As you may know, Beth Lorio is leading our second workshop, Nurturing Creativity: An Artist’s Practice. Beth will be speaking at the Sea Change Gallery at 625 NW Everett Street Gallery, #110 on Saturday, November 7 from 2-4 pm. The workshop will center on how restoration is part of the creative process. In anticipation of the workshop, we are pleased to present this interview with Beth:
You have a background in both in healing and theatrical arts. In what ways do you see those two approaches complementing each other?
I believe that most artists are essentially healers, working to make our experience of life richer, more whole, wonder-ful. Art began as an activity meant to connect our consciousness to that mysterious something that permeates and shines through “real life.” That mysterious something is responsible for the shifts that take place during a healing session. Intuitive healing work requires similar things from the practitioner and the recipient: the ability to really listen and respond to the moment, and the willingness to surrender to the experience that is unfolding. Just as a performance is a co-creation between the actors and the audience, so is an intuitive healing. That palpable sense of mystery is a key ingredient to both “arts.”
When did you start developing an interest in wellness?
My active interest in wellness began after a big personal crisis. I suddenly became intensely interested in my own healing! Very quickly, though, it became apparent that I could only do my own healing work through working with others towards their wellness. That is the funny little secret behind being a practitioner: the healing that one receives through working with others is IMMENSE. If everyone knew that, everyone would be a practitioner!! And we could all just go around trading healings all the time. Wouldn’t that be great?
You are in the process of creating a multi-part series on wellness and artistry. Tell us more about it:
Just recently I started revisiting my experience of running a small ensemble theater company, which I did for eight years. I started asking myself, if I could go back in time and share some things I have learned with that very stressed out version of me, what would I say? And all of this great stuff started pouring out. So I am creating a four part series of workshops for artists about healing and creative energy. We will explore topics like: using some of our tremendous creative juice for our own personal wellness, working with energetic boundaries, healing the shadow side of the “artist” archetype, and creating strong supportive community. We will do lots of different things during the workshops; somatic awareness exercises, visualizations, group process, meditation, and I will teach some basic tools for working consciously with energy.
There seems to be a lot of playfulness in your performance theatre. What draws you to playfulness?
Passion, curiosity, love, fun, surprise, innocence, these are tremendous teachers. It’s so wonderful to learn through joy rather than to learn through hardship. Playfulness is all about learning through joy. Amusement is a very high vibration, and we can take in extremely profound information about ourselves while we are laughing, that we might not be able to handle so well in a heavy context. My new favorite word at the moment is DELIGHTENMENT.
What books/movies/ media/ plays are currently inspiring you?
I just read a book called “The Horse Boy,” a true story about a couple who take their seven year old autistic son to Mongolia to work with traditional healers there. When they return to the United States, he is symptom free. All about where we can go and what we can achieve if we really follow our intuition. An amazing, magical story.
Who are some of your favorite local wellness workers?
I see a Cranial Sacral therapist named Beata Moreno, who works out of the Anisha wellness center on Hawthorne. She is amazing. My friend Cara Lee does great shamanic healing work. My favorite thing to do for my own wellness right now though is ecstatic dance. I love dancing at Paula Byrne’s Somaspace in the Hollywood district. She holds a really great open yet safe space to dance in, and she is really supportive of the arts and artists and creative community. There are all kinds of interesting things happening at Somaspace.
To learn more about Beth, please visit her website.
