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Chris Zydel MA, CHT
Chris Zydel Quick Facts
Main Areas: Creativity & Spirituality, Creative Process, Intuitive Painting, Spirituality, Expressive Arts, Healing, Astrology, Women's Groups, Art as Meditation,Personal GrowthCareer Focus: Workshop Leader, Business Owner, Author, Coach, Astrologer, Consultant
Affiliation: International Expressive Arts Therapy Association,Steven Forrest's Astrological Apprenticeship Program
CREATIVITY AS A PATH TO SPIRIT, JOY, HEALING AND TRANSFORMATION
Chris Zydel, Founder of Creative Juices Arts, has over 28 years of experience as a compassionate creativity guide. She is devoted to providing the enthusiastic encouragement and inspiration that supports her clients in developing their full creative potential and living a vital and authentic creative life.She has worked extensively with individuals, couples and groups to help them connect with what is most real and essential in their lives. With humor, insight and compassion she gently challenges the unnecessary limitations that people believe regarding who they are and what they can become.
CREATIVITY COACHING
As a creativity coach Chris has successfully mentored countless writers, painters, photographers and business owners ... anyone with a creative vision trying to be born! Her deep intuitive understanding of the creative process directs the people she works with towards choices that lead to a greater sense of creative purpose and fulfillment.
Her greatest joy is in supporting people to take the risks necessary to claim all of who they are, to create a life that has meaning, and to encourage their opening to greater levels of fulfillment. Her own personal experience, as well as her work with others has shown her that the 'royal road" to a satisfying, balanced, heartfelt life is through creative expression. However, accessing our true creativity means having the willingness to explore our shadow side, to confront our inner critic, and to risk exposing our emotional vulnerability and needs.
ASTROLOGICAL COUNSELING
Chris utilizes many different tools in her work with clients and students but one that she finds tremendously useful and powerful is evolutionary astrology.
This type of astrology does not put you in a box, describing you in a static way, but operates from the premise that you are free to make choices about how to deal with the planetary energies that you are given. An astrological reading of your birth chart can help you to see these choices more clearly and can point you in the direction of choosing options that are most likely to lead to happiness, satisfaction and fulfillment.
This approach to astrology is spiritual and metaphysical in focus with a strong grounding in depth psychology, archetypal symbolism and pragmatic, common sense reality. A major underlying premise of this approach is that there is an overarching meaning and purpose to your life and that astrology can help you to identify and more fully live out that purpose.
WORKSHOP AND RETREAT FACILITATOR
Through her popular PAINTING FROM THE WILD HEART workshops Chris creates a sacred space where the power of intuitive painting, dance and movement and in depth group process works its magic of healing, personal growth and spiritual renewal.
Our creativity was given to us by a very compassionate and benevolent force as a way to access and express the deepest parts of who we are. It is connected to our internal guidance system, also known as our intuition, that leads us with unfailing accuracy to make positive, optimal life choices. It is a powerful tool for healing on both spiritual and psychological levels. And it keeps us viscerally connected to what is passionate, vital, and meaningful in our lives.
The basic philosophy of PAINTING FROM THE WILD HEART is the belief that a regular diet of creative self expression is an important and often underutilized tool for those of us on the path of spiritual and psychological development and personal growth. This approach to painting is not oriented towards learning artistic techniques or analyzing a completed project. Its unique focus is on working with the flow of the creative process itself, which allows you to connect more deeply with yourself in a powerful, nonverbal way that can lead to profound inner experiences of joyful transformation.
Learning to trust and embrace your unique and natural creative style in an atmosphere free of comparison and judgment can bring an increased sense of self acceptance and compassionate attunement to your soul's purpose and your heart's desire. This process gives you the tools to work through creative blocks by learning how to deal directly and successfully with the inner critic. It also provides a creative community and a circle of challenge and encouragement that fosters the courage needed for creative risk taking both on the canvas and in your life.
IN ALL OF HER WORK, Chris provides a safe space in which people feel fully held to embrace the depths of their psyche, and the range of all their feelings from grief to joy. She has been honored to work with many individuals, both singly and in groups, who have had the courage to face the inner demons that guard the gates to the treasure of their real, creative self.
HER BACKGROUND and training include a Masters Degree in Clinical Counseling from John F. Kennedy University in Orinda, CA and a certification in hypnotherapy from The Hypnosis Clearing House in Lafayette, CA. She has been a student of the Enneagram of personality for 18 years and a former practitioner of Reichian and bio-energetic bodywork. In addition, she has a certification in Evolutionary Astrology from well known author and astrologer Steven Forrest, and is an active member of his astrological apprenticeship program. She is a member of the International Expressive Arts Therapy Association , has studied with Natalie Rogers, founder of The Person Centered Expressive Therapy Institute. She has completed a 2 year teacher training program with The Painting Experience, and has been painting, writing, dancing, cooking, making photographs and all around living a creative life for as long as she can remember!
For more information on her services please go to her website at www.creativejuicesarts.com.
Other Programs & Highlights
Residential Weeklong Retreat: Painting From the Wild Heart
January 16-22, 2010
Napa Valley, California
for more information go to www.creativejuicesarts.com
Non-Residential Weekend Retreat: Painting From the Wild Heart
March 19-21, 2010
Oakland, California
for more information go to www.creativejuicesarts.com
Non-Residential 5 Day Retreat: Wild Heart Painting As A Spiritual Practice
April 16-20, 2010
Oakland, California
for more information go to www.creativejuicesarts.com
Favorite Quotes & Thoughts from Chris Zydel
Chris's Selected Favorite Quotes by Others:
"Why should we use all our creative power? Because there
is nothing that makes people so generous, joyful, lively, bold and
compassionate . . ."
--Brenda Ueland
"Don’t ask yourself what the world needs, ask yourself what makes you come alive, and then go do that because what the world needs is people who have come alive."
Harold Thurman Whitman
"An artist's job is to go to the edge and report back."
-Yo Yo Ma
I have been absolutely terrified every moment
of my life, and I've never let it keep me from
doing a single thing I've wanted to do.
Georgia O'Keefe
"Prayer is not asking for what you think you want, but asking to be changed in ways you can't imagine."
- Kathleen Norris
"To know what is important to you,to have a real sense of who you are and what would be deeply satisfying and archetypally true, is not enough.
You must also have the courage to act. Courage is a willingness to act from the heart, to let your heart lead the way, not knowing what will be required of you next or if you can do it."
Jean Shinoda Bolen
“Never give up, and never under any circumstances, no matter what, ever face the facts.” –Ruth Gordon
"If you obey all the rules you miss all the fun."
-Katherine Hepburn
QUOTES from Chris Zydel's own work:
"If you learn to listen, you can get valuable messages from your insides. There is magic there and an abundance of wisdom and intuitive guidance. If you let go of control there are wild rides through internal landscapes of incredible complexity and richness that feed you in ways that just focusing on external presentation never can. You have a natural expression that doesn't need to be trained. It doesn't need to be polished, controlled, cleaned up and made presentable. It is good enough, more than good enough, just as it is. Trusting your own unique and spontaneous style and giving it room to live and breathe, can lead to profound experiences of healing, of trusting yourself and of trusting life, unlike anything that can happen when you grasp so tightly for control."
-Chris Zydel, MA
"The intuitive painting process is a practice of surrender to the energy of creativity, much like a shamanic practice. There is a transformative power that gets released in the act of painting when we can allow ourselves to open to the painting itself as a living thing. We are afraid to drop down into that realm of unadulterated energy because it doesn't always make logical, rational sense. It doesn't make sense that standing in front of a piece of paper and simply engaging with images, forms and colors can make any difference in your life at all. But this process will change you. It will wake you up and call you towards what is sacred and mysterious and alive." -Chris Zydel, MA
Getting Started With Chris Zydel
You can get started with Chris in a number of ways:
* Schedule an appointment with her for an Evolutionary Astrology Reading and Counseling session
* Schedule an appointment with her for a Creativity Coaching session
* Visit her website http://www.creativejuicesarts.com
* Read one of her articles
* Attend one of her Painting From The Wild Heart classes, workshops or retreats
Contacting Chris Zydel
You can contact me via email:
chriszydel@creativejuicesarts.com
phone:
510-839-2434
or snail mail
432 Bellevue Avenue
Oakland, CA 94610
