Welcome to the Mindfulness Exercises Podcast, your space to deepen your presence, elevate your mindfulness teaching, and embody mindfulness with confidence, authenticity, and integrity. Join us as we explore insights and tools to transform lives, including your own. Hello, welcome to the Mindfulness Exercises Podcast. My name is Sean Fargo, and today I'm honored to share a really thought-provoking conversation that I had recently on the intersection of mindfulness and creativity. This conversation was with a really inspiring guest named Marnie Friedman, who is a writing coach, editor, playwright, and she's kind of functioned as a therapist for artists with over 25 years of experience helping people to bring their stories to life. She also runs the San Diego Writers Festival, where she curates world-class programming for writers, and she's interviewed some of the biggest names in the writing world. Her deep understanding of the creative process, both with its magic and its struggles, makes her a great person to explore today's topic. And she's a really delightful person. Creativity is often thought of as an act of inspiration delivered to us. But what if we can create the right conditions for creativity to arise? In this episode, we dive into how mindfulness helps artists, writers, and creatives to move beyond any sense of fear, self-doubt, or resistance, or self-judgment. To help open the door to more authentic expression and flow. So whether you're a writer, an artist, a musician, or someone who simply wants to unlock deeper creativity in your life, this episode will give you fresh perspectives on mindfulness as a gateway to your own creative flow.
SPEAKER_00Thanks so much for doing this. I really appreciate it.
SPEAKER_02Sure, yeah, it's a pleasure. Thanks for inviting me.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. So so yeah, I'm writing this book on um creativity and the well, the intersection between mindfulness and creativity. And I'm I'm loving the course, by the way.
SPEAKER_02Oh, great.
SPEAKER_00Um, I do have a technical question, but I'll save that for later. Um but no, it's really, it's life-changing for sure. Like I did it once, and then I'm like, wait a second, I gotta back up and slow down. And the slowing down really changed everything. Really powerful questions that you're posing. So yeah, I'm writing this book on the intersection between mindfulness and creativity. And mostly what I've discovered is that creativity really has to do with like what I've been calling like having a fertile soil or a culture, a healthy culture. Like you can't necessarily predict when someone will have the aha idea, but you can make the soil fertile enough for ideas to be possible. For me, mindfulness has been part of what's made that soil fertile. So that's just a little bit about my approach and where where I'm thinking, but I'm open to anything you have to say about creativity and mindfulness.
SPEAKER_02Sure. Yeah, I'd be happy to share. Is this for primarily like writers in terms of creativity, or do you want me to like a certain kind of avatar?
SPEAKER_00I would say all artists. So I'm the therapist for artists. So I'm I work with like musicians and composers and dancers and a lot of writers too.
SPEAKER_02You know, just doing the course when you like slow down the power of the questions and the power of the teachings has more potency. So many of us get caught up in moving quickly. You know, oftentimes we're rewarded for moving quickly and getting things done and figuring things out and maintaining connections with family and friends and neighbors and acquaintances. And the pace of our world has increased so much and continues to increase with news cycles, AI, social media. A lot of us forget how to slow down or carve out space, not space for Netflix or YouTube or the next thing we want to achieve or binge on, but space in its truer sense of a lack of content or a lack of goal.
SPEAKER_00Do you think we fear not having that content or that goal?
SPEAKER_02It can be terrifying because if there's nothing to grab onto or control, if there's no process, there's no thing that we're certain is going to create some level of drama or laugh or numbness, what is it inside of me that I will need to face? If there's an increasing amount of space of external stimuli, then what internally is going to arise? And in our fast-paced world, most of us, including myself at times, forget to tend to our inner world and we often end up suppressing important emotions and realizations. And so if we decrease the amount of momentum and external stimuli, then I might be forced to face what I've been actively trying to avoid, whether consciously or unconsciously. So for many of us, it's terrifying. Now, with mindfulness, one of the key components is that we're not out to judge anything, that whatever we feel, whatever we face, is not about being good or bad, right or wrong, but rather a natural unfolding of experience, energy. And if we can summon the courage, a little bit of curiosity, we can be with increasing intensities of anything. And so we may very well be valid in our terror. And so the invitation is not to try to be mindful of everything all at once.
SPEAKER_00Ah, interesting.
SPEAKER_02But rather go in baby steps. So if I could open a little bit to what I'm scared of, how might that feel? Or what aspect of it could I tend to, just even for a little bit? Or if I'm not even sure what I'm scared of, if I had to guess one or two things, what might they be? And you know, this touches on the fact that most of us as human beings living in the 21st century carry trauma of many kinds. So we want to be uh as gentle with ourselves as we can, and we can find uh safety in space before opening to what is uh scary. And what I mean by that is that we can curl up in our blankie, our favorite bankie, pour ourselves a cup of tea, maybe say, okay, I'm gonna just take two minutes of sensing into a safe place in the body where I can maybe practice noticing what my inhales and exhales feel like in the belly, or finding safety in another part of the body, like our hands, maybe our back, maybe our feet, somewhere in the body that feels safe to sense into with gentle awareness of how it actually feels in those places in the body. Not trying to feel a certain way. There's no agenda here, not trying to feel good or happy or calm, but rather just sensing into how do the feet feel now? How does the breath in the belly feel now? And now, maybe it feels pleasant, maybe it feels a little unpleasant. Kind of staying with it and kind of sensing into the actual sensations as they unfold. And then maybe we can congratulate ourselves, talk to ourselves as if we were talking with a really good friend who made this step. Good job. That was great, very cool. I'm really happy for you that you're on this journey of exploring how to be present in this moment, this gentle awareness. So we can start by sensing into safe sensations in the body and keep practicing that, maybe sensing into um certain emotions that feel mildly pleasant, noticing how those feel. So we can maybe think of something that made us smile the other day and relive that memory, and then okay, how does that feel now in the body as I think of that? Oh, yeah, there's a little bit of lightness in the head, maybe a little bit of like my lips kind of curve upwards a little bit with a slight smile. My heart feels a little bit moist and open. My breathing relaxes and becomes deeper. It's easier for me to feel my connection of the body on the ground. And then maybe we can play with sensing a mildly unpleasant sensation. Like, um, you know, someone kind of looked at me funny the other day, and it's not a big deal, but it just made me feel a little weird. So we can relive that. Now, how does that feel? Oh, my heart feels a little heavier. My breathing is a little bit more shallow. I could feel my face tighten up a little bit. Now I'm kind of getting into my head and I don't feel quite as balanced physically. Doesn't mean it's wrong or bad. Just kind of what's showing up. It's okay to feel what we feel. But can we stay with what we feel? I'm just kind of sensing into how that feels with this gentle awareness. Not trying to make it right, not trying to figure it out, not trying to blame or shame them or ourselves. Just staying with the physical sensations of how this feels now. And we might find that as we continue this gentle awareness of the body, as we sense into a mildly unpleasant memory, that we start to feel a little bit more balanced over time. This gentle awareness is healing. We might say, Oh, you know what? Kind of sensing into like momentum of like empathy now. I wonder what they were going through. Well, you know what? I was kind of going through kind of weird that morning, and I wonder if that kind of rubbed them the wrong way. I just might be a little more curious. The name of the game is this gentle awareness. So we might be scared, and oftentimes that fear is very valid. And after we get the hang of practicing presence after a while, we start to more quickly turn towards the thing that we think is the obstacle.
SPEAKER_00Can I ask you this in a context? Like I so I teach memoir, and sometimes people will come in and they'll say, Um, I want to talk about everything but what's behind the golden door, and then what's the whole story? It's what's behind the golden door. And when they're ready, is that kind of what you're talking about? Like, is it similar to that facing what's behind the golden door?
SPEAKER_02It sounds like it.
SPEAKER_00So are you saying that practicing presence gently and being, you know, I liked what you said about, you know, this is great that you're doing this, just like the gentle praising of that can help us to slowly turn towards that what's behind the golden door, like the thing that's terrifying us.
SPEAKER_02Correct. And to turn towards the fear itself and its raw nature. And so maybe in this metaphor, it's the door itself. But so a lot of us will say, but I'm a I'm afraid of X. I'm afraid of acknowledging or accepting or thinking of X. I'm afraid I'm afraid of addressing it, I'm shunning that out of my life or whatever. But what can be so paradigm shifting is the invitation to sense into the fear itself. So like I'm I'm afraid of thinking of X, like I am afraid. So that's that's phrased in a sort of like an existential identification with fear. Like I am afraid of X, Y, or Z. Mindfulness is okay, there is fear in your experience. You are not fear, it's not who you are, but there is fear. Where is that? And for a lot of people, it may be in the heart. Where in the body is the fear? Huge knot all around my chest. My heart is 200 degrees Fahrenheit. There's like a two-inch thick layer of leather around it.
SPEAKER_01I feel it here. It's interesting.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, it may be in our gut, maybe here. I had it like on my left shoulder for a few years, and then like Masseuse, like actually, it was a rolfer, was like really needing that part, and I just every time they would touch it, I would cry. Like uncontrollably. It was just like, oh my goodness. And I I don't know something from my childhood, I guess. But anyway, for all of us, it's maybe somewhere different and it might feel very different, but can we be the with the fear itself? And we can toggle the amount of like thinking we do about the thing that we're afraid of, meaning like we can increase or decrease the amount of energy we or the amount of awareness we put on what we're afraid of to then kind of increase or decrease the amount of felt emotion we feel in the body. Like I think about it a little bit, maybe I feel feel it a little bit. Think about it more, I feel it more. It's it's not always that simple and it's not always a direct correlation, but oftentimes there's a general correlation. Can I practice being with the fear, not identifying with the fear as I am afraid, but rather, yeah, there's a little bit of fear here, or there's a lot of fear here. Can I practice inching closer to it? So maybe I start in the belly and then kind of move up to the heart where it's the fear is more present. Or, you know, I can start somewhere safe in the body and then kind of inch towards where the fear is, and then we can toggle back to the sort of thought-based story, the golden door, can open it one inch. Come back to the body.
SPEAKER_00That's what I ask people to do.
SPEAKER_02Oh, really?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, crack it open, yeah.
SPEAKER_02So we can open it like an inch, come back to the body, sense how does that feel? Can it bring gentle awareness to it? So it's not good or bad, not right or wrong. What does it feel like in a very gentle, tender way? Going in baby steps, and we can zoom out into the whole body or our aura or the world, can zoom in to like one millimeter diameter of like a part of the body, and then zoom out and zoom in, move around our physical experience and keep toggling back to the story, back to the body, back to the story, back to the body. There's physical sensations of fear, but as I learn how to meet that fear with gentleness, and I remember to breathe, I remember it's not who I am, it's just a part of this experience that comes up when I think of something sometimes that fear takes less and less hold over us. We learn how to execute agency, we have choice in how we relate to it. We realize we can relate to it in a present, gentle way. Before I would have reacted and judged it, judged that, judged me, ran the other way, resist it. A lot of us will exaggerate it or suppress it or numb it. So those are all reactions, but with a gentle awareness of the sensations itself, we realize we're able to choose our response. We're able to realize that it doesn't have as much hold over us as it used to, and that we can choose how to relate to it over time with practice and maybe even see the you know the beauty of it, which is kind of what you're doing with with your clients. It's like, oh, this is in some ways a blessing.
SPEAKER_00Once we crack open the golden door, if they're willing to go there, what we find I've noticed is is sacred ground, and then we can walk on the sacred ground, and that's where the truth and the juice of the everything, you know, is so you're putting together something. I mean, I almost feel like crying because you're putting together a piece for me that's been missing, which is the the toggling, the how to help people. All I could say before was risk five percent more, open the door five percent more. But this is richer and and more tangible, what you're saying.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, like what does five percent more mean? Yeah, like to different people, it might mean something very different.
SPEAKER_00And also, how do I get there? How do I this is what you're saying is an actual practice.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, and there's more of them too. What's your favorites in terms of this topic?
SPEAKER_00Of yeah, like, or I don't know, you know, you seem to be a really beautiful writer, and I want to later ask you about your process, but yeah, what what what do you gravitate towards or what do you teach people about?
SPEAKER_02Well, I mean, over the years it's it's changed for a variety of reasons. I mean, for a long time it was um like courage, encouraging courage. I think that I think like a lot of what mindfulness teachers do is really just encouraging courage to slow down, and that alone is powerful, and then you know, feeling, sensing, you know, and and over time you'll we'll discover there's like many, many layers, and so we might get bored after we slow down for 10 seconds, like, yeah, I get it, it's a room, like there's nothing going on, but like, okay, well, let's have this like gentle awareness of either your boredom or layers of energy in the room, or what can you continue sensing into? I mean, there's uh that's one of the things about meditation practice is that once we really learn the process of mindfulness of being present, we learn that we never have to be bored again. Because there's always something to notice, because everything is always changing externally, internally. There's layers and layers and layers and layers. We can go deeper and deeper and deeper into who or what we are, or interconnection with everyone and everything, goes deeper and deeper into what many people call spirituality or the magic of this mysterious unfolding, imbued with what I perceive as benevolence, kindness. So, anyway, so there's many layers to experience. We often need courage to continue with each layer, yeah. And it's not like you crack open the first layer with courage and then it's free-flowing for the rest of your life.
SPEAKER_00It's like is it endless or is there like a tsi wall pop inside?
SPEAKER_02I don't know. I'm tempted to say both. Okay. Like in Buddhism, they talk about in terms of having two wings of a bird. So wing of wisdom and a wing of compassion. Vedanta, it's like there's like everything and nothing, you know. So this path is full of paradox, and a lot of masters who are far wiser and more loving than I do, than I am, often talk about it as a weaving kind of between the two, or a blending of the two, so that it's everything and nothing, love and wisdom, um, absolute and relative. You know, like this is all really important, and I love my family and what's going on deeply. And there's a bigger picture.
SPEAKER_00So um, you talk a little bit about if you have a creative process?
SPEAKER_02Like this morning, I like happened to start listening to um Rick Rubin's book, The Creative Act.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_02And it just resonates so so much with this right now, like over the last couple weeks only. I'm like been playing with becoming more full of myself.
SPEAKER_00What does that mean?
SPEAKER_02Is that that might actually be the book I create because it's it's kind of a catchy title that like means the exact opposite of what most people think it means.
SPEAKER_00Yes, it's great. I love it.
SPEAKER_02It's not about ego or self-centeredness, but rather like filling me up, like my body and like my space with my essence and not allowing myself to be like dented by um or constricted by you know the what I'm afraid of or other problems I've had as a kid or yeah, or other people. I'm I tend to be like very empathic and sensitive, which means it's all the more important for me to really limit the amount of doing and consumption that I that I do, but rather like feeling into this experience, feeling fully embodied. You know, and like the mind encapsulates our whole sensory apparatus, you know, that the mind and the brain are not like fully synonymous, you know, mindfulness is not brainfulness, it's it encapsulates our whole sensory apparatus. So if I want to be like truly mindful, I'm aware of my full presence. So it's been a lot of fun to because like like my energy tends to be quite like when I go into a a fear-based pattern, I condense a lot of energy into my body. And so by expanding up the energy, uh becoming like full of myself, I feel much lighter, present, balanced. So I've been playing with that, and it's also helped me to feel into my voice, which I've had so many coaches and teachers say they all kind of say the same thing with me, which is what do they say? Like your path in this life is to give voice to what you believe, you know, what you're learning, your experience. So by doing this practice of becoming more full of myself, and I say that like somewhat sarcastically, there's um sort of this like sense of freedom that I I can give voice to it with less fear, self-consciousness, agenda. It's just kind of more of like a raw.
SPEAKER_00I have a question about that. So I've noticed this especially with women, there's not always like the permission to go into the fullness of oneself and to there's like this sense of who am I to even put that focus on myself or or I don't know, self-doubt somehow creeps in. Just wondering if you could say something about that.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, what we're saying has some level of heart to it, you know, and it's if it's meant to kind of either help others or to illustrate what's going on for ourselves in case it might be helpful for them, who am I not to help others? Or another way of saying it is like like if someone wanted to judge me for giving voice to something that is intended to hopefully be of help to someone else, then who is that person to stop me from helping others? If someone wants to get in my way of trying to help another person, it's more like who who are they to stop me or to want me to withhold like something from helping others? Like if I have even just a tiny piece of medicine, and I know a lot of other people are struggling, and I know not everyone's gonna want the medicine, not everyone needs this medicine, but maybe a couple do. Who is anyone to stop me from sharing this little piece of medicine that might be helpful for a couple people? Like to me, that's wrong. I don't know.
SPEAKER_00Uh just so I don't get it wrong. Um, could you explain a little bit more what you mean about the fullness of yourself? If you're allowing it, what does that mean? What does it look like?
SPEAKER_02Um, like one way to think of it is like your childlike energy. Did you go by Marnie as a kid? And you think of yourself like as Marnie, then that like Marnie, like what is the Marnie essence? Like, can you share a few adjectives about like who Marnie really is, like when you're free or like happy, or like when you're a kid, like kind of kind of fearless, kind of playful, really silly, um, kind of outrageous, pushing boundaries. Okay. So that's all encapsulated by Marnie. Okay. And so like that energy, like when you were talking about that, like fill your fill up your space with that. And when I say space, I mean like your body, but also like a little bit of space around you, too. So that's you. Fill up your like space with you, and you like you can close your eyes and like feel all those things, feel that energy of when you were talking about Marnie and like spread that energy throughout your body and the space around you. Breathe. Breathe it in, breathe it out, and really feel it like all around you and in you. It's becoming full of you, you know. And so sometimes we get inundated with fears and desires and all these things, and like sense into like where do those places live? What happens to the energy? Does our energy go out six feet that way, 100 feet that way, and kind of dart around?
SPEAKER_00I was limiting it so you could just it could keep going.
SPEAKER_02The Marnie energy? No, I think it's good to kind of keep it kind of close by.
SPEAKER_00Oh, okay.
unknownOkay.
SPEAKER_02But it might be an indicator that maybe one of your patterns is that you send your energy out. There's a lot of people do that. And my sense is knowing you're a little bit of personality, is that you might do that.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. So that's a pattern. So notice when you're sending your energy out, what's that about?
SPEAKER_00Can you same fear of slowing down and looking at what's behind the golden door?
SPEAKER_02But yeah, like can you keep the Marnie energy like in in your body or like fill yourself with the Marnie with Marnie in your body and like the space around you?
SPEAKER_00So that's kind of anything else that you would want to say to creatives about mindfulness, about because I I've been feeling lately it's really an investment in so much. Like the rewards are bountiful, but we're in such a hustle culture. And I want to with the book, I really want to talk about the gifts that that get that keep growing. Like I feel like there's more and more the more I do this work.
SPEAKER_02To me, it kind of comes down to like just a fun way of being.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_02There's like creativity of like producing a thing. And then there's like creativity of being creative. Like in how slow kind of. Yeah, like how I fold the laundry today. Or like how do I relate to that person? Or you know, how I cook that thing, or even like how I walk to the you know, coffee shop. Like maybe it's a different way or a different route. Maybe I wear something different, maybe I walk like a giraffe. I don't know. But like it's kind of a fun way of being. And it's just like a funness to it, then unlocks more creativity because I'm feeling fun. And um, yeah, like the flow that you're talking about. Most people in the West are we live in our heads, and it's really easy to think about like perfecting the thing or doing it right or following someone else's process, and all that can be useful, but like, can I feel creative? Like in my body, you know, maybe I do yoga in like in advance of my creative work, or maybe I do some breathing exercises, or do something silly, or like laugh at my jokes, or whatever. But like it's kind of a fun beingness or a creative beingness. And to me, I I just love fun. It doesn't have to be fun for everybody, but like it's a way of being that then like unlocks more.
SPEAKER_00I want to sneak in one last question that it would it would mess me up if I didn't ask you this. When you're being creative, um, let's say you're writing, do you feel like you're communicating with like a creative source or a field or um like Eckhart Tolle calls it the Great River? Do you feel like you're connecting with that or does it what does it feel like to you?
SPEAKER_02If I'm leading a meditation or kind of leading a retreat in which we're kind of deepening our presence, oftentimes, yes. Sometimes it's more about connecting with oh like connect with different energies. Um, I don't know how to describe, like I I've noticed that um I gravitate towards groups of men. And it might be because I didn't have brothers and there may be a golden door here, but there's um this connection I have with like small groups of men that often unlocks um something very creative.
SPEAKER_00Do you ever feel like you're channeling, or is it like talking to a higher self?
SPEAKER_02Um, I get out of my own way. Like I don't know.
SPEAKER_00Through what? You're out of your own way to do what?
SPEAKER_02Like flow. I don't know, like it could be through a word or a look or an act. Um could be like doing something behind the scenes that are it's in support of someone, like someone else. But it's like I have a little bit of like coyote in me of like like doing something that's a little bit like surprising, but with kind of like a finger pointing to the unnamable. I don't know. I like the um I love the Daddy Ching, but the um Don Quixote is my favorite book. I just love the juxtaposition of like silly things that a lot of people might say is just like my people some people might judge as being dumb. I don't know. But really, like when you really pay attention to it, like there's something way deeper there. And I just love that juxtaposition. Like my favorite comedian is Norm McDonald. A lot of people think that he's kind of a dumb comedian, but like when you really open the layers, there's like a hundred layers, and you realize like he was always the smartest guy in the room, pretending to be the dumbest.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_02And I'm not saying I'm always I'm the smartest person in the room, but like I love being silly, but like with an element of like care or wisdom, or I don't know.
SPEAKER_00I'm I know I get it. I'm I'm totally with you, and and I really encourage you to write the book whenever it's you know you feel petty and in your time because I was an agent for a while, so there's part of that part of my brain too that's like that's a great idea. And I just want to thank you so much for spending this time with me. It was life-changing for me. So seriously, well, I'm gonna take some nuggets that I'll bring to others.
SPEAKER_02Cool, yeah, hopefully it's helpful. Um, thank you for helping uh writer writers and artists and creatives, um, and helping them heal along the way. And if um you want to reconnect at some point, um, the door is open.
SPEAKER_00Oh, thank you. Thank you, thank you, thank you. Of course, yeah, thank you again.
SPEAKER_02All right, thank you.
SPEAKER_00Great to meet you.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, feel fill yourself with Marnie.
SPEAKER_00I will. Big shot.
SPEAKER_02As we reflect on this conversation, one thing becomes clear. Mindfulness and creativity are deeply intertwined. The more we cultivate presence and the more we create space for inspiration to arise helps us to unlock the energies within. Mindfulness helps us to meet both inspiration and also resistance with a sense of gentle awareness so that we can allow creativity to be unlocked and to help us to create from a place of clarity, curiosity, and courage. If today's discussion resonated with you, I invite you to continue deepening your mindfulness practice, whether through creativity, self-inquiry, classic meditation, or simply by being present in the moments of your life. Thank you for joining me in this exploration on mindfulness and creativity with our wonderful guest, Marnie Friedman. If you'd like to share mindfulness with others, I encourage you to check out our mindfulness meditation teacher certification at mindfulness exercises.com slash certify. Until next time, stay present, stay grounded, and continue showing up with authenticity and compassion. Thank you for listening.