Meet Michelle
How it started
Like many of you, I was brought up thinking we had to separate our creative aliveness and meaning from our "real job" that paid the bills. I spent years trying to integrate the them – through trial and a lot of error, navigating many fears, doubts, and challenges along the way – until I came up with a creative, emergent way to do that in my own life...and discovered my unique creative emergence process.
I started sharing my integrated approach with friends and colleagues who got great results and started referring me...and Creative Emergence Coaching was born.
That was over 2 decades ago. I have since learned much, and evolved my process and my own way of being within it. After working with thousands of people, I've located certain similar organic patterns embedded in every client's unique emergence process, and I use various creative approaches to engage it, customized for each client.
My sweet spot
Helping you engage what's truly emerging, and birth anything new, authentic and unique is my sweet spot - from a workshop or product to a business or a new way or being. I'll help you birth it, own it, structure and design it, clean it up, create it out, get paid for it, and get it ready for the world. I'm the midwife, not the nanny.
Discoveries
A series of personal transformational experiences led to the discoveries I use in my work, along with a strong intuitive ability to sense into what's emerging in coaching sessions. The Creative Emergence process is both a framework and an integrative approach.
I have learned to connect with the underlying creative life force we all have in us, and help my clients connect with theirs. A few paradigm-shifting experiences and challenges left me perceiving the world differently. They sparked a deep curiosity, and a sense of wonder and purpose in me.
Learnings
In addition to discoveries from embodied experiences, I became a life-long student of creative process at different levels - cognitive, intuitive, somatic, soul, universal - and its connection with human potential.
Informing my work is the organic creative process and my focus on emergence with learnings in neuroscience, organizational change, group process work, depth and somatic psychology, integral theory, participatory design, the expressive arts, movement, bodywork, mythology, improv theater, storytelling, spirituality, and the complexity sciences.
Creations
I have developed many original processes products, workshops, train-the trainer programs and love supporting my clients in creating their own original models, services, and products.
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Creative Expression
A lover of creative practices, I performed full-length improvised plays with Precipice Improv for many years, and currently perform Playback Theater with Virginia Playback Theater. I'm an abstract painting artist and a CoreSomatics® Movement and Bodywork Master Practitioner. I also do pole fitness, and recently created my first comedic pole routine.
Community Gathering
I founded and ran the Capitol Creativity Network in DC, and the Applied Creativity Network Meetup, and was a TEDx speaker. I produced Creativity in Business Conferences, and Creativity in Business online summits, with an accompanying ebook, Navigating the New Work Paradigm. My work has been featured on podcasts, television, and in books, was recognized in Fast Company's blog for creative community building.
My book, Pattern Breaks: A Facilitator's Guide for Cultivating Creativity, is available on Amazon at https://amzn.to/3QDbZ65