Hello, everyone. Welcome to Your SuperPowered Mind. I’m your host, Kristin Maxwell. And in this show, we explore the process of transformation and give you tools and strategies that you can use to transform your own life. Today, I am going to be talking to Eliza Lay Ryan, about how to tap into your creativity to create resilience. Eliza Ryan is a speaker, teacher and performing artist, who has led acting programs and taught super mindfulness practices of resilience to people from all over the world. She collaborates with leaders in neuroscience, business, wellness, and education. And uses insights from science and the arts to offer practices that support creativity, resilience, and connection. Eliza is the author of the book Supermindful: How to Tap Into Your Creativity. Welcome Eliza.
Thanks so much for having me.
Yes. I enjoyed your book and I’m really excited to share what you’re doing with everybody.
Me too.
So my first question is always, what superpower did you discover as the result of mastering your mind?
Well, my book was actually, initially called Ways To Wonder, because I think the superpower that we get through super mindfulness is access to both the experience of wonder and the verb to wonder. And this place is as actively in a beginner’s mind and also proactively in a creative, curious mind that wants to go further to understand the world around us and connect with it more deeply and create with it instead of running away from it or avoiding it. So wonder really places us in full contact with the fullness of life. Instead of that kind of aspirational transcendence, wonder allows us to be fully connected, fully here and fully engaged.
Ooh, that’s lovely. Yeah.
It’s a nice experience too.
Yes, it is. So, my question is have you always been this way, connected to wonder?
No.
Are you one of those people who was born with that “look at how lovely the world is” or is that something you’ve learned?
No, it’s definitely something that I’ve learned. And it was an interesting thing because I’ve always been connected to it in the sphere of the arts. So I grew up acting and dancing and singing and painting and playing the piano. The arts have been where the sphere where I had a lot of access to wonder and a lot of access to curiosity and creativity. And in the rest of my life, I really struggled. And I’m still in dialogue with a lot of anxiety, a lot of confusion. “Why is the world like this?” I mean, from a very young age I was kind of besought by these existential questions of being and it’s a lot to navigate. I mean, we don’t know the answers to these questions, right? So we need to find ways to be in dialogue with them in relation to them.
And it wasn’t until I started, I was teaching acting to actors and non-actors in this program where people would come from all over the world to study acting together.Â
And a lot of them are there just because they were interested in becoming more confident or public speaking. And they had never encountered these practices before. And they were reporting to me like, “Wow, this really helps me feel more resourced. This really helps me feel more present. This really helps me feel more empathic. This really helps me feel like I have more choices in my life.” And I thought, “Whoa. So this thing that I’ve been teaching over here, I haven’t been translating into my actual life as a being, as a creative being outside of a laboratory of art.” And so that became my real curiosity of how can we take these practices that in one sphere are so helpful in being fully present and fully engaged and bring them out into the flow of our daily life.
Wow. Okay. What I’m loving about what you’re talking about is how we can take this and learn to take it into a different part of our lives. And what did you find when you started taking this into other parts of your life?
Well, what I’ve found is that so much of my goal or my idea of the ideal was kind of transcendent ideal, transcend my humanity, transcend my vulnerability, transcend my discomfort. And what’s amazing about acting is that you’re engaging all different textures of humanity. And you’re allowing those to teach you. You may play a villain and you have likes and dislikes about that villain, but you also have curiosity about that villain. You want to understand them and inhabit them and see why they are how they are.
And I realized I was extending so much empathy and care and compassion to fictional characters and teaching other people how to do that, while not extending the same loveliness to myself. And I realized, “Wow, could I extend that curiosity, that compassion, that care, that empathy to myself?” And I think that’s been one of the largest benefits and gifts of practicing these tools and just practicing this mindset of being creatively engaged. And instead of trying to manage.
I spent so much time trying to show resilience and manage myself, even with spiritual practices, because I’ve always been interested in them. I’ve been meditating for a long time in different modalities. Done a lot of different kinds of energy work. Using those as a way to open and engage and experience is totally different than using those as a way to manage. And shifting into that place of empathy for myself, place of curiosity and compassion for myself, has transformed all of the ways that I try to experience or play around with experiencing life.
Yeah. I love that. And I can’t wait to get into some of the more nuts and bolts about how. Again, look, I’m sort of this manager.
Yeah.
Oh, what is it that you do.
Yeah. Yeah. Well, I can tell you the process. So there are two buckets that are interplaying all the time, our ability to be present and our ability to be open to new possibilities and experience new possibilities and new mindsets.
So our ability to be present rests on two things. One, our ability to learn how to be present, to how to come into the present moment. So for example, just how to be in touch with our physical selves, where we are as we are. So for example, one practice that actors use, that I use all the time and that is part of Supermindful canon is just being present to where you’re making physical contact at any moment. And saying, “Okay, here I am making physical contact with the floor. And making physical contact with the chair.”
And just that brings you where you are. You tend to notice that everything slows down for a moment. You have a different access to your breath, just very tangibly landing in the place that you’re in. Then from there, it’s so helpful if you can feel the floor under you, expanding out in all directions. And then everything on the floor with you. And then you’re really placed in the room that you’re in. And once you’re really placed in the room that you’re in, especially if there are other people in that room, you’re really there with them. So that’s one that’s in bold practice, that you can really do any time. And then there are three more. So we can talk about that one first, if you want.
Yeah, good. Let me cut you off because we do need to go to a break before we go back to that.
Oh, sure.
But what I love about your saying is that making physical contact. And then even this idea of one thing that I just somehow… Is sometimes feeling the air on me.
Exactly. Yes, you’re feeling your clothes on you. Or even just saying, “Where does my attention want to anchor?” And just allowing it to anchor there. I always find that when I ask that, it anchors in my upper back between my shoulder blades and then I’m just connected to my emotional center really. And it spreads out from there and here I am. So, just even connecting to your own inner wisdom, which is so there and we just don’t access it. “Where does my attention want to anchor? Oh, right there. Okay. Here I am.” So, ways to bring us to that place of “here I am” is the first step in the process that we’ll continue to talk about.
Yeah. Perfect. I love this. Want to go on. Okay. But in a moment, before we take a break and continue talking about resilience and more, can you tell people where they can learn about your book and more about you and your work?
Sure, supermindful.co is the website.
Okay, great. Hang on. We’ll be right back. And we’re going to talk more to Eliza. God, I am butchering your name Eliza Ryan, about how to tap into creativity to create resilience.
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