Meredith Oke [5:00 - 5:06]: Deanna Minick, welcome to the QVC podcast. I am delighted to be having this conversation with you.

Deanna Minich [5:06 - 5:16]: Well, I'm excited to have the conversation with you. It's not often that I get asked questions about creativity, so I am looking forward to having that deep dive with you.

Meredith Oke [5:17 - 5:56]: Yeah, I'm really excited about it as well, because it's not necessarily something that we connect to health, this idea of creativity, and yet for you, it's one of the key pillars to health. So you have sort of four key pillars, if you want to just tell us what they are and then we'll talk about. When I saw creativity in there, I thought, oh, my goodness. Because I was thinking of you as someone who could talk about nutrition or melatonin. There's so many roads to go down with you, Deanna. But this creativity piece just was so compelling to me because it's in the context of health.

Deanna Minich [5:57 - 7:53]: Yeah, yeah. So I did arrive at these four pillars because I was looking for common threads throughout everything. I was talking about exactly what you just said. What do I talk about within nutrition? What am I talking about when I talk lifestyle, Even physical activity, even down to a dietary supplement. And I realized that there were four things that I came back to time and time again. So they are color. And we'll get into the weeds on color, because color is vast. It's everything from the colors in your environment, the colors you wear, the colors you eat, the colors you see, the colors you feel. So it's much broader than just phytochemicals in food and eating the rainbow. The second one is creativity, which we're going to talk about more. And I even have a personal story about creativity in my own health journey. The third is diversity or variety. Right. So just shaking things up and getting a diverse blend of life experiences, even physical activities, how we think, travel, how we eat. All of that is enrichment, from everything from our microbiome to our brain neuronal plasticity. So diversity is key. It's one of the elements of nature. And then the fourth one is rhythm. And that applies to all the many different kinds of rhythms that we're enmeshed with. So that could be circadian rhythm, lunar rhythm, seasonal rhythm, menstrual rhythm, life rhythm, like season of life. And so I'm not really making any of these up. They all really do come from nature. If you look at nature's principles and kind of following the lead on what nature presents to us, a lot of these principles are embodied in what we see, feel, hear, and experience. So I just apply Those principles to everyday life.

Meredith Oke [7:54 - 8:29]: I love this. And it's, it's a much, it's a very different way of organizing our minds around the concept of health. These pillars. Right. It's not like we're used to, you know, food, diet, mindset, exercise or something like that, but these are much higher level. And I mean higher in terms of altitude, not necessarily like superiority, you know, like a higher altitude view of all of life and how we connect with it.

Deanna Minich [8:30 - 9:41]: Yeah. And I think the reason why I like that is because it allows for some plasticity or flexibility in their interpretation. Because I think often on social media people will post, these are the top 10 things that you have to do for health. And it gets very specific very quickly, which is okay because some people actually like that, like drink water as soon as you wake up, tend to your gut by doing X, Y and Z. And all of those are great strategies for sure. It's just that I like to bring in a bit of interpretation and personalization in that health journey. Because we are more than our physical bodies. We're physical, emotional, mental, spiritual, subtle. We have many different layers and we might feel drawn to certain things at certain times. And all of that is really valid in many ways. Right. So it's really honoring nature on the outside, within the natural rhythm of our own path. So where people are, I mean, that's how I work with people. And that's also a lot of how my teaching is structured as well is through those four principles.

Meredith Oke [9:42 - 10:08]: And do you find that if people are encouraged to connect to their intuition and to follow that kind of inner impulse to try something or do something that they naturally sync up with some of these cycles as opposed to following a more regimented, top down instruction manual, so to speak?

Deanna Minich [10:09 - 12:22]: Well, I think that there are many paths to healing and for some of us it's very structured. It needs to be information rich. And some people like the play by play, step by step path. Some people like a more organic, feeling oriented path where it feels more intuitive or they get more sensations as it relates to following, doing a certain thing. Right. We just have different kinds of people and different approaches. And some people are a hybrid where they like the information meshed with the inspiration or more of the intuition and they kind of braid those things together and say, okay, I need a little information here, but then I'm going to sieve that through my own filter of intuition to kind of figure out how it nets out for me. So I don't think that there's any one right path in that way. There are many paths up that road of healing. And sometimes we might feel like we need more structure. Other times we feel like we are inundated and we need to bring in the creative aspect of our being to allow us to flow moment by moment. And I've seen that with people too. You know, the more they know, the more I think they can flow. And so as people are starting out on their health journey, they might actually need to get familiar with a lot of the information first, so that it's kind of like training wheels. You know, I think of when I was first learning to ride a bike. You know, first you get the bike, then you have the training wheels, then somebody's helping you. Right. Then eventually you've got the wheels off, and then you can kind of flow and move in your own rhythm and where you want to go. So I feel like, you know, that that's kind of our journey through life. Sometimes we need mentors and guides and books and courses and a supplement, you know, all different kinds of things. But I do think it's important to get the basics down. Down to get the fund. I would call them like the fundamentals or the foundational aspects of life in order to build upon and kind of tweak from there. And these four principles are what I consider to be foundational.

Meredith Oke [12:23 - 13:09]: Right. Yeah, I think that makes a lot of sense. I've certainly noticed for myself and with coaching clients. I don't do health coaching. I do more like business and life coaching. But there's a period where I'm. Yes, I'm just like, downloading. I'm like, more information, more and more. And then it's like, okay, I'm full and I need to express it in some way. I need to either start living it or. Or sharing it with other people, or it needs to, like, move through me in some way in order to really become a part of my life. And is this, like, where that creativity principle comes in? Like the idea of. Of making something and contributing what we've made to the world?

Deanna Minich [13:11 - 17:45]: Yes. So creativity, the way I define it, is a sense of flow, a sense of. I would say it's the vital force within us that is leading to cellular growth. Right. So even down to our physical being, we're very creative. We're shaping ourselves every day, actually. We're combing our hair, we are getting dressed. We are in a creative process of discover about ourselves and who we are. Right. In fact, if you even look at healing, if you look at the roots of medicine, we used to call medicine the Healing arts, because it truly is an art to look at. How do we shape our path of whether it's physical, emotional, mental, spiritual health? Right. Do we want to use Reiki? Do we want to use diet? Do we want to use Tai Chi? Right. It's kind of an art. There's a patchwork, a whole palette of different offerings. The other way that I see creativity coming forth is in allowing yourself to be a bit empty, to kind of the seeking and to be in the place of receiving. To me, creativity is a very receptive yin process. And for some of us, that comes in the form of meditation. It comes in the form of silence. Maybe we're taking a quiet walk through nature and we're not engaged in the mind. To me, creativity is more of the heart. It allows us to be in the feeling space and the sensing space, which I think and feel that in our society and where we're at now, that that is not as valued. It's often seen, and I even saw this going through school, that the intellect is. Is really like the highest point, and that anything under the intellect or if you talk about feelings, it's. It's almost as though there's a diminishing of that or that it's not valued to the same degree as a degree or even as a knowledge in some way. But if you look at some of the traditional systems of medicine, like even the traditional Chinese medicine infrastructure and philosophy, and I just know a little bit about this because my husband is an acupuncturist. He's an East Asian medical practitioner. And they believe that the heart is where our consciousness is kept. So the heart is kind of like a central feature of our beingness. It's not the brain. It's truly the heart. So to me, creativity brings in the heart space. It brings in how we feel, how we sense and how we intuit, and leaves us in this open space of possibilities. And that's what I feel that people are shortchanging themselves on. You know, let's just imagine somebody gets sick, right? There's a lot of panic, there's a lot of stress to figure things out. And perhaps this is whether it's chronic illness or a symptom or just even something that's stressing us out. It requires that we go within. And I think so many people are going on the outside. They're looking, they're seeking, and there's a place to do that. But then there's also a place, just like you described, where we take what we have sought, and then we Bring that inside and we digest it and we sit with it. And I feel like there's a little bit too little of that place of just like, sitting with something. You know, some of the best entrepreneurs, they just allow themselves the time to be bored, the time to be not doing things. Because we know that in the steamy shower, like, if we just were in a hot shower and just not doing and just reflecting, sometimes the best ideas come forward in those moments of, like, not doing anything or what we would consider not doing anything. So that's what. When I talk about the pillar of pre, for me, that's what that acknowledges. It acknowledges the flow, the aspect of potential that can come through us and actually be even more magnificent than the aspect of information overload and just getting that next book on your shelf or taking the next program. So I think there has to be a happy marriage of both of those. Those things.

Meredith Oke [17:47 - 18:40]: Yeah, it's. It's so true. I just. This past fall was in one of those periods where I had read some piece of wisdom. It was about, like, you know, letting. Letting things go that are, you know, where it's time to. For that project to wrap up or to let something go and then not filling that space up immediately with the next thing. And I was sitting with this empty space, and I was. I was quite anxious, actually. So I called. I called my friend Kelly, and she's like, oh, you're like in the messy part. I'm like, oh, right. But it's just what you're saying. And I was trying to rush to this next thing, and it. It wouldn't. It just didn't feel right because I wasn't giving that space that you're talking about, that creativity, that creative, open space.

Deanna Minich [18:40 - 21:26]: Well, I love what your friend Kelly said about messy because creativity is very chaotic. It can be, you know, think of love. You fall in love with somebody. It is this process of total sensing. It's messy. It's. It. It doesn't feel logical. You might fall in love with somebody that from a head perspective and kind of thinking through it, it's like, why would I be in love with this person? But there's this feeling side, right? And just to share with your. Your viewers just a little bit about my personal journey with creativity. So I. I do think that there's a science and a symbolism or even a spirituality to our body. So. And Louise Hay and Bruce Lipton and others talked about that. That's nothing really brand new or even creative. It's just out there. Right. Well, for many years, What I experienced in my own body was a lot of health issues related to my reproductive tract. So I had endometriosis from a very young age. I had a blocked fallopian tube. I had all kinds of issues with my monthly cycle. Lots of pain, lots of just overall mood issues. It's just I wasn't comfortable being a woman in this body that I had. Right. Just so much. And I would say I also had some gut issues. Right. So if we just look at that as a body system, the reproductive system is the system of creativity in our bodies. Like, if we just look at it as a whole. Right. Ovaries, uterus, kind of like that whole system of creating. So I didn't even put it all together. I kind of went at it from a diet perspective, and I started doing all kinds of therapies. I was being creative about whether it was chiropractic massage. I even had my. And abdominal massage to release a lot of the adhesions that I felt in my low belly. I was doing supplements, lots of different supplements. I mean, I was doing it all. And I didn't really have a significant, I would say, impact. You know, I was helping to reduce some of the symptoms, but not resolving the root cause. And I could tell that. So one thing I noticed was that towards my late 20s, I would start to just, as a way of coping, I would start to paint with bright colors whenever I got stressed. So that happened at the end of my PhD. It was kind of in crunch time. I started painting on large canvases. I never had a painting class or anything like that where it was like a structured thing. It was like I was messy. I was.

Meredith Oke [21:26 - 21:36]: I was just gonna ask, like, so this was just. You felt like, I want to paint. So you went to the store and bought all the stuff and started messing around. Okay, I love that. All right.

Deanna Minich [21:36 - 22:43]: Yeah. And it wasn't small. I went to the store, and you're right. I mean, I just. It was un weekend. I went to the art store and I didn't. Didn't buy, like a little notebook of paper to paint. I bought a big roll of paper and I just rolled it out. I. I was on the ground. My hair was in a ponytail. I had sweatpants on. And, you know, there was this release of perfection, and I just kind of let go on this paper. Right. That was like my first. I was about 28 or 29 when I did that. So fast forward, I kind of, I would say, came into art and painting and colors whenever I felt kind of stressed. And then I met my future husband, the acupuncturist, and we were together, and he started to realize that whenever I was painting, it was almost like I was painting certain colors. And he made a comment to me one time, which was, I was putting my ovaries and uterus all over the house. Like, a lot of shapes and lots of pink and orange and gold colors. And he was like, what is happening?

Meredith Oke [22:43 - 22:44]: You're putting your.

Deanna Minich [22:44 - 22:46]: In your uterus all over the house.

Meredith Oke [22:50 - 22:55]: Giant uterus canvases. I love it. But a good husband.

Deanna Minich [22:56 - 22:59]: I didn't see it like that at all. It was kind of.

Meredith Oke [22:59 - 23:03]: You had. Oh, really? You were like, oh, is that what I'm. Is that what you see?

Deanna Minich [23:04 - 23:06]: Right. Well, he knew a bit about my.

Meredith Oke [23:06 - 23:07]: Yeah.

Deanna Minich [23:07 - 23:27]: And what I was going through, and I think he pieced it together in his mind of being a practitioner and kind of like, what's happening to her? She's got, like, these swirls, and it's always the same shape. And he. He was always kind of. He was very supportive. He wasn't laughing at me, but it was kind of like this feeling of like, oh, she's at it again. She's painting same colors.

Meredith Oke [23:27 - 23:28]: Yeah.

Deanna Minich [23:28 - 24:22]: Finally said that. It was like I had a light bulb that turned on. It was like, oh, my gosh. Maybe my body is speaking to me through these colors. Because I did not like pink, orange, or any of the colors I was painting. I would never wear them. You would never catch me wearing pink. Never. I couldn't stand the color pink. So once he said that, I intentionally decided to start creating the phases of my uterus. So I painted menstruation, I painted conception, I painted menopause, I painted kind of the dance. I mean, I have all kinds of paintings, and they're not outright where and obvious where you would think that that was what I was painting, unless you were kind of tuned into it. It was kind of Georgia O'Keeffe style, where it's like, oh, are these female body parts?

Meredith Oke [24:23 - 24:23]: Right.

Deanna Minich [24:25 - 26:53]: Yeah, like that. And I decided to show my paintings in a small neighborhood art gallery just for fun. You know, I had a friend that was an artist here, and so showed the paintings, had friends come to the gallery. And, you know, long story short, basically my symptoms cleared up, like, completely, to the point that I gynecologist. I went for my annual scan because, you know, I had some issues that were getting serious, like, they were being monitored. But if they tended to get worse, which the outcome of these things typically was, that was the case that they would get worse. Then I would have to have surgery. So I can't say that it was the art that led to a complete resolution of my symptoms. This, I mean, my fallopian tube was unblocked. It was previously like almost like this balloon inside my gut, like, you know, kind of this oblong balloon where it was blocked and it was filled with fluid. And then all of a sudden it was like my fallopian tube was unblocked. My gynecologist, these are her exact words. She said my uterus looked beautiful. I was like, she's like, wow. She's like this, this never happens. And I said, you're going to laugh if I tell you what just happened over the course of this year. But I started painting and I actually had, I told her, I headed this exhibit. She goes, well, whatever you're doing, just keep doing it. You know, she, she couldn't really explain it. But I go through the pains of mentioning this whole story with people because again, I can't say that being outwardly creative with something like art is going to heal you. But I think that it was really important for me that there was a lot of stuckness and stagnation in my body. And until I was creative, outwardly creative with getting something out or at least letting my body speak through color and through shapes. Because it wasn't just the color. The color was there, but the shapes were like, they were consistent shapes. And I was drawn to circles and spirals, I have to say. So I just tell this to people because it may inspire them to do something creative that could unlock or at least help them with the stress response, which I think really happened in my case. It felt like I was undoing a valve of pressure from within.

Meredith Oke [26:55 - 27:41]: Yes. That's such an amazing story. And yeah, there's the creativity, the colors, the cycles, the shapes, all of the different pillars were involved there. And what. Yeah, and like one of the aspects of creativity is like, there's no wrong way to do it. So when you talk about that expression, it's like we have so many rules for ourselves and structure, which is important and helpful and necessary. But I hear what you're saying. To have some aspect or outlet in life where there are no rules. It's just like, what is my body? Like what wants to happen here?

Deanna Minich [27:41 - 30:00]: Yes, I think that's really key. I feel like one of my issues is perfectionism. Just always going through life as a people pleasing perfectionist. And art was the one place that I can get messy and I didn't really care what other people thought. About what I was making, my professional life and my science life. I cared about getting good scores on tests and in school, performing well, getting my degrees. But in my art space, I didn't care. Like, I was like, I don't care if you like my work or not. It's just. I'm putting it up on the wall, and I. It doesn't matter. But it felt like it needed to be seen. So there was that element of witnessing what I also made. And I actually had gone to a therapist at some point in my journey, and she was an artist. Well, I. I don't know how to. I think she was more like a Jungian therapist. And she had asked me to bring in some of my paintings. And she. This was really creative of her because I had not thought about this, but she said, why don't you bring in about six to eight of your paintings? And I said, okay, I'll do that. So I brought in these large paintings. We set them up inside her therapy room, and then we did an exercise where she had me go around to each of the paintings to have a dialogue with them, because she said that these paintings were part of me. Right. And this is a part of. Of me coming out to be realized in this way. And so that's why all creative endeavors could be seen that way, Whether we are sewing. Knitting. I have a friend who likes to. To just knit and stitch. And it's like every. I'm just amazed at, like, how she just makes all of this beautiful stuff so quickly. And that's like a meditative therapy. And it's her. She chose the color, she chose the pattern, and then she gifts it to people, which is beautiful. There are other people who feel called to do music and to put together beautiful sounds. I mean, gosh, there are so many different expressions of creativity. And just like you said, there's really no one path. There are lots of splintered offshoots. And this is where you can just let your curiosity take you.

Meredith Oke [30:01 - 30:13]: Right. And that's the beauty of it. It doesn't. It's like, I'm just doing this because I'm curious. I'm just doing this because I feel like it. There's really no other reason. There doesn't need to be.

Deanna Minich [30:14 - 30:14]: Yeah.

Meredith Oke [30:16 - 30:29]: You said something a few minutes ago about something like creativity affecting ourselves. Could you dive into that a little more?

Deanna Minich [30:29 - 36:29]: Yeah. If we want to look at the physical expression of creativity, there are many layers of that. So there are books written about this, actually. So creativity, if we look at it as a vital force, of life, it's that which animates us. Some people would even say it's very spiritual to be connected to our creativity because it's opening the space for source God, you know, just basically just to come through us to enable whatever kind of expression, right? So when we think of physical creativity, at least in the scientific literature, there are three main things that I think of. I think of neuronal plasticity or the ability of the brain to be a bit more plastic. And we know that being a bit more creative with thinking helps to create better neuronal connections and synapse differentiation and connection. Then there's heart rate variability. So the more we have these beat to beat variations in our heart beats. And so we want that kind of variability. But if we become less resilient in that way, then we start to have low heart rate variability, which is not a great marker for health. We want high heart rate variability. And the way that we do that is to help our responses to stress. So if we make our heart a bit more flexible and flowing through, managing our stress response with creativity, that could be beneficial. The other point that I think of is what is referred to in the literature is metabolic flexibility, the ability to switch between different energy sources for fuel. And that has to do with our mitochondrial flexibility, the ability to just take in different fuel sources and accommodate. And sometimes as we become locked into certain patterns, we become much more rigid. So to me, we can bring in a bit of creativity to allow for better cellular health. We can also think about just our overall aging process. I think that for people who are more creative, and we see this in the science, right, it's so much about our connections, our community. People who dance, people who listen to music actually and meditate can do better in terms of their health outcomes. So I would say that creativity is part of, I mean, it could even be applied to problem solving. You know, I have a friend who is a financial strategist. You know, he's kind of a heady guy. And we had a whole conversation about creativity once. And he said, deanna, you probably think I'm not that creative because I'm in finances and I'm all around numbers and I always have to do all this troubleshooting and strategizing. But actually you bring in creativity to the thought process as well. You know, how we think about something, how we think about repairing something, how we think about solving an issue can be a very creative process. So it's not that the brain is separated into two hemispheres of like the thinking brain and Then the creative brain, that whole construct, has been debunked. It's really about the connections between the hemispheres, the connections between the cells. And if we were to look at thinking and applying the creative process to our thoughts, I feel like that is such a great integration of the two, because it's not a matter again, of being one or the other. It's how do we take them both in a way that can amplify their respective effects? So you have synergy. One plus one is three, rather than one plus one is two. It's like you actually have an amplification because you can see the benefit of both sides. So, yeah, I think that the creativity. I want to also mention this, that it brings in fun and joy. And I feel like a lot of people just are deficient in fun. They don't even know what that is anymore. So it allows us to laugh, to have humor. And so when we're creative, we're open to outcome. We're not feeling rigid and confined and feeling stressed. And when I think of the ancient chakra system, so the seven chakras that we hear about in Ayurvedic medicine or even in yoga, you know, many times I think about the root chakra of our being, which is very structured. It's anchoring its safety and survival. And then you have the sacral chakra, which is all about flowing and emotions. And really, I think the essence of life is how we manage both of those things. How do we have structure and at the same time flow? Right. Because if you have a stiff skeleton and you don't exercise and you don't flow, you actually create rigidity and greater chance of fracture. You can be too structured, and that can be to one's detriment. Then you can have too much flow where, you know, you see this sometimes in yoga, where people are doing lots of flowing movements but not a lot of strength training to fortify the structure. And this can be problematic where you can get a lot of laxity in the spine and you can get hypermobility and, you know, so. So one or the other is. Is not the best case scenario. It's really the convergence of both in that kind of yin and yang way of bringing those two domains together. So that's. That's kind of how I envision it.

Meredith Oke [36:31 - 36:47]: Wow. It's so. There's so much depth to this idea of creativity, the way that you explain it. And it's almost. It's like creativity is like building healthier mitochondria in a way.

Deanna Minich [36:47 - 38:12]: Yes, yes. It is. That's a really good way to think about it, you know, and what creates flow? Like, if we just substitute the word flow for creativity for a second, what creates flow in the body? Like, literally? Well, we know hydration does. We know omega 3 fatty acids do, because they are in cell membranes. And that fluidity of the membrane allows things to go in and out with fluidity. Right. We want good, healthy cell membranes to get toxins out, to get nutrients in. So think of it in that way of, like, what creates fluidity in the body? Because fluidity and flow in my world are synonymous with creativity. When the cell can actually flow and flux, it can be much more creative in its outcome. Meredith, I think the other thing that might be useful to your. Your viewers is to review the different kinds of creatives, because somebody listening might feel like, oh, my gosh, where do I even start? What kind of creative am I? Like, she's talking about art, but I. I don't feel drawn to art. And what does that even involve? But, you know, I've actually created a course on creativity to help people navigate seven different types of creatives, and that's just seven. There are many. But maybe we can go through them and maybe.

Meredith Oke [38:13 - 38:14]: Yeah, let's do it.

Deanna Minich [38:14 - 40:09]: Okay. So. And I align them with the operating system that I always come back to, which is the chakra system. So if we start with the first one, the first creative that I think about is a food creative. And a food creative is somebody who really gets into their bodies, into their health, into their nourishment. I mean, you just go and look at Instagram and you can see all the people making recipes and smoothies. And these are the food creatives, where a plate is like their palate. It is their. Well, you could even say it's their canvas. They are creating this beauty through food and anything that relates to their physical bodies. By the way, people can be multiple of these creatives. I have a questionnaire to kind of help people figure out which one is their dominant or their kind of their leading creative, or where. Basically, you can kind of move through each of these and you can kind of see where you feel drawn. The second one is called the Feeling Creative. And I would say that's more or less where my art was taking me. It was connected to the feeling Creative. It was like when I was feeling something, I needed to create something, that my emotions had to go somewhere. And being that I wasn't getting them out, talking them out, working them out, I need to. Needed somehow to create them out. So the feeling creative is connected to their emotions and needs an outlet. And then their emotions can be expressed in any number of ways. I mean, even Facebook was created from emotion, from anger, all kinds of things, all kinds of emotions. Right. It doesn't, you know, there's no judgment on emotions. Jealousy can create, envy can create.

Meredith Oke [40:09 - 40:10]: Right.

Deanna Minich [40:10 - 40:20]: So how do we take that creative impetus of emotions and move it into something that can be useful potentially for people?

Meredith Oke [40:20 - 40:32]: Right, that's true. I'm just thinking of myself. I've had, I've had great creative output of the result of being pushed a little further than I want it to be. Right. It's like, oh, really? Well, I'll show you.

Deanna Minich [40:33 - 40:34]: Right, Exactly.

Meredith Oke [40:35 - 40:37]: Okay. I love it. All right.

Deanna Minich [40:37 - 42:08]: Feeling creative. And then the third one is describing my friend, the thinking creative. Now this is a person who doesn't feel so comfortable perhaps in their feelingness and kind of being in that well of feeling. So then they bring it up to thinking. However, thinking can also create creativity and kind of that whole portal of like being creative with how you think. And sometimes people do that even through their dreaming process. Right? So they go to sleep and then like their thoughts don't turn off. And then by the morning, voila, they have their solution. They were kind of putting those synapses together as they were dreaming. But that can happen whether they're taking a walk, they're working out, they're in the shower. So thoughts are creative, this is the thinking creative. And some people feel more comfortable there. Then you have the movement creative. This would be the dancer, the person who expresses through their bodies. I have a niece, she's 11, just about to turn 11 actually. And she is definitely the movement creative. She loves gymnastics, she loves dance, she loves swimming, she loves anything that moves her body in all directions. And that's how she expresses herself. She is in plays with movement and drama. And you know, there's always a lot of movement with her. And for some people, that's their art.

Meredith Oke [42:09 - 42:32]: Oh, that's so interesting. I have a 10 year old daughter who is just like that. She does gymnastics. She is never not moving. Like even at the family dinner, she'll have her chair like in some kind of position, like balancing on one corner. And I'm like, would you put your chair on the floor? Just 10 minutes, not moving and she can't do it.

Deanna Minich [42:32 - 42:43]: She's kinesthetic. That's how she relates to her senses through her body and through that environment. I think. Yeah, that's just how some people are wired.

Meredith Oke [42:43 - 42:46]: Right, Fascinating.

Deanna Minich [42:46 - 43:28]: Okay, so Then you have the speaking creative. This might be you because you have a podcast. Usually people who are speaking creatives use their voice. So that could be somebody who does podcasting. It could also be somebody who writes. Right. They're using their voice in the written word. But the essence for this creative is the word, whether it is written, vocalized, there's a meme, you know, whatever it is, it's about words and typically spoken, but it can also be written. You look at poets, novelists, authors, bloggers. These are speaking creatives, the written word creative.

Meredith Oke [43:29 - 43:56]: Oh, interesting. It's interesting too, because, like social media has been coming up because I noticed that, and this is just me making this up, but I noticed there's like Instagram people and Twitter people, and the Twitter people are word people. And the Instagram people tend to be visual people or the food, like you were talking about food as your palate. And they gravitate more towards one of those areas of expression than the other.

Deanna Minich [43:56 - 44:08]: That's a really good way to see it. Actually. This is probably why I don't play on Twitter or X, because it's like I'm just not drawn to, like, just words and like a very defined amount of words.

Meredith Oke [44:09 - 44:15]: That's funny because that's the only one I like that's really funny.

Deanna Minich [44:15 - 45:38]: Well, and then the next one is exactly what you just pinpointed, which I call them the visual creatives. So they're the ones where. So I have some friends like this, I have one friend in particular where they will send me a photograph of something that they took, like in nature that was very inspiring, so very visual. These people are visual. They need visuals. Seeing is believing. I mean, if you think about it, I mean, art is a form of that visual creative as well. And then it's coupled with the feeling creative to inspire that kind of visual manifestation. Right. But some people are drawn to photography, to AI art and creating there. And it's like the hyper reality of all things visual. It might even be clothing, you know, interior design, you know, how do things look is what they are focused on. So anything visual would be where their creativity is. An architect, an architect could be somebody who is a visual creative connected to a thinking creative because they are using the best of structure to create. I mean, that's a great hybrid profession in many ways. It's like, how do you be functional, have a structure, but yet have the creative experience of being in that building?

Meredith Oke [45:39 - 45:40]: Right.

Deanna Minich [45:40 - 47:09]: And then the last one is what I call the. The connection creative. So this was. This is a little Bit more amorphous and organic. But this is somebody who is inspired by awe or through something in their lives that is inspirational. So a feeling creative, I would say is more about the base emotions, whether it's love, fear, anger, again, jealousy, envy, you know, any kind of those emotions. When we talk about the connection creative, there's something about awe, magnificence, divinity. You start to see the interconnection of life. Like there's something big around that that gets somebody very inspired. Maybe it's travel and connecting to many different people and kind of feeling like sometimes people have this connection creative feeling when they're at a concert. So they're in the audience and they just feel like this, the music, they feel like the sense of people and then they get all these ideas because of their connection to the whole of that experience. So it's a little bit of a fusion of some of the different aspects, but it can garner a lot of creativity and awe and purpose are huge inspiring forces to realizing our mission and also being creative. So.

Meredith Oke [47:10 - 47:31]: Oh, I love that one. We have a lot of those who listen to this podcast, a lot of those connecting creatives, people seeking out like a, almost like a cosmic understanding of things versus just third three dimensional understanding.

Deanna Minich [47:32 - 49:41]: Definitely that that would be in alignment with that kind of creative. It could also be somebody who devotes their life to a mission of, you know, they see. So I'll give you an example. I was listening to a podcast with sadhguru and sadhguru is all about this Save Soil initiative, right? Kind of through the planet. And so it could be somebody like that where they are so focused on the connection like the planet, they don't see that. They see the micro and the macro. So if they can work on the macro in these big initiatives and they're part of a group, they're part of a mission to or a cause. Maybe it's a mother who has a child with a certain health condition and that inspires her to champion that cause forward. You know, that's, that's truly like, it's beyond the self and into like the greater collective of like, what is the potential for creativity and what could I do to effect change? So that one is like a really big, you know, in terms of like the expansiveness. One of these is not better than the other. It's simply where we feel drawn at that time of life. Like we could run through many of these in a day. We could be a food creative in the morning, be a feeling creative at night before we go to bed. We could be a thinking creative while we're sleeping, movement creative in the afternoon when we're, like, going to a yoga class. So we can bring out a lot of these different creatives throughout the day and allow each of them as archetypes to really live through us. Or we just start with one and really get that connection going and relate well like, wherever we feel drawn. If it for you, it's, you know, like the speaking creative, like, going deeper with that. You know, what does that look like? Maybe trying out different other types of word creativity. You know, being on substack and then writing a blog or, you know, there could be other things that could take you even deeper into the creativity of words.

Meredith Oke [49:42 - 51:14]: Right? Yeah. That's really inspiring to think about. And it's. I. I love what you're saying and the way that you talked about, like, the fluidity of it as well, because it's. I'm trying to think of, like, how to articulate this. So we talk a lot about circadian rhythm on this podcast because I felt like light was like a very, you know, was not understood, and I. I felt that mission to help people. So let's think about light in the same way we think about food in terms of, is it nourishing? Is it good for us? And so what I noticed is that as I started to understand all of the beautiful things that are happening to my body when I'm out in sunlight, like, going for a walk with the dog became much more meaningful because I was like, oh, all of, you know, there's all of this. All of this cellular. I'm communicating with the universe. I'm communicating with the light. And when you talked about that going through the day or connecting to your type of creativity, I feel like you are helping us to imbue meaning into things that we, you know, we'd probably be doing anyway. Right. But I'm like, I'm not just figuring out what's for dinner. I'm being a food creator. You know, I'm. I'm expressing creativity. And that is. That is a really profound gift, Deanna, that you're laying out for us.

Deanna Minich [51:15 - 52:07]: Well, I think it's about injecting consciousness into everything. And if we saw life as art rather than as duty, I think it takes on a different feeling. Right. It's kind of like, oh, I can be creative, and let's try that one out for dinner, and let's see how creative I can get. Can I try a new food this week? Can I try a new recipe? So it kind of starts to take us into its own creative path. Right. It's releasing the kind of the shackles of maybe our thoughts about something, and it's giving us some more resilient and fluid ways to look at a situation which can take the stress out. Because think of how many people find making dinner is drudgery. It's like another thing that they have to do. Right.

Meredith Oke [52:08 - 52:10]: I've gotten over it in recent years, but for a long time.

Deanna Minich [52:11 - 52:11]: Yes.

Meredith Oke [52:11 - 52:12]: Hands up.

Deanna Minich [52:16 - 52:47]: Yeah. And we could say, perhaps the question for everybody listening is, what is something that you don't have a lot of feeling for? You feel like it is drudgery. How could you see it with eyes of critical creativity? Like, how could it be creative for you? How can you juice it? How can you make that experience really juicy where it's giving you something in return? It's giving you a life force that you didn't have from doing it? And that was just because of the constraints of your thought process.

Meredith Oke [52:49 - 53:13]: Yes. I mean, as you. As you moved through your description of creativity and like the different types of creative. Yeah. I felt like, this deep sense of relief and like an opening and like all those things that feel like, oh, I have to do this and I have to do that. It's like, oh, those are potential creative outlets.

Deanna Minich [53:15 - 53:16]: Absolutely.

Meredith Oke [53:18 - 54:06]: So good. And you reminded me, too, of a friend who I've had on the podcast called Mawash Syed. And she recovered from cancer. She's an interior designer, and she wrote a book about the power of beauty to heal. And so she did, you know, she did chemotherapy and food and all kinds of other things, but she really. That was, I guess, that probably the overlap of many different types of creativity in that. And that's where. And that is now she's on a mission to share that. And she speaks at hospitals and. And taught, you know, and talks about the power of having a visually beautiful space as a. As a. As a part of healing well.

Deanna Minich [54:06 - 56:22]: And that even goes into. By the way, that's just. It's beautiful to think about beauty. And I. If you look at. Even there are studies showing that our physical environment primes our mind and our mental space. So if we live amongst clutter, it's almost like we have a harder time. We may not see it in our conscious mind as an issue, but subconsciously it's just like it's more to have to deal with. Then if we layer on top of that and bring in beauty, it's almost like mentally it's opening up to just that greater sensing and affinity to the Space that we're in. This is why having certain colors in one's environment are so important. I really like what you said about that. That is something I did not mention yet is really important for creativity. Right. So we think about. Even though I said about my art, you know, not all of it is beautiful or that people may not find it beautiful, but for me, there's something raw and beautiful about it for myself and my own process. Right. So I really like the fact that she's bringing that message to the world. That's really incredible, actually. I love that because even clothing, Right? Clothing, or just the things that we do for our environment or for our bodies to feel more beautiful. Right. And actually this brings me into kind of a philosophical way of looking at it, because I feel that there's so much seeking of beauty on the outside these days, Whether it is all of the modifications that people are making surgically or just through different modalities, which there's no judgment around that. But looking for, like, what if we created an inner beauty? Would we have so much in kind of feeling like we were having that sense of worth and validation from within? Would we be looking so much on the outside for certain things? So that's just something to think about, Right?

Meredith Oke [56:23 - 57:12]: Right. Yes. And that the way we feel inside is going to express on our faces. I was just. My husband and I. He saw a piece of research recently where it was. It had to do with, like, the, like, if someone has a relaxed expression on their face, the. The interaction that they will have with other people is completely different than if it's like, even just, like, tensed up or, you know, and it's. And I thought about it and it was like. Right. Like, you do have to feel that. A sense of inner peace and a sense of acceptance in order to have your face and your body and your energy be communicating that and people feel it and it changes your experience.

Deanna Minich [57:13 - 58:21]: Yeah, yeah, it definitely reflects back. And for some people, you know, what is beautiful sometimes is smile. You know, just being met with a warm smile that is genuine and not forced. You know, that that makes somebody beautiful in my mind and in my perception of them. It's not like all the external stuff. It's like, what about their energy? What are they radiating out to me in this. In this interaction that I have with them? So, yeah, it's amazing how our bodies are so much of that indicator our posture. I mean, there's the whole science of posturology, you know, that can already tell us about our openness to certain things. Right? Are we kind of hunched over? Are we open and out? Or, you know, just all of those many different signals that we're constantly taking in, like you saw in that study. Yeah, it's. It's profound. And I feel like it's. It's beautiful that we get to continue to learn about ourselves in all these many ways we live our lives in bodies that we spend a lifetime trying to understand.

Meredith Oke [58:23 - 58:38]: It's so true. I feel like every day I'm like, whoa, who knew that? And it just keeps unfolding. If we seek it out, it's such.

Deanna Minich [58:38 - 59:18]: A great messenger in that way. And if we pay attention to a lot of the signs and symptoms that we have and start to look at them in a very full, complete whole way and say, what is this teaching me? What am I learning with this symptom? How is my body speaking? You know, back to even my own experience with my reproductive tract? How is my body speaking? How does it want to be heard? How do we acknowledge it? The body is so smart, it's so intelligent, it's so creative, and it's constantly giving us feedback signals on how to course. Correct.

Meredith Oke [59:20 - 59:20]: Right.

Deanna Minich [59:20 - 59:21]: Yeah. It's just up to us.

Meredith Oke [59:21 - 59:25]: And we're continuously learning. Learning the language.

Deanna Minich [59:25 - 59:26]: Yes.

Meredith Oke [59:26 - 59:28]: To. To be able to hear the messages.

Deanna Minich [59:29 - 59:30]: Absolutely.

Meredith Oke [59:31 - 1:00:15]: Yeah. I just, you know, to wrap up, I. I think the way that. That you, you know, have framed this, I feel like it's just a really beautiful shift from thinking about, okay, what do I need to eat? And how long do I need to do this? And what. You know, like, we've been very trained, and as we talked about earlier, like, there's definitely a place for that, especially if we're trying to develop a new habit or a new way of doing something. I think we do need to focus on that. But what I'm hearing from you is, is that almost every moment of that we're awake and asleep is. Is a creative opportunity.

Deanna Minich [1:00:16 - 1:00:19]: Yes. It's a creative moment. Absolutely.

Meredith Oke [1:00:20 - 1:00:26]: I don't know. I have no question. I'm just processing your beautiful work.

Deanna Minich [1:00:28 - 1:00:45]: You know, I think you really consolidated the. The message that every moment is creative. And to really see it in that way and to experience it as something flowing, fluid, and gives us potential and possibility.

Meredith Oke [1:00:46 - 1:01:23]: Right. And it's. Yeah. Like a way of managing energy. And if we don't have. In the same way, if we never exercised or we never talked to another person, it would. That would have detrimental effects. The creative energy flow is. Needs to be part of our. Like, that's just how we are meant to exist in order to. If we want to be fully healthy, that needs to be part of our lives. And it might already be there. We're just not recognizing it. Or maybe we need to cultivate it. Who knows?

Deanna Minich [1:01:23 - 1:02:32]: Well, I like your word, cultivate. To me, it's like a spiritual practice. It's like eating is a spiritual practice. Feeling is a spiritual practice. Thinking can be a spiritual practice. So. And when people say to me, when I give talks and I talk about my creative journey, people will come up to me and say, oh, I'm not creative. I said, well, you're standing here and you've got cells that are growing and creating right there in your own body. You're very creative. So I think we need to reclaim our creative selves, not dismiss or hold it at arm's length and say things like, I'm not creative. I'm not an artist. I'm not good at art. I hear this a lot. If we see creativity as something that is expansive in its definition and really connects to flow and fluidity of life and the life force, then I would say that we are all the origin of us is creative. How did we come to be? You're an act of creativity. Oh, there we go.

Meredith Oke [1:02:39 - 1:03:13]: Oh, I love it so much. Deanna, thank you for being here. And you know, I hope we can do this again sometime because I, I would love to do an hour on every one of the pillars. I think, you know your body of work and where the way that you are presenting it and bringing it to the world is just so healing and so beautiful. I really appreciate this. And people can find you@deannaminnik.com. is that where the, the quiz, the creativity quiz is?

Deanna Minich [1:03:13 - 1:03:21]: Yeah, yeah, that's all there. It's under programs. There's a bar for programs. And you'll see some of the courses that I have there. One of them is the creativity course.

Meredith Oke [1:03:22 - 1:03:22]: Okay.

Deanna Minich [1:03:22 - 1:03:23]: Yeah.

Meredith Oke [1:03:23 - 1:03:37]: And I'll put, I'll put that link in the show notes, but if you're listening in the car and you're never going to find them, it's Deanna is D E a N N a M I N N I C H dot com.

Deanna Minich [1:03:37 - 1:03:40]: Is that correct, actually M I.

Meredith Oke [1:03:40 - 1:03:42]: Or is it FoodAndSpirit dot com?

Deanna Minich [1:03:42 - 1:03:55]: Well, you can go to FoodInSpirit dot com but the Deanna Manic site has all of it. So it'S-E-A-N n a m I n I c h.com and you'll see all of my Facebook and everything is okay.

Meredith Oke [1:03:55 - 1:03:56]: Oh, one end. Sorry. Okay.

Deanna Minich [1:03:57 - 1:03:59]: Yeah, well, and. And you'll see there are a lot of different.

Meredith Oke [1:03:59 - 1:04:15]: And also, if you just Google d animinic, it all comes up. You're very optimized. I appreciate that. It's easy to find you. Google knows where you are. All right. Thank you so much.

Deanna Minich [1:04:16 - 1:04:17]: Conversation.

Meredith Oke [1:04:17 - 1:04:18]: My absolute pleasure.