The Syncreate Podcast: Empowering Creativity

What comes to mind when you hear the word “imagination”? Does it evoke a particular image, scene, or context in your mind’s eye? We often associate imagination with the visual sense, as a close relative and component of creativity. But imagination can be associated with any of the five senses or perceptual fields, and it is also closely linked with intuition, spirituality, and synchronicity. And what about the dark side of imagination? We discuss all of this and more in Episode 10 of The Syncreate Podcast with Dr. Diana Rivera. 

Dr. Rivera is a licensed clinical psychologist and creativity coach in Los Angeles. She’s the owner of Empowerment Psychology, and she's worked for many years as a facilitator in performing arts education, as well as offering professional development coaching to artists, youth, educators, and corporate America. She holds two Bachelor’s degrees from the University of California at Santa Cruz in American Studies and Theatre Arts. She has a MA in Psychology with a specialization in Creativity Studies and a Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology from Saybrook University. She is also a certified personal/professional development coach as designated by the International Coaching Federation. 

At the end of the episode, I offer a Creativity Pro Tip encouraging you to consider the transpersonal or spiritual element of your own creativity and imaginal work. In other words, what gives you a sense of meaning and purpose in your life? Is there a spiritual dimension to your creative or professional work? 

Credits: The Syncreate podcast is created and hosted by Melinda Rothouse, and produced by Michael Osborne at 14th Street Studios in Austin, Texas. Creative development and video production by Shuja Uddin and Devon Foster at Tishna Films. Artwork by Dreux Carpenter.

If you enjoy this episode, you might also like our conversations in Episode 8: Grief, Healing, and the Artist’s Life with Anne Myers Cleary and Episode 9: Music and Psychology: "The Pocket" Experience with Dr. Jeff Mims.

Episode-specific hyperlinks: 

Dr. Rivera’s Psychotherapy Website: https://www.empowermentpsychologyla.com/

Dr. Rivera’s Creativity Coaching Website: https://creativeempowermentcoaching.com/ 

Saybrook University Creativity, Innovation & Leadership Ph.D. Program

Article by Dr. Rothouse on Jungian Psychology and Creativity: Navigating the Creative Wilderness in the Journal of Creativity

Buddhist Teacher Pema Chödrön 

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Dr. Jeff Mims is a psychologist, creativity expert, musician, and researcher. His work focuses on the relationships between music, health and well-being. He holds a doctorate in humanistic psychology with a specialization in creativity studies, as well as a master's in rehabilitation counseling, and a bachelor's in film and cinema studies. Currently he’s the operations lead at the Music and Expressive Arts Center of Oklahoma. For his doctoral research, Jeff focused on the musical experience of “the pocket.” This term comes out of the jazz world, when a group of musicians performing together come into a collective flow state.

Dr. Mims and Dr. Rothouse were in the same PhD program at Saybrook University, focusing on creativity, but he started the program right after she finished. So we knew of each other, and we were connected on LinkedIn, but we only recently finally got to meet in person at a creativity conference in Oregon. Through our conversations at the conference, we both recognized an opportunity to collaborate, so I’m excited to bring you our conversation today about the pocket experience and the healing power of music.

Once you’ve heard the episode, my creativity challenge is to think about your own experience of flow states, either individually or with others, in your creative or professional work. When do they happen? What does a flow state look and feel like for you personally? What’s possible from that place? How can you facilitate such flow states for yourself and others? Pay attention to your own energetic flows and see if you can create the conditions for them to happen more intentionally, because that’s where the creative magic happens!

Credits: The Syncreate podcast is created and hosted by Melinda Rothouse, and produced by Michael Osborne at 14th Street Studios in Austin, Texas. Creative development and video production by Shuja Uddin and Devon Foster at Tishna Films. Artwork by Dreux Carpenter.

If you enjoy this episode, you might also like our conversations in Episode 3: Creative Polymathy with Musician, Photographer, and Podcaster Michael Walker, Episode 5: Creative Global Citizenship with Filmmaker and Screenwriter Shuja Uddin, and Episode 7: The Syncreate Story with Charlotte Gullick.

Episode-specific hyperlinks: 

Dr. Jeff Mims on LinkedIn

The Music and Expressive Arts Center of Oklahoma on LinkedIn

Saxophonist Kenny Garrett

Saybrook University Creativity, Innovation & Leadership Ph.D. Program

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Anne Myers Cleary is a visual artist, as well as a writer and musician, based in Indianapolis. Anne majored in art at Kenyon College, and studied vocal performance and opera at Longy School of Music in Boston and the Jacob's School of Music at Indiana University. Her work has been featured as part of the Encore Sotheby’s Visiting Artist Series, The Harrison Center for the Arts, Kuaba Gallery, the Carmel Clay Library, and the St. Margaret’s Guild Decorator’s Showhouse. 

Anne shares in her Artist’s Statement: I believe in the importance of imagination, make believe, magic, and mystery, and the truths that are revealed therein. My work is an emotional response to the natural world. I'm interested in the complex and varied emotionality of places and the meaning we attach to them. How we feel in them, or gazing at them, removed. They are reflections of our inner psychological and emotional spaces. I am a traveler, capturing these sacred spaces as they are revealed to me in an attempt to understand human existence and its relationship to the natural world. 

We discuss how Anne discovered her own unique creative rhythms and routines, as well as her connection to the place she grew up, and how that sense of place figures into her work. We also explore her creative and meaning-making process in connection with a recent series of paintings in oil and spray paint that explore grief and healing, paradoxically expressed through bold, colorful abstract landscapes.

Credits: The Syncreate podcast is created and hosted by Melinda Rothouse, and produced by Michael Osborne at 14th Street Studios in Austin, Texas. Creative development and video production by Shuja Uddin and Devon Foster at Tishna Films. Artwork by Dreux Carpenter.

If you enjoy this episode, you might also like our conversations in Episode 3: Creative Polymathy with Musician, Photographer, and Podcaster Michael Walker, and Episode 7: The Syncreate Story with Charlotte Gullick.

Episode-specific hyperlinks: 

Anne’s website: annelouiseart.com

Anne’s Instagram

Anne’s work on Saatchi

Artist Francis Bacon

Saybrook University Creativity Studies Program

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One of our primary areas of focus at Syncreate involves honoring the power of collaboration and community in the creative process. So I’m thrilled to bring you my conversation with Charlotte Gullick, my Syncreate Co-Founder. Charlotte is an author, novelist, memoirist, and educator. Her first novel, By Way of Water, was chosen by Jayne Anne Phillips as the Grand Prize winner of the Santa Fe Writers Project Literary Awards Program. Her nonfiction has appeared in a number of prestigious literary journals, including The Rumpus, The Best of Brevity, The Los Angeles Review, and Hippocampus. 

Charlotte and Melinda first met in Austin when we were both teaching at Austin Community College. We founded Syncreate several years later, in 2013, to provide creativity coaching, consulting, workshops and retreats, and we co-wrote a book on the creative process called Syncreate: A Guide to Navigating the Creative Process for Individuals, Teams, and Communities, which came out in 2021 and won a Silver Nautilus Award for Creativity and Innovation. 

We recently traveled to Ashland, Oregon for the 2023 Creativity Conference at Southern Oregon University, where we presented ideas for our next book on creativity and community. We recorded this podcast episode together in Ashland, and the conversation gave us an opportunity to reflect on our work together helping to empower creativity over the last 10 years.

Credits: The Syncreate podcast is created and hosted by Melinda Rothouse, and produced by Michael Osborne at 14th Street Studios in Austin, Texas. Creative development and video production by Shuja Uddin and Devon Foster at Tishna Films. Artwork by Dreux Carpenter.

If you enjoy this episode, you might also like our conversation in Episode 3: Creative Polymathy with Musician, Photographer, and Podcaster Michael Walker.

Episode-specific hyperlinks: 

Charlotte’s Website: www.charlottegullick.com

Charlotte’s Novel: By Way of Water

Syncreate Website

The Syncreate Book

Austin Community College

Creativity Conference at Southern Oregon University

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The Syncreate Podcast

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One of the most powerfully creative things we can do as leaders and changemakers in this complex world is to identify and live from our core values. As a creativity and leadership coach and consultant, I always encourage my clients to articulate their core values and utilize them as compass points in their work. My guest in this episode, Mayela Padilla Manasjan, exemplifies this values-driven creative leadership. Mayela is an environmental scientist as well as a poet and photographer. She’s also the Executive Director of Casa Werma, a Buddhist retreat center in Patzcuaro, Mexico. She leads from what she calls her “Three Gs”: gratitude, gentleness, and generosity.

Credits: The Syncreate podcast is created and hosted by Melinda Rothouse, and produced by Michael Osborne at 14th Street Studios in Austin, Texas. Creative development and video production by Shuja Uddin and Devon Foster at Tishna Films. Artwork by Dreux Carpenter.

If you enjoy this episode, you might also like our conversation in Episode 1 on Audio Storytelling with Podcaster and Environmentalist Michael Osborne, PhD.

Episode-specific hyperlinks: 

Mayela’s Website: www.mayelapadilla.com

Tiny Climate Challenge Podcast

Casa Werma Retreat Center

Maya Angelou

The Climate Reality Project

Mayela’s Poetry Book: Orange Line to Tennessee

Tucson Festival of Books

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Creativity benefits from a diverse array of perspectives and experiences. The more creative inputs we have, the more we experience life and the world around us, the more stories and ideas we can observe, live, and share. In this episode, we talk with Austin, Texas-based Shuja Uddin, a screenwriter, filmmaker, and professor of media studies originally from Karachi, Pakistan. We discuss the diverse influences on his storytelling and creative process, from growing up in the bustling metropolis of Karachi, to traveling the world, to studying at Boston University, as well as moments of comedic impersonation. 

Credits: The Syncreate podcast is created and hosted by Melinda Rothouse, and produced by Michael Osborne at 14th Street Studios in Austin, Texas. Creative development and video production by Shuja Uddin and Devon Foster at Tishna Films. Artwork by Dreux Carpenter.

Episode-specific hyperlinks: 

Episode Transcript

Tishna Films

Short Film: Article 370

Karachi, Pakistan

Book: How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie

Author Robert Greene

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Change is hard. Our natural tendency is often to resist it, even if we know it’s good for us. Change represents the unknown, and so we often fear it. That’s why we need people like Reem Khashou, a Wellness Coach and Personal Trainer, to help us implement lasting change in our lives. In this episode, we discuss the mind-body-spirit connection, Reem’s own health and wellness journey, and her approach to stewarding change in her clients. We also examine the transtheoretical model of change, transpersonal psychology, and the importance of daily practices like meditation on the path to wellness.

Credits: The Syncreate podcast is created and hosted by Melinda Rothouse, and produced by Michael Osborne at 14th Street Studios in Austin, Texas. Creative development and video production by Shuja Uddin and Devon Foster at Tishna Films. Artwork by Dreux Carpenter.

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Episode Transcript

Reem Khashou’s Website: changewithreem.com

Transtheoretical Model of Change

Tara Brach - The Sacred Pause

Transpersonal Psychology

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Melinda came across the term “creative polymathy,” meaning interest and skill in multiple creative fields or disciplines, a few years ago at a creativity conference, and it really resonated. The nature of creativity is to make associations between disparate ideas and inspirations, so it makes sense that creative people often have talent and ability in more than one area. Michael Walker is one of these people; he’s a musician and songwriter, as well as a photographer, podcaster, and the Director of Many Things at Positive Energy, a building science consulting firm based in Austin, Texas. Michael recently released a couple of instrumental albums inspired by Palo Duro Canyon, near his hometown of Amarillo in the Texas Panhandle. In this episode, we discuss the creative process in Michael’s music, as well as his influences and inspirations, ranging from Buddhist meditation to the landscape of West Texas.

Credits: 

The Syncreate podcast is created and hosted by Melinda Rothouse, and produced by Michael Osborne at 14th Street Studios in Austin, Texas. Creative development and video production by Shuja Uddin and Devon Foster at Tishna Films. Artwork by Dreux Carpenter.

Episode-specific hyperlinks: 

Episode Transcript

Michael’s Website: sleepyburrito.com

Creative Polymathy

Palo Duro Canyon

Llano Estacato

Dan Flores (author)

Coyote America

Project Coyote

Artists for Wild Nature

Red River War

Canyon Illuminant album

Red River War album

Johnny Greenwood (film composer)

Trent Reznor (film composer)

Ryuichi Sakamoto (film composer)

Positive Energy (building science consulting firm in Austin, TX)

The Building Science Podcast

Terry Allen (artist and musician)

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We often talk about the mind-body connection, but how does this relate to creativity? Embodiment refers to the state of fully inhabiting our physical selves, as well as our internal, phenomenological experience of living as a physical being. Many of us have complicated relationships with our bodies, especially those of us who have experienced trauma in some form or another (which is most of us). Yet, the body is also a fundamental source of creativity, as we explore in this episode with physical therapist, dancer, and Feldenkrais practitioner Thais Bicalho Silva. Our conversation explores the healing power of movement and touch, as well as what comes alive for us when we experience ourselves from the inside out, as opposed to self-objectifying, and what’s possible when we create from that place. 

The Syncreate podcast is created and hosted by Melinda Rothouse, and produced by Michael Osborne at 14th Street Studios in Austin, Texas. Creative development and video production by Shuja Uddin and Devon Foster at Tishna Films. Artwork by Dreux Carpenter.

Episode-specific hyperlinks: 

Episode Transcript

Thais’ Website: mayolimovement.com

Psychiatrist and Trauma Researcher Bessel van der Kolk

Book: The Body Keeps the Score

Psychologist Wilhelm Reich

Neuroscientist Antonio Damasio

Book: Descartes’ Error

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Podcasting has become such an important medium of creativity, carrying on a long tradition of oral storytelling that stretches back to the beginnings of human history and culture. But what makes a successful podcast and how do you create one? Today’s guest, Michael Osborne, PhD, stumbled into podcasting while working on a PhD in environmental science at Stanford, and never looked back. Over the last 12 years, he’s hosted and produced several very popular and critically acclaimed shows with themes ranging from humans’ impact on the environment and big data to dead celebrities and how to live a meaningful life. In this episode specifically, and in the show more broadly, we explore the creative process itself, as well as the multidimensional nature of creativity and innovation. 

The Syncreate podcast is created and hosted by Melinda Rothouse, and produced by Michael Osborne at 14th Street Studios in Austin, Texas. Creative development and video production by Shuja Uddin and Devon Foster at Tishna Films. Artwork by Dreux Carpenter.

Episode Transcript

Michael Osborne Website

Famous & Gravy Podcast

Generation Anthropocene Podcast

Raw Data Podcast

The Syncreate Podcast

Syncreate Website

Syncreate Instagram

Syncreate Facebook

Syncreate Twitter

Syncreate LinkedIn

Syncreate YouTube

Melinda Rothouse Website

Austin Writing Coach

Melinda Joy Music Website