Michelle James

Facilitator, coach, artist, improviser, author. Work w leaders & groups to consciously create what's next. #wholebraincreativity #appliedimprov #emergence

[Michelle James @CreatvEmergence]

The CREATIVE ENERGY EXPERIENCE. Where Your Creative Energy Is Blocked and Getting It Moving Again https://t.co/6P6DXRnBBZ

A 75-minute guided experience of state change, perception shift, and renewed creative aliveness in a time of unsteadiness and uncertainty

Free! May 28 • 4:00pm EDT • On Zoom

Have you been feeling blocked, stuck, or uninspired?
Or feeling like you are in a perpetual inhale waiting for that out-breath?
Or feeling hesitant about how to move forward?

We are living in a time of uncertainty, transition, and rapid change. This can show up as:

• scattered or stagnant creative energy
• not moving forward due to so many unknowns
• too many ideas with no sense of which to engage
• a sense of being “between chapters” or between identities or roles (Who am I now? What do I have to offer now and next? What do I want to express?)
• something new trying to emerge, but not yet taking form

We never lose our creative self, but we can feel disconnected from our access to it, and the life-giving creative energy it carries. Our creative energy can become constricted, especially when we try to navigate uncertainty through thinking, efforting, or analyzing alone.

We've been socialized to forget we are multi-dimensional beings, and have a living, flowing, creative energy source within us.

The good new is that creative energy is always available to us. We just need to give it some space and engagement to get it flowing again.

This experience is designed to start moving energy.

This is not a workshop, seminar, or training. It is a state-change experience. This is a 75-minute live, experiential field where you will be creatively guided through:

• awareness of your creative energy
• perception shifts that reveal what has been “stuck”
• engaging embodied practices that start moving your creative energy though you

This experience may be for you if:

• you want your work or life to feel more alive and aligned
• you want to reconnect to your natural creative intelligence
• you are a soulful leader, guide, creator, or entrepreneur who is navigating how you/your work is evolving in a changing and uncertain world...sensing something new is trying to take shape through you, and want to free up more of your creative energy

This experience offers a small taste of moving energy so something new can come through. This session can stand alone, or serve as doorway to deeper creative emergence work.

There is no charge for this experience. Register at:
https://t.co/6P6DXRnBBZ

[Michelle James @CreatvEmergence]

I once was in the National Gallery of Art and found myself totally immersed in Rembrant’s self portrait, painted in 1640. I knew very little about his life, but after being with that painting for 20 minutes, I started to feel as he were standing right there with me, sharing his world with me.

It was fully alive for me and the experience as profound as if we had just had a conversation….maybe even more so, in that words can often obscure the true essence of someone.

The aliveness energy that comes thought masterful art transcends time. It is “out of time” in a way, at least out of time as we experience it in our left-brain dominant, linear-thinking world.

I had a similar experience in a totally different venue - at an artist’s home in Sedona. She painted wolves, shamans, and other-worldly landscapes.

While we saw so many wonderful and truly gifted artists in that area, her work had an extra-dimensional quality that took it beyond great art. Her paintings paintings come alive in a way others had not.

I felt like I was in desert where all these people and animals where there, alive and breathing all around me. I was not just an observer, but an active participant in the experience of the art.

Aliveness energy goes beyond logical reasoning alone, into a non-verbal state of pure experience. It's multidimensional, impacting experience at more than one dimension simultaneously.

With aliveness energy combined with mastery of a craft - and a deeply present state - the creator of the art and the experiencer share a moment out of time - a connection, a feeling, an understanding that goes beyond age, culture, language, and time.

It that moment, there is a relationship between the creator and the experiencer of the creation, even a kindredness. The relationship to time and space temporarily changes.

Art has this power to unite people across space and time, it is there for all of us. We don’t all have the same gifts, skills and levels of talent in the same ways, but we all have access to the creative unconscious, where this energy exists and the power to create from what is most alive in us. And that aliveness speaks!

Not only can we access this energy as individuals, but as groups, in a co-created group field. A transformational power can be unleashed in our lives, organizations, communities - both individually and collectively - by valuing and harnessing the alive energy of what's still unseen, and calling to emerge.

[Michelle James @CreatvEmergence]

My latest mandala #handdrawn #coloredpencils

[Michelle James @CreatvEmergence]

I enjoyed being a guest on the Radiant Business Podcast with Jason Ross and Yavor Yankov, where we talked about pattern breaking, creative thinking, and moving through creative blocks in business.

#creativity #creativeblocks #patternbreaks

https://t.co/6uKzD6yrZG

[Michelle James @CreatvEmergence]

Just 2 spots left! Earlybird discount rate thru tomorrow at midnight. https://t.co/pwx191ejlg 6-week creative program. Feb. 26-Apr. 3.Fridays weekly 3:00-4:15pm EST. Diving into 9 Dimensions of Receptivity + whole-brain creativity...

[Michelle James @CreatvEmergence]

ReEarthing the Human Mind by Julie Brahms
https://t.co/8XEEhpGpOv
"The most significant changes will be in our mind—perceptual and internal. The external result, meaning how that culture will behave, will unfold from there. Each of us will be part of what that new way looks like."

[Michelle James @CreatvEmergence]

NEW CREATIVE PROGRAM! This 6-week immersive experience is for for leaders, facilitators, coaches, and practitioners who have to stay steady in unsteady times. https://t.co/pCmBAkAiko

You're someone others rely on. You have to show up fully resourced for those you serve. But who, or what, do you rely on when the world feels destabilizing? In these volatile times, it's easy to feel our well run dry.

I was feeling that way, so returned to immersing more intentionally in a variety of creative "receptivity" practices for myself and my clients...and that's been transformational. It's not about feeling good all the time, or bypassing, but being present and resourced for ourselves and others.

Receptivity is an often overlooked, yet essential, leadership capacity that strengthens discernment, creativity, and aligned action. It's the foundation of resilient leading, living, and creating.

In this programs, we'll explore and cultivate 9 dimensions of receptivity so that clarity, responsiveness, and inner alignment become more reliable.

This program may be for you if:

• You're feeling like external chaos has unsettled your focus or sense of aliveness
• You value your intuition, but rarely give yourself the time or space to truly engage with it
• You desire to feel more consistently nourished and resourced from within
• You want to make choices, take actions, and create offerings aligned with your values, wisdom, and aliveness

Receptivity is a part of refilling our wells and part of sensing into what's emerging as you go. It's such a huge part of the emergence process that it felt like it needed to it it's own area of focus.

This program uses an original 9 Dimensions approach to receptivity using multiple "creative languages" to form a more resilient inner ecosystem.

In this creative program, you will explore and experience:

• 9 Dimensions of Receptivity: what they are and how to engage them
• Whole-brain approaches to receptivity via different creative languages: verbal, visual, imaginal, intuitive, somatic, energetic
• Connecting with the creative intelligence of what's emerging
• Conditions for receptivity
• Coaching
• The power of supportive group field

This program is designed to experientially strengthen our capacity to receive - ideas, guidance, nourishment, support - both from within ourselves and from life around us.

This program is less about doing, and more about being.
The "doing" is more of a spacious receiving: yielding instead of forging ahead, listening instead of asserting, feeling into instead of figuring out, savoring instead of rushing, and making space for knowings to emerge.

We begin February 27. 3-4pm EST.
We meet weekly for 6 weeks.
Early-bird pricing through February 20.

Spots are limited. This is a small group for maximum attention, connection, and support.

If it resonates with you, hope you can join us.

More details & registration link:
https://t.co/pCmBAkAiko

Questions? Contact me anytime.

[Michelle James @CreatvEmergence]

New Inner Parts Program! https://t.co/NDSdTMJDBh
I had such a rich time w such an awesome open-hearted group in the Holiday Inner Parts Workshop that I decided to offer a deeper deeper dive into w a program in January. This is a unique, whole-brain approach to parts work. Space is limited for maximum attn & engagement.

[Michelle James @CreatvEmergence]

https://t.co/IDpmrIwAAk When Walt Whitman said, “I am large. I contain multitudes,” he wasn’t kidding. Each of us has multiple parts & when we work with them they become a source of support & creativity. In this workshop, we’ll focus on just a few key parts - your Inner Support Team - using creative process to help these parts become a foundation for moving into 2026...catalyzing a small number of powerful parts to support your aspirations. #creativeemergence

[Michelle James @CreatvEmergence]

My latest mandala inspired by our first snow here this year #handdrawn #prismacolorpencils #originalart

[Michelle James @CreatvEmergence]

My latest mandala #handdrawn #coloredpencils

[Michelle James @CreatvEmergence]

I have a client who leads an org. team focused on shifting their team norm from thinking and interacting more mechanistically and conventionally to engaging more co-creatively, organically, non-linearly, and "humanly."

One of the things they started doing is getting their team to regularly engage in whole-brain practices together at their meetings, and it's shifting the way they interact and collaborate together.

Many of our organizational systems and practices were established from principles and values steeped in more left-brain logic, reductionist, linear-dominant, and analytical-centered thinking with rationality as a core value.

They produced mechanistic systems that ignore our organic ways of being human - ways which include conceptualizing, contextualizing, feeling, sensing, and interconnecting.

Storytelling, visual mapping, movement, theater, music, art, creative thinking and sensing techniques, and other whole brain processes are about:

• weaving seemingly disparate elements into a larger context and extracting relevant data, patterns, and connections from the larger context
• integrating linearity (stages & steps) w non-linearity (context & milieu) for larger perspectives and possibilities
• engaging both what is known and what is unknown, and emerging

Whole brain/whole-person integration methods involve embodied understanding, direct experience, and purposeful implementation within the larger context of being human first.

Research shows that when developing new innovations, services, and offerings, you get more novel ideas using whole-brain conceptual thinking than left-brain only thinking. When leading a team or group, you get more safe feelings and bonding.

Whole-brain thinking (incl. feeling, embodying, sensing, visualizing, imagining, intuiting) engages a larger context, so it produces more coherent, inclusive, and human-centered ideas than left-brain thinking alone produces.

The more whole-brain integration, the better we think and perceive. This often means the willing to break our patterns, feel the discomfort of unfamiliarity, and questions core foundational assumptions..

Questions to consider:
~ How might you bring in more whole brain practices into your leadership, facilitation, and/or meetings?
~ What patterns in your thinking or work no longer serve you or your team?
~ What is something new you've always wanted to try but have kept putting off?

#wholebrain #creativefacilitation #creativeleadership

[Michelle James @CreatvEmergence]

You're invited to the Giving Thanks Feastival! Nov 26. 11:00am-12:30pm EST. It's free to participate.
https://t.co/bd6QsIrS36
For several years a coaching friend and I had an annual ritual of setting aside two hours each year the day before Thanksgiving to explore our gratitudes from the previous year.

I always left our calls in an expanded, spacious, appreciative energy, and with renewed hope.

With Thanksgiving coming up, I thought I would continue this pre-Thanksgiving day ritual with a space online for pausing to create a gratitude "feastival" for anyone who resonates, and is available.

The 90-minute Online Feastival Experience:

• An opening practice to create a trust-centered gratitude field
• A lightly facilitated gratitude engagement process
• A debrief and closing ritual at the end

Each person will have an opportunity to share.

Bonus: A Free Whole-Brain Gratitude Practices PDF!
Even if you can't make the online event, you can still get this free PDF. It has several practices in there we won't be doing in the session for you to do on your own.

Click here for the free Feastival and the Creative Gratitude Practices PDF.
https://t.co/bd6QsIrS36

[Michelle James @CreatvEmergence]

Next Online Mastermind Group start Tuesday!
https://t.co/FLk6urnuRa
How many times have you taken a workshop and got great ideas, and were filled with energy, only to go back to your habitual ways a few days or weeks after?

This 8-week program supports you in staying focused - in an easily distractible world - on what you are creating next in an ongoing way until it becomes an embodied new pattern or habit, and you are far enough in to your next chapter to keep the momentum going. Plus, it's fun and a great bonding experience!

Space is limited for maximum support.
This is for you if:

- You're feeling ready to enter a new phase of your work or life, but not sure what that will look like.
- You still have so much inside of you (dreams, gifts, talents, aspirations) that you have yet to let out.
- You resonate with creative approaches.
- You have something that's yours to create and offer, even in an unsteady, unpredictable world.
- You want a generative start to your new year

In this Mastermind group we engage our whole brain and multiple dimensions of creative process for practical, focused results.

[Michelle James @CreatvEmergence]

Sept 6. 10-4:30pm EDT in Northern VA. https://t.co/9o5uWLwmK4
An in-person transformative workshop for those in a work or life transition and ready to start creating your next..but might you not be sure what that is. Working consciously with our stories helps us extract opportunities from challenges, express more of who we are, and create next steps, even with a lot of unknowns. Leave with an emergent navigation process when the path isn't clear that you can use beyond the workshop setting, insights and practical next steps for your next chapter, a Story Playbook, more trust in yourself & the initial stage of your next. https://t.co/9o5uWLwmK4

[Michelle James @CreatvEmergence]

I recently found out the first stage of a chick's birthing process is called pipping, where it breaks the shell and starts making a hole with its egg tooth. The chick then uses its egg tooth to break the shell in a circular pattern in the egg called zipping, for basically unzipping the shell in preparation to hatch.

Then it goes into hatching, where it pushes off the shell to emerge out into the world. Apparently the time between pipping and hatching varies and can take up to 24 hours or more. It's laborious for that newborn, but important.

The natural hatching process helps a chick to develop its muscles, lung function, blood supply, and get vital nutrients from the yolk. Removing the chick out of the egg before it has completed the process can cause lifelong problems for the chick - like taking a butterfly out of its cocoon.

Similarly, it seems important to be discerning about what what we keep for ourselves to slog through in the creative process, even when it takes more time and is uncomfortable. Laboring through the messiness of the creative process can have real value not just in what's created, but in what we discover and how we grow or transform during the process.
#creativity #emergence

[Michelle James @CreatvEmergence]

Latest mandala drawn with colored pencils #handdrawn #originalart #meditativeart