even really know what the song's about, honestly. I've only I only remember it from then. But like the point is we assign, we assign, you know, meaning to things, right? We assign it, we connect with it in certain ways. So the purer your connection to the art and the transmission of the art, then the purer the possibility of others connecting with that mess that message too. And also with non-attachment that some are going to connect to it in the way that they're needing to. But if there's a good intention behind it, it will stand the test of time. It will. It will be timeless in its own way, you know? And timeless meaning not not as much about legacy, as much as about impact, as much as about movement and evolution and opening and growing. Yeah. Right? Because art is also a statement, too. An act a form of activism, a form of storytelling. That's why I love it. Tells a story without the words, so people don't get lost in the the whole thing. It's like really the pureness of the feeling. And that's what good stories do. Someone an elder will tell a story when you ask him a question, not answer the question, but answer the question.

SPEAKER_00 1:09:30

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:09:31

Because in between all that is the boom, the bomb of feeling. Oh. If you had just said that, I wouldn't have felt it, but all of that contributed to it. Amazing. But art, I feel like, in a way, maybe music is different because of the lyrical content, but like a chord progression or a chant that you don't even know what the fuck they're saying, right? Or or shapes and and and colors and all that kind of tunes into the pure part without needing the whole wrapped around story. Yeah. Why? Because creativity at its core is pure, divine. It's the beginning of everything. An idea turns into physical form. So the clearer your channel, the easier it is for you to create.

SPEAKER_00 1:10:18

As we kind of wrap up for today, we've talked about a lot of tactical approaches to how do we apply some of the principles and ideas that we've discussed so far today. I want to open things up for anything else that we haven't covered, any other um, you know, ways to really take this into our day-to-day. There's something that you mentioned before about journaling. Um, I will just speak from personal experience. That has been a transformational part of my practice as well, because what am I trying to say with my work as a whole, my entire body of work? That's one thing. I'm very clear on that. But what am I trying to say with this particular piece? What does

Setting Intention With A Cleaner Why

SPEAKER_00 1:10:58

this material mean? What does this mark mean? What does the relationship between these elements mean? I work abstractly. So journaling for me has been extremely useful. It's a relationship with the work, it's a conversation back and forth, it's sitting with a piece as it is in its incompleted state, right? In its in its evolution, sitting with it, identifying what is this saying to me. Got it. I'll I'll write about that. Sometimes poetry, sometimes just you know, incoherent ramblings. But over time, when I spend enough time with it, then it becomes clear, oh, that's what this is about for me. And getting clear on that with intention allows me to then be clear about where to go from there, how to resolve a piece in a way that the hope, my hope, is that the audience will then feel their own version of whatever that might be for them. But that's where the purity comes from.

SPEAKER_01 1:11:59

Totally. The the the saying that came to me as you spoke was Are you invested in yourself through the art or are you invested in the art? Right? Because I I lived the journey of both. In the beginning, it was the art. It was just I was like, how can I learn how to be in more communion with creation? The good guitar fascinated me, the the upright bass, the drums. I was like, oh, I was captivated, right? And then eventually it became how do I serve myself through this? Right. So an open dialogue with the art and with yourself helps to move through all of that, right? It's really interesting through this hero's journey, somatic writing, which I always, it's such a powerful, simple practice. It's like r replace the sensation with the art and and start to speak to it in that way, especially with visual art and abstract art, is genius. It's an amazing way to start to be in in conversation so that you're not now in a pocket of serving yourself through the art, but rather serving the art itself. Does that make sense? I feel like so many people, especially in the in the you know, the achievement level, right, they're focused on the serving themselves through the art, even though they think they're serving the art, because they're so wrapped up in will this work? Will people like it? Will people blah blah blah blah blah blah blah right? They're they're focused on all that as a protection in a way, because a part of them is being expressed in the art, and if it goes out there and people don't like it, it's almost like people don't like them.

SPEAKER_02 1:13:35

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:13:35

Right? So they're still in a way serving themselves. Right? Yep. But if someone can clear up that and be clear on I'm in service of what's coming through me as an expression and in service of what this needs to become, right? What what this is asking of me, then when it's out there, it's out there. It's I've done everything I can. Now everyone's interpretations, filters, distortions, ideas will be what's either in the way or not in the way of them being able to relate to it in a similar way that I did. I don't need to you know be bent out of shape about that. Because I served that instead of serving myself through it. I used to do this back in the music days. You know how many people I would gladly show all of the music I was working on thinking I was just like thinking like, oh yeah, I'm just really excited about this. But honestly, I just wanted to be like, this is dope. You're dope. You know? Like it wasn't pure. Now, now when I show something, whoever it doesn't matter to me, like whether they relate or I'm just like, I'm in it, I'm into it. I'm proud of whatever it was that was created. You see what I'm saying? It's a different experience. Absolutely. It's a different experience. And because of that, more people are purely relating to it because I'm not conditioning it with all my own self, my own self-assumptions. That's what our art deserves is to be to be served instead of to you to use it for ourselves. And that doesn't mean that you can't charge for what you're doing. That's not what I'm saying. To your point with journaling, which is why why I'm talking about this, is like I think when you start to open up the dialogue with whatever it is you're creating as its own creation, right? Yeah. And then honoring those that are a part of the creation, something magical happens. And I'll give you one example. I I worked with this artist last summer, and she came to me, she's a pop artist, and wanted to break into more of the intentional music space, met medicine music, whatever you want to call spiritual music. And like for me, I don't really, you know, make like what most people describe as like the spiritual music, you know, a lot of reverb, angelic. Those are great too. I have some songs like that, but my my interest is like how do we meet, how do we become a bridge, right? Relatable to the everyday person, but profoundly intentional, right? And there was a song that we created or that she that she wrote for her father, right? Really personal. Over the course of the month, we realized that while she was using her father as the catalyst for the song, the song really ended up being about her relationship with what she described as the father. She didn't realize it. We all didn't, right? Because we were in service, not of the exact story and the conditions and like what it mean to her, and it had to be what it was for her, what it needed and what it was evolving into. Yeah. And all of a sudden, the whole album was like, holy shit, this could work for both the father, the mother, the sister, the brother, and all of those other archetypal ways of relating to life itself. Naturally, because of the conversation that continued throughout. So journaling, open conversation, like obviously with you, you're working really just you and your art. But even in that, it's you speaking and knowing yourself, and then knowing the relationship between yourself, your vision, and the art itself. I just literally described the Holy Trinity in a weird way, right? It's like literally it in that way, it's like the the the threes is like your Godhead perspective, your you know, your your vision, right? What you as a person is feeling and moving through, and then the art itself, the physical manifestation, is like the relationship between those three. And so you have to tend to all three in order to be in a whole place, right? I always find a way to weave in something like that, but it kind of just happened. Um but the point is I think that practices like journaling, practicing like practices like uh openly, vulnerably communicating with others that are either creatives or just people you trust, and continuing to honor what the art is calling you to do, not what your mind or your history or what the market is telling you you need to do is always gonna be more fulfilling. May come with some like crunchy times where you think something's gonna do uh really well because it's really amazing and it doesn't, and whatever. Like it just happens. Because at the end of the day, while while art can be transcendently uh it's cross-cultural, cross everything, right? Beyond language, uh it also is subjective too, you know, and that's cool. That's fine. But at the end of the day, I think that clearing up the relationship with yourself, with your ideas, with your mind and your history, and what your art is asking of you, what it wants to be. I know it's like kind of fluffy to think that way, but I think all the creatives can understand that, right? What is this asking of you? Yeah. You know, it doesn't need to be so fucking complicated.

SPEAKER_00 1:18:50

So Well, if there's one thing that is true about the human condition, we are professional overcomplicators. Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_01 1:18:58

Exactly. Professional overthinkers.

SPEAKER_00 1:19:01

That um that feels like a good place to land a plane. Uh Michael, I I I've really enjoyed this conversation. I I hope our audience has gotten a lot out of it. I'm sure they have. Uh where can people find you before we uh before we wrap up?

SPEAKER_01 1:19:11

Uh you can find me

Journaling With The Work And Closing

SPEAKER_01 1:19:13

on Instagram at Michael Vgazzo, and I answer all DMs, whether it's specifically about the coaching I do with men or just breath work or personal growth or even creativity, anything. Um so you know, you can hit me up there, and then I have a website, Mike uh MichaelGaso.com, super simple. I love being able to have open conversations with curious people, especially creatives, um, about what I feel like I've uh tapped into over my career in music and then now focus on spiritual and personal growth and the cross sections. So, yeah, you can find me those two of the main places.

SPEAKER_00 1:19:47

Amazing. Thanks again. Grateful for you taking the time to do this, grateful to call you a friend and um to our audience. Thanks for tuning in to this episode of Just Make Art Podcast. In the meantime, just go make some art. Bye.