The Way Back to Yourself: Creativity, Intuition & Embodied Wisdom with Alexandra Beller

In this episode, I'm joined by choreographer, educator, author, and creative mentor Alexandra Beller for a fascinating conversation about creativity, intuition, embodiment, and the often-overlooked wisdom of the body.

Many of us have been taught to live primarily from our minds—analyzing, planning, and trying to think our way forward. But what happens when we become disconnected from the deeper intelligence that lives within us?

Alexandra shares insights from her work in dance and creative process to explore how creativity extends far beyond artmaking and why reconnecting with the body can help us access greater clarity, self-trust, and flourishing.

In this episode, we discuss:

• Why creativity is about far more than making art
• How disconnection from the body affects decision-making and self-trust
• The relationship between intuition, creativity, and flourishing
• Practical ways to begin listening to the wisdom of your body
• Navigating perfectionism, overthinking, and the inner critic
• Living with desire without rigid attachment to outcomes

If this episode resonates with you, I'd love to hear from you. Share it with a friend, subscribe to the podcast, and continue the conversation with us.

Connect with Alexandra Beller:

>>Instagram

>>YouTube

>>alexandrabellerdances.org

>>Pre-order The Anatomy of Art: Unlocking the Creative Process for Theater and Dance

RESOURCES & LINKS

• Take the quiz: Are You a Gifted Woman?
• Sign up to receive my Sanctuary Letters
• Book a complimentary Flourishing Call if you're curious about working together
• Follow me on Instagram: @dr.andrealein
• Learn more: andrealein.com

SUBSCRIBE & REVIEW

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Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Welcome back to the Power to Flourish Podcast. I am your host, Dr. Andrea Line, and do I have a treat for you today? My guest today is a celebrated choreographer, director, and educator with over 25 years of experience in dance, theater, and creative process. She is a former company member with the Bill T. Jones Arnie Zane Dance Company, director of Alexandra Beller Dances, and professor at universities throughout the country. She has since become a sought-after mentor helping artists and students cultivate brave, embodied, and meaningful creative practices. She's also an award-winning choreographer for theater and intimacy director, and is the author of two books, The Embodied Conductor and her most recent coming out in 2026, The Anatomy of Art, Unlocking the Creative Process for Theater and Dance. Her book, The Anatomy of Art, is a field guide for artists, a powerful blend of poetic insight, practical tools, and embodied wisdom that challenges makers to disrupt their habits, trust their instincts, and reimagine how they create. Whether in the studio or on the page, she brings clarity, rigor, and deep care to the messy, beautiful work of making art. I am so excited to welcome to the show Alexandra Beller. Welcome to the Power to Flourish podcast, where science meets the art of a beautiful life. I'm Dr. Andrea Lyme, positive psychologist, giftedness expert and coach, and modern-day spiritual godmother to brilliant, deep-feeling women. This isn't just another self-help podcast. It's a sanctuary, a sacred space to come back to yourself. Each week we'll explore the emotional experience of gifted, sensitive women and what it means to live a life that feels as beautiful as it may look. Because flourishing isn't a luxury, it's your birthright, and your life is waiting. This is the Power to Flourish Podcast. Well, welcome, Alexandra, to the show. I'm so excited to have you. And why don't you just start by sharing your journey, how you got to doing this work? Because I know you've had a very interesting path.

SPEAKER_00 2:22

Yeah, um, I started as a professional dancer, uh, I became a choreographer inside that era. I uh became a teacher, um, mostly of dance and choreography, and along the way got a few degrees, one of them in movement analysis, which really led me more into a therapeutic and trauma-informed side of the world and um being able to um cut through the layers between meaning and movement and past and present and wanting and feeling and needing, sensing and intuiting. So um that led me into more of uh like therapeutic exchange with people. And all of those um life experiences led me to want to write about them. So then I finally started writing as well.

SPEAKER_01 3:17

Yeah. So why don't we start there? Because you have this book that's being birthed as we speak now, but perhaps it's having been birthed already by the time this airs. Um, why don't you share with the title of the book and sort of the, yeah, the basic message that you want to readers to get out of this?

SPEAKER_00 3:34

Yeah. The book is called The Anatomy of Art, Unlocking the Creative Process for Theater and Dance. But I do think it um bridges beyond just theater and dance artists because creativity is such an innate part of all of us.

SPEAKER_03 3:48

Right.

SPEAKER_00 3:48

Um, and it was really born about a decade ago when I was um doing a lot of artistic feedback for um mostly choreographers. And often there would be a question I would ask during feedback. They would have just shown their work to a small group of people, and then I would ask them a question, and the room would just change, like get charged, positively charged, and people's spines would get straighter and would hear a little intake of breath. And I I thought, these questions are really meaningful. And I wish that somebody had been asking me these questions when I was trying to find my voice and vision as an artist. And so I thought, well, let me write down these questions. And over time it became clear to me that it didn't feel vulnerable enough to just write questions that I needed to put myself behind a statement as well. And so the book just kept expanding out over years. Oh, I should do scores, I should do embodiment exercises, and it became this like very fleshed out um book, workbook, memoir, etc. Wow.

SPEAKER_01 4:55

How long have you been working on it? A decade. Wow. Yeah. Yeah, this baby's ready to be birthed, I'm sure. Yeah. Um yeah, what a labor of love. Well, you have such rich experience. And even though my audience, I don't think they would all necessarily identify as like a professional creative. I believe, and I know you agree that we all have creativity in us, in our DNA somehow, some way. Um, but I would say that many of the women who listen to this podcast are they are very bright, they're incredibly capable, but they may and they and they may be and they may be professional creative, some of them, but a lot of them I think feel disconnected from their creative expression. It's like, you know, they're living life, they might be living it even sort of well, you know, so to speak, but they're living almost adjacent to themselves. It's like they're just not fully embodying their creative expression, or they might not even know what that means. So if you were speaking, I mean, maybe you can speak to, you know, your your typical uh your reader as a dancer or um someone in the arts, but maybe even just like this the broader audience of women that that you know, whether it's professionally or personally, like that creative expression, what do you think is going on there in your experience when people get disconnected? Yeah and how you and you use your methodologies to kind of bring them back to themselves. Yes.

SPEAKER_00 6:27

Yeah. Beautiful, rich question. Um for one thing, I think it's useful for us to remember that creativity is not just about art making, and it's also not about producing anything in particular. That we are creative when we are problem solving, when we're adapting, negotiating, when we're figuring out how to phrase a sentence at a tricky juncture in a conversation. All of this is creativity. And, you know, creation is invention, and invention at its heart in our species is problem solving. So we are being creative all the time. I think we may not always be noticing it or giving ourselves credit for how creative we are. How, and I will say, in my experience, women in particular, um, and um people who are part of like an underrepresented, marginalized or oppressed group, um, you know, including disabled people, when the world is not made for you, when the world does not privilege you, you are constantly being creative because you're trying to work around the system. And the system wasn't made for the neurodiverse and the disabled, and you know, white supremacy was not made for people of color, et cetera. The patriarchy wasn't made for female identifying people. So we are being creative all the time. I think we sometimes conflate creativity with art. And I think a lot of what's happening, you you asked what was happening, is that I think we are conditioned to v value and valorize um metrics other than intuition. And even in writing this book and in sending like articles out for peer review, often I'll have an idea that feels uh unique to me, um, at least in my lived experience, I came up with it. Did somebody else also come up with that? Potentially, yes. But I didn't get it from reading somebody else's work. And I'm often getting told, like, you have to cite this, you have to, and I'm like, but I thought of that. You know, I mean, I can do some research and you know, do a deep dive into like, is anybody else thinking about this? But what you're really asking me to do is validate it with somebody else's idea. And that feels like it um hooks into just this lifelong centering of metrics that are not inner metrics. And so the big thing that I'd say is like, what do you feel? And often when people go to see art, especially more experimental or explorational art that doesn't feel concrete to them, um, they can have feelings of um resistance or rejection of the art. Um, I don't like this because I feel stupid, because I don't know what it quote unquote means. Right. And often artists are like, but what'd you feel? Yes. And I think we do that it's too cavalier sometimes because I think there is some genuine fear in that audience member that's looking at a piece of art and is like, I don't want to feel stupid. I'm gonna put that feeling onto how I feel about the art. This is opaque, opaque, and I so I don't like it. And there's something about like sitting with the unknown and letting something resonate with you or not, but like finding like what is the resonance or the friction between you and this thing. And it's what we do when we're tasting the soup that we made, you know. I'm like, is that it? And the thing is when we're in situations like that, it it's often a no-brainer, like you taste your soup and you, oh, it needs salt, and you know it right away. Or at least, oh, it needs something. What is it? Hmm, a little acid or a little salt, or it needs a little more, you know, and you can feel it, even if you're not a great chef. And I think, you know, you move your couch in the living room when you've moved into a new apartment and you're like, not not quite oh, there, right. Yeah, I want to face the, you know, and you feel it. Right. And then we forget to use the body as a metric in so many other situations. And I think that's the portal to creativity is letting the body start to um have sovereignty over some of our decision making and not always feel that we have to validate everything with somebody else's metric or idea.

SPEAKER_01 11:11

Yeah. Well, well said. I have so many questions stemming from that. And so one of the things I that just has popped into my head is I think a lot of women listening can do resonate with this feeling of, or at least some point in their life, feeling like they're cut off from their body. They're just really cut off. They're conditioned, whether it was trauma, whether whatever the reason, I think a lot of us, especially in Western society, have been like, we learn, like, uh, like just use this my head right here, right? Yeah. Just you function from up here because that's what makes sense. And um I love the the example you gave because it's so everyday, like with the soup, or yeah, like moving in. And if you're not an interior designer, okay, but like you know the couch feels better over here than there. And like, how do you explain it, right? You you don't have to necessarily go to school to analyze why I mean you might want to, but you you don't you don't have to if you just learn to listen. And so um what I I said to you before we started recording is as a psychologist, as someone who has spent hours and hours and years and years in therapy spaces with people. And I'm a you know, I'm a big proponent of the therapy space. However, there are some things that are better unlearned and perhaps relearned outside of the therapy room. And so I love for you to talk about um some of your experiences, some of the practices that you have done in the past, again, maybe some of them with dancers, but even just like what an everyday person who isn't necessarily studying dance might think about if they're if they're listening to this and going, oh, I would love to be more connected to my body and listen to my body in that way. Uh I have no idea where to even begin.

SPEAKER_00 13:08

Yeah, I think um there are so many places where the body actually knows more than the upper, the attic brain. You know, like where like the lower brain, second brain, enteric nervous system, gut, that's those aren't just um, you know, metaphors. There is a ton of neurological research around a hundred million neurons in the gut and second brain, et cetera. So we do have this ability to to respond to the world physically and emotionally through the body, and we don't need to defend it any more than when we say no to somebody, we need to defend it, which that has taken me a long time to learn. And I'm still teaching myself that lesson.

SPEAKER_01 13:56

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 13:57

Um, what I often find with students and clients is that there are these beautiful places where we can um let systems talk to each other. And by systems, I mean like the physical system, emotional, social, even political, relational, intellectual. And that cert a client or student will come to me and they'll they'll say something, and in that sentence will be a word where I see the portal between, oh, that's something I would use to talk about the body, oh, but that's also something I would use to talk about the way I life plan or the way I communicate with my partner or the way I parent. And so, you know, if somebody says, I'm just feeling really lost, I don't know which way to go. I'm trying to make this decision. I I'm at a like fork in the road in my career. I'm trying to figure out which one, and I just keep, you know, volleying back and forth between these two decisions, and I'm just feel stuck and frozen.

SPEAKER_01 14:57

And like, for a lot of women are are right now saying, Yeah, that's how I feel. That's how I feel.

SPEAKER_00 15:03

And so two things about that. One, these are all things you could say physically. I'm lost in a forest, I don't know which way to go on this street, I don't know which step to foot to to walk with next, right? Right. So I do think that sometimes we can get so wound up in our heads that it becomes um just this web that we can't quite get through. And because there's so much storytelling we do in our heads, and this idea is attached to this whole emotional heaviness, um, sometimes the body can slip under the radar of our alert system. And um, so uh, you know, a client will come to me and it it it's a very emotional thing. Like they're trying to decide whether or not to stay with their partner in their marriage, and they've got kids, and it's like one of the biggest decisions they're gonna make.

SPEAKER_03 15:56

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 15:57

Um, and it's so freighted and so loaded. And I feel like I don't know that it's so useful to go into the feelings right now. I'm not saying there's never a use. Of course, there's plenty of use for like talking about feelings and feeling feelings. And sometimes those feelings become a story, and the story's hard to get away from. So they're having trouble touch trusting their intuition about which way to go. So I build an exercise, a walking spatial exercise where I'm like, um, you know, I'm I put little colored dots on the floor, and like when you see this dot, you're gonna turn left, and if you see this dot color, you're gonna turn right, and you know, or like doing an improvisation in which, you know, at certain beats or at certain places in the room, they're gonna make a spatial decision on a dime, you know, no thinking, just feeling, letting their body be like, I know where to go, I know what's next, I want to level change, I want to turn the corner, I want to turn 180, no 90. And they seem to have no trouble having immediate, intuitive, physical ideas about directionality. And I believe that putting your body into that kind of practice when you're trying to be in that kind of life practice really does make an effect, have an effect. Um, I sometimes have people who are like, I'm having a lot of trouble asserting my boundaries and I'm having trouble saying no. I'm having trouble um not centering other people's needs in my life. And great, let's do some contact improvisation. We're gonna do a little weight sharing, and I'm gonna ask you to lean into me and we're gonna move together. But if you feel like you're just following, I'm gonna, if I feel like you're just following, I'm gonna stop moving. And I'm only gonna follow you. So you, yes, we're in collaboration and cohesion, and it's about you. You're the leader of this. And if I feel that you are letting me take over your decision making, I'm gonna stop and just give you weight or pull my weight away from you because it's clearly too much. Like holding my weight, you're losing yourself. So if I feel like you're losing yourself, I'm gonna pull my weight away. And you're gonna have this physical, neurological like feedback. Oh, yeah, I gave up self. And I do feel like the repetition of that kind of practice in the body changes something in the way that we feel in the world and in those situations. And I have asked people, students, clients, after we do something like boundary work, what their next conversation with their partner was like. And they're like, yeah, it changed, that changed.

SPEAKER_01 18:49

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 18:50

And it's exciting to see that without, you know, making New Year's resolutions and writing down the the codes on a cheat sheet, and you know, nothing wrong with any of those things, but without really thinking about it or making any kind of determined, you know, decisions about how I'm gonna change in my conversation, things do change.

SPEAKER_01 19:13

Yes. I think that's a what's so exciting. And I'm sure a again, a lot of women who are have lived this, a lot of their experience up here in their head, and they're like, I don't even know how to get out, like are listening to you. I'm listening to you describe this. And and while I have never personally worked with you, I've been in, you know, my own version of kind of just getting outside of the typical talking space. And as intelligent women, we can talk, talk, talk, and it's great, and we like to do it, and it's you know, this podcast, it's wonderful. But there's some there's just something so powerful and beautiful. I'm imagining you in the space with your clients doing this. And that, the transferability, I think, maybe is really underestimated by people. And you're like, okay, what are how is how is this exercise, you know, going to translate into the conversation that I I know I need to have? But you don't have to calculate it. It like it transfers.

SPEAKER_00 20:06

Yeah, a hundred percent.

SPEAKER_01 20:08

Another one probably even more so than if you, you know, right. I do think so. It's a l it's a felt, it's really concrete, the experience.

SPEAKER_00 20:16

And I've, I mean, cumulatively probably done eight or nine years of talk therapy, and I'm still in it and appreciate it and you know, enjoy it and have gotten plenty of reward out of it. I wouldn't keep doing it. And I think some of my biggest shifts have been bodily. Um, one thing that comes up a lot is um uh I work with uh dynamics called effort in this Laban movement analysis um system that I teach. And one of the motion factors we talk about is control, and another is force, and they don't need to go together. And so when I'm working on control, I often notice that people are applying a lot of force. And so I'll say, What happens if you don't use force when you use control? And their bodies kind of flip out a little bit, and I'll say, you know, is this feel like it's familiar to you? Is this a habit that if you control something, you need you feel that you need to do it forcefully? And of course, if you've grown up female presenting and identifying, like it often has been something that you've had to do because you're not being listened to and you're you do need to assert yourself, et cetera. Um, but then it can become the default. And I'll say, you know, what if we used the same kind of force and control relationship that we use when we're threading a needle? Delicate, specific, highly controlled, not forceful, not tense, right? Not brutal. Um control feels like it often just defaults to this idea of forceful. Even sometimes oppressive control. Because that's often how we've experienced receiving it.

SPEAKER_01 22:06

Right. A very a much more masculine.

SPEAKER_00 22:08

Yeah, but if we're gonna if we're gonna draw this society toward a matriarchy, which I think it's gotta, it's where it's gotta go. This is the kind of work that I think we need to do, which is like, well, it's the it's the way that the patriarchy controls things with force. What's the opposite of that? Can I have a ton of control with delicacy, with specificity? Can I replace force with specificity?

SPEAKER_02 22:36

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_01 22:38

I love your the visuals that you're using. Like threading the needle. I'm like, that is such a good, a great visual. I tried to actually do that recently. It's very hard when you get to middle age and you need your glasses. I'm like, when I was a little girl, this is a lot easier. But um, yeah, what it's such a, again, so it's such a concrete uh visual where again, I think sometimes when we talk about these things and or talk about disconnection and even talk talking about creativity, it can feel it can feel abstract or it can feel like, oh, I have an idea of what that means, like with creativity, right? I have an idea of my head of what that means. I have it in a box, I've categorized it, right? Or even looking at a piece of art, let me categorize it, how do I categorize it? And if I can't categorize it, it makes me feel uncomfortable. So I just love how you're you're taking these um these different ideas and making them so embodic, so easy, or I think easier for women who struggle with that to to like wrap begin, not not that they have to wrap their brain brain around it, but you know, kind of start like, oh, okay, I get that. That makes that makes a lot of sense. Because I think if you've grown up, you know, using the control and the force as an example, you grow up seeing one way. And it's very hard to imagine doing it another way. And if you know, you might even know that this way doesn't work as effectively for you. It's familiar. But it's it's familiar. And I and again, I think a lot of women, you know, uh if a lot of women in leadership, whether they're leading families or they're leading the boardroom or whatever wherever they are in the world, um struggle with this. I'm an intelligent, capable, creative woman trying to find that right balance. I know I've I've certainly struggled. I mean, I I think there was a there was a time my husband can remember, I'm sure, where I would come home frequently after work and it was like the same refrain. And I worked in a male dominated, very big ego kind of place, but I would just say, I feel like my voice is not being heard. I feel like my voice is not being heard, right? And what do we do if we feel like that's one example? Like, do I need to scream? Do I need to talk louder? Like, what do I mean what is it that I need to do?

SPEAKER_00 25:00

And so it's yeah, it's a the world as soon as you said that, I felt like, well, there's one of those words, right? Your voice is this kind of metaphorical thing, right? Your ideas are not being heard, your your self is not being um taken in, but your voice is also this physical thing. Go into the shower and hum, sing a song in your car on your way home. Yeah, use your voice, um, leave audio messages instead of sending texts to your friends, like use your voice more.

SPEAKER_01 25:30

Well, it's so interesting because th this was several, probably over a decade ago when that was going on in my life. And I have been very intentional over um, I mean, I it was always a part of my life, but all the things that you just described, like I I literally sing on stages, not not not not to prove anything, but as like a reminder for myself, these are ways. I I do leave the audio message. I'm the friend and the sister that's leaving all the audio messages. I'll they know um I can get lengthy. And and then the podcast, right? Then I was like, I'm gonna do a podcast. And so it's funny how life has a way of like, let's show you how to harness your voice. I don't need to, I don't, I don't need to yell, you know, I can just be me and trust that the right people who are who are open, not everyone is going to listen to my voice. And part of my decision making was getting out of certain situations. But you know, some of that is is yeah, not just shutting down completely and saying no one is gonna hear me, so therefore I will mute myself. But finding the outlets, um, that was certainly the case.

SPEAKER_00 26:39

Uh and then also maybe um going backwards into it and saying, like, so when I feel unheard or I notice myself being unheard, what else is that adjacent to? Um, I have this really I'm not gonna uh value it, but um, I will say uh unfair of me response. My um my partner, um, who's uh an exceedingly um considerate person loves music. And so he walks around with headphones on all day long. Like until we're having quality time, he often has headphones on. So he can have his music because I'm neurodiverse in a different way than he is, and I can't have music. Like it's overstimulating. So to protect me, he wears headphones around the house almost all day long. And I'll often have a moment where he's like coming down the stairs and I see him from the couch, and he's maybe looking at something, and I'll say his name, his name, his name, a little louder, a little louder, a little louder. And I feel this like um rage and helplessness well up in me. Totally unfair. He's got headphones on as a generous gesture to me, right? Yeah, but I feel this like overwhelming rage. And so I started sitting with that feeling in that moment, being like, okay, for one thing, this is not about my partner. For another thing, this is a really interesting moment in my body. What is this like disproportionate amount of yes, I can feel where that hooks into my childhood? And I can also feel where in my body it is living. So let me sit with it and listen to that part of my body and maybe let that part move a little bit. Maybe I'm noticing it in my sternum, in my chest. So, what if I put my fingertips on my sternum and just, you know, imagine that my sternum had a crayon on it and was drawing against a piece of paper, or that my sternum was like a little stream of smoke coming off of a candle and I could see it, you know, moving in the air. And what if I just try and let that part that's feeling so much um uh intensity right now have a little bit of time to be in the driver's seat, have a little bit of sovereignty and see what happens.

SPEAKER_01 29:07

Yeah, that's beautiful. I this thought just popped in my head. How early in your life did you realize that you uh had this I don't know if you would say this about yourself, but it seems apparent to me that you you certainly have a that one of your gifts is being so uh attuned to your body and using your body. Is that something from like the youngest ages that you can that you can remember?

SPEAKER_00 29:35

I think in a way it's uh a huge silver lining from two different I I will say traumas. Uh one of them is being alone a lot when I was a kid and teenager, and the other is that I grew up inside dance in a body that did not was not acceptable to the dance world, especially like the 80s dance world. Yeah, yeah. Um I was, you know, quote unquote too big. Yeah. And so I was often not really compared to, like, I wasn't the ideal that they were really force feeding down everybody else's throat about like what to look like and what to go for, they sort of dismissed it for me because they're like, you're not gonna look like that anyway. So what does it matter? And so, in a way, because they sort of left me on the sideline in a lot of dance classes and they didn't really take me seriously, I was able to feel my way into things that a lot of people were being pushed to aestheticize their way into. Look like this, do it like that. And they were like, you're not gonna be able to look like that. So it doesn't matter what you look like. And then I was like, all right, well, I guess I'll feel it then. And so I think between those two things, in a way, it gave me um a window into that inner metric that I was talking about before that we get so conditioned against. Um, and because I wasn't gonna match the outer metric, they sort of stopped pushing it on me.

SPEAKER_01 31:16

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 31:16

In a certain way.

SPEAKER_01 31:17

Yeah. Yeah, it's a blue it's a silver lining for sure. Yeah. I I'm I I just I I mentioned this to you before we started recording too. I just came back from Hawaii and um what flashed in my head as you were describing, and it's it's so my daughter was in gymnastics and a similar, you know, that that unfortunately, again, in our American particularly, our uh and maybe other certain, you know, Western countries, but this um really unfortunate yeah, just unfortunate mixing of like body image stuff with the with what should be so life-giving and joyful. Like what is more joyful than dance? Like I just feel like it's so joyful. And um one thing that I'm thinking about in Hawaii is when I see both the um and they just had this huge, I don't know if it's a competition, but it's called Mary Monarch on the Big Island, and uh people flying from all over and they have like they do the traditional, you know, hula, all the different groups. And I'm looking at all the men, women, everyone, and all different kinds of bodies. There's no I did I don't watch them and think, oh, they're all a certain type, right? Yeah, all different kinds of bodies. And I think it's so beautiful, and I just think about even their movement and everything, it's so fluid and free. And um, I I I wish for America. I wish for the little girls, and I love dance. Um, and I love things like gymnastics and it, and I I'm always on the lookout for places that you know aren't taking that path. But I do think in the 80s and 90s, hopefully by today there are more places that aren't putting that on kids. But um, yeah, what a beautiful gift though that unfortunately you had to go through that, but that you came out the other side like so, so connected.

SPEAKER_00 33:12

Yeah. I thought the triangulation between those two things and my neurodiverse brain just gave me access to uh a very high level of interoception, being able to feel the inside of my body.

SPEAKER_01 33:25

Yeah, it's awesome. I'm I'm envious. I'm so envious. Um my goodness, I have so many questions, and I know we we could talk all day, but let me ask you, since we're we talked about creativity earlier, what do you think? I mean, we've you've shared some examples, but I think already when you find someone who is feeling either disconnected from their body, I guess it's one and the same, disconnected from themselves, disconnected maybe, or not as fluid in their creative process. What have you found? Are there some practical maybe first first steps that someone could take to begin to feel because I I recognize it's it could be a process, but to begin to feel that that internal sense of safety, like that relationship between the internal sense of you know, feeling a little safer to the creative process or feel I don't know how you I I may not even be asking the question right, but yeah, I guess what what how do you how do you make that connection for people? How do you get them just in that those beginning steps through dance?

SPEAKER_00 34:36

I I think I I often would probably have a few questions for them to fine-tune this next idea and listen to like where do they feel like they get lost or stuck or frozen in the process? And you know, I might have more specificity for them given their answer, but one fairly general thing that I find quite ubiquitous is that um we often are trying to be both intuitive and analytical at the same time, and they don't play well together. And um that's what I think often the inner critic is is like we're in some kind of flow, in flow state, intuition, sensing, feeling, intuiting, being, creating, divergent thinking, wildness, etc. And then poking into it, piercing it, and wounding it because that's a very like um tender space to be in and a vulnerable space to be in. And we are sitting inside the unknown in a really lovely, wild way. And then um what we might call the inner critic, I think it is often the analytical mind. And I mean, I think it's often stemming from a real fear. And for one thing, I do think we need to have a conversation with that fear at a separate moment. So, what I often do is um ask people what that relationship between like instinct, intuition, sensing, feeling, and logic analysis editing criticism is both super essential, both for life and creativity and relationships. We need them both. Um, the best artists have both in some fairly equal measure, I think. Um, but they don't live well together, they don't perform well together. And so I'll ask somebody what that relationship is like for them. Um, when they're in that free flow state, can they stay there? What happens? And often I hear that there's this interjection. So we create a practice together, um, you know, based on what that voice is like and how they respond to that voice. Um, to say, like, I hear you, I'm gonna ask you to wait on this. This is not a moment when I'm doing analysis or logic. Um, I'm gonna stay in intuition right now. And I I suggest that people treat that voice the way they might treat their teenager who was not having an emergency and was popping into their office or bedroom at a moment when they were in some kind of workflow, creative flow or a conversation.

SPEAKER_01 37:31

Because I used to work with a ton of teenagers who did that very thing.

SPEAKER_00 37:35

So um, so um if my teenager was not having an emergency and popped their head into my office while I was in the middle of book writing, I would probably turn and fairly lovingly say, I'm just right in the middle right now, but I will talk to you later. And then I would go talk to them later. Yeah. So I do think that it's important to be honorable in our relationship to that analytical voice that is trying to alert us to something that we are worried about genuinely. I don't think there's any part of us that's just being an ass and trying to sabotage us, right? I think there's something real happening and I would like to hear it just the way I want to hear what my teenager has to say. Yes. But not right now.

SPEAKER_01 38:16

Right.

SPEAKER_00 38:16

And I want to honor the practice of what's happening right now. And if I abandoned my book every time somebody sent me a text or somebody popped their head into my bedroom, I would not have a a manuscript in right now. Right. I I chose to value and honor it. And I did hopefully eventually get all those things responded to over time, but not at that moment. So I do think that's separating those functions of the mind and saying, I hear myself thinking, I hear myself critiquing, I hear myself analyzing, I don't want to do that right now. So I'm going to pause this voice and I'm going to stay in wild space and let myself be playful.

SPEAKER_01 39:07

I love how you have described that. And as someone who has um specifically, I'll say in one of my areas where the I'll the perfectionism is coming up in my head. A lot of women struggle with that. Mine happens a lot around writing, so much, so much around writing. And um, but wherever it happens for people, right? It could happen. I mean, it certainly happened to me at times singing, although usually I can get right into the flow and like separate the two out. But for for people have it in different areas, some people have it everywhere, but it takes a lot of practice. You know, if if if you have allowed the I love the teenager popping in uh, you know, analogy, but if you've allowed that teenager to come in all the time and you just get derailed every time, it it's a sh it's a big shift to move to I'm going to I I would imagine right, just like a little bit more time staying in that wild playful part and practicing sending the teenager back to where they where they were. And yeah, like just yeah, differentiating and even having the awareness, like the language you're using, I think it can be so hopefully will be so helpful to people to say, these are just different parts of the mind. We need them both, they're both useful, but at different times. And in the creative process, that's not the that's not the time to be coming in and and analyzing. And sometimes my my husband and I all use this too as a personal story. He's very analytical. I can be extremely analytical as well, but I like to play and I can get into a playful spot. So if I'm in like dreaming, visioning for our life, right, I have to ask him to just give me a moment and before you shoot down all the big dreams with all the analysis of what's realistic and everything, like could you just hang out in the playful part for just a moment? And we can come back to it and do the you know, analytical mind, but just a moment. Like, let's just play. And I do think that there's that practice and training ourselves, training our partners, whatever. I also laugh for that.

SPEAKER_00 41:20

I also think that it's circular in that um that intuitive creative wild space often leaves us, leads us towards detail and convergent thinking and specificity. And like, you know, I'll start imagining my dream house, but then I'm thinking about, you know, what the kitchen is gonna look like. And then I start thinking about like, yeah, because then I'd be able to do this and cook it. And then I'm like, you know what? Actually, I should I could revamp our kitchen just a little bit for very little money. I should just move those things over to the, you know, and I start having like a real convergent, like specificity. And then I feel like the opposite also happens. I noticed in editing my book, I'd be like, really specific and editing, and looking, that's not the right word. Why is that not the right word? What is the word? And I'm like, that's not the right word because there's a little faulty thinking in this. Because actually, this analogy, it's not chemistry, it's ecology. Hold on a second, wait a minute. This whole chapter is built on shaky ground. Okay, hold on. I need to go wait, I need to go back, I need to go read some stuff about ecology and chemistry and hear how people just, you know, and it's like one leads to the other. It is circuitous or like alumnus gate, like a Mobius band.

SPEAKER_01 42:36

Um, well, on that note, I really want to read your book. And I got a segue there. I am very excited about this book, even though I don't identify as a dancer. I love, I love watching dancers. Um, I did take some dance as a young person, but it's not something I stuck with. And I have a lot of friends who um are in the dance world. So I'm excited about your book. Tell people where they can get the book and then also just other places they can find you, because I'm sure I am not alone in being a new fan of yours and just find out more about what you do. Where do you want people to go?

SPEAKER_00 43:11

I'm I have a really robust website that's got a lot of different places it branches off to, including a separate website for my book. And so I think just alexandrabeller dances.org is um such a good hub, and there's lots of there's free classes and there's essays and links to writing and that kind of thing and ways to connect with me.

SPEAKER_01 43:31

Great. That is amazing. And tell us just once again, I will put a link in the show notes so people will see that there too. But the name of your new book.

SPEAKER_00 43:39

The Anatomy of Art coming out uh through Bloomsbury. And right now, unfortunately, it's uh gotten a little bit delayed. It was supposed to be June, then September. I'm hoping it stays September, but it you know published.

SPEAKER_01 43:53

Not unheard of with the the dates. But we'll we'll we'll put it there, we'll have the show notes. I'm and sometimes people can pre-register, right? To oh it's

SPEAKER_00 44:00

It's available for pre-order right now. Yeah, pre-order.

SPEAKER_01 44:02

Pre-order. Yeah. That's great. So I will um highly encourage people to check you out there. Thank you so much, Alexandra. This has been um, I really could I could talk to you for at least another half hour, half hour. Easily. Easily. Um, so fun, so fun. I want to go like move my body in the other room after this episode. Um, thank you so much. I always ask my guests one last question before we go. Because this is the Power to Flourish podcast, I would love to hear, and you could take a second to think. What does flourishing mean or look like for you at this season of life? Because I know that can look different at different times.

SPEAKER_00 44:40

Yeah. And um, I was sitting in uh North Carolina actually at my best friend's house. We were sitting in uh, she's lucky enough to have a hot tub, and we were looking up at the stars, and I was saying, you know, I'm I feel like I'm at this crossroads in my career, and I've been identifying as this choreographer and artist for so long, but I also feel like I'm becoming this healer, and um I feel like if I'm gonna become a real master at one of them, I feel like I have to choose. And she said, What if you didn't uh choose anything right now? What if you just let yourself see where your feet take you? And I felt like in the middle of menopause, it felt like such a relief to think of not planning anything. And so I think for me, flourishing feels like rooted flow. Um, I'm not aimless, I'm not wandering, I'm not without desire, but I am no longer determining or projecting myself in any particular direction towards uh an imagined outcome. And I've been asked a lot, like, oh, well, you know, what are you hoping for with a book, or what do you want, or what's your five-year plan? And I very consciously do not have a five-year plan, no idea what will happen with this book releasing, I don't know where I'll be in the future, I don't know what I'm gonna want, and I am enjoying living inside desire without goals.

SPEAKER_01 46:23

Yeah. That is an amazing answer. And um, I don't know if it has something to do with the stage of life that we're in, but I feel very similarly at this stage of my life. Um, it's an interesting tension to still have desire.

SPEAKER_03 46:38

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 46:39

Um, like we're not dead yet. Yeah, but the um there's something about it that is yeah, sort of like there's the the strings have been cut. There's nothing attached as much.

SPEAKER_00 46:50

It's very present. And maybe because there's less life ahead of me, probably than behind me. I'm 53. So I'm guessing there's more life behind me than ahead of me. So maybe that like energy of like forward, forward, forward starts to recede a little bit, at least for me. I'm like, I'm not Russian anywhere. Like uh I'm pretty happy, like riding on the arrow of time right now. Yeah. You know, and just like sitting here and yeah, as you said, it doesn't mean I'm devoid of hunger, desire, want, sensation. Um, but I'm not imagining things in the future and directing myself towards them. Yeah. And then feeling like what when I reached them and they looked the way I thought they'd look, I have succeeded, and when they don't, I have failed. That just feels like um tangibly incorrect. And I have had the experience so many times of like, yeah, you could never have known what that would be like. How did you think? How'd you have a picture of it? And then it yeah, of course it diverged because how could you know what being a mother would feel like? You know, writing a book would feel like, etc.

SPEAKER_01 48:03

Yes, yes, yeah. It's the adventure of life. Yeah. It would be boring if we knew how it all was gonna go. Yeah, even though part of us probably likes think we think we want to know, but yeah, yeah, it would be really boring. Yeah. Oh well, such a pleasure. I hope we stay in touch. Um, and until next time. Absolutely. Thank you so much. Keep flourishing. Thank you for listening to the Power to Flourish podcast. I hope today's conversation left you feeling more seen, more supported, and more deeply connected to yourself. And if this episode resonated, would you take a moment to subscribe, leave a review, or share it with a friend? It's one of the best ways to help this work reach the women who need it most. You'll find show notes, links, and resources from today's episode at powertoflourish.com. And now just a quick reminder: this podcast is for educational and informational purposes only. It's not therapy, medical advice, or a substitute for professional support. Listening doesn't make me your therapist or doctor, though if you're looking for a coach, you know where to find me. All right, beautiful one. That's it for now. Until next time, trust yourself, honor your guests, and keep flourishing.