Second Wind
A small-group Creative Emergence Incubator for mid-lifers in transition exploring what's next
A new wind in your sails to take you into new territory.
Facilitated group experiences and coaching for midlife professionals who know there is more creativity, vitality, possibility, and dimensionality available to them.
What if this next part of your life isn't about slowing or settling, but feeling more fulfilled, alive, and working on your terms?
I call the essence of this Midliveness™
It's where midlife meets aliveness.
"Working with Michelle has been like magic. I have worked with many coaches before but I can honestly say the process Michelle takes you through and her deep intuition and skill has been like nothing I've ever experienced. She helped me discover and develop the skill to be attuned to my deepest, most authentic creative impulses and longings, and then kept me accountable to following through on them. I'm so deeply grateful I found her."
~ Dr. Elise Bialylew, Psychiatrist, Author of The Happiness Plan
Why Second Wind?
I’ve been noticing, in myself and in clients and friends, how different the energies, drives, desires and even the “rules” of midlife can be from when we were younger. Not just the challenges, but also the opportunities.
Then 3 different midlife clients said to me within a short time period, "I feel like I have my second wind!" after a session, and as I was in the process of cultivating my own next chapter. Then I had a deep emergence experience unfold in me around the sacredness of this time of life which inspired this offering.
About two thirds of my coaching clients are mid-lifers (as am I) and I felt called to offer something special for the needs of this particular group.
I found a pattern in most of my mid-life clients. They're no longer motivated in the same ways by the same things they were when first starting out. For many, the drives and concerns of younger days start giving way to feeling less like pleasing and more like living.
They still want to do something meaningful and valuable, but the old achievements focus is less important to them now than feeling fulfilled, and living their work and service on their terms.
A New Focus
So much of the cultural story of aging is about what we're losing. But something else arrives at the same time if we open to expand beyond our own preconceived notions about what’s possible. Midlife is an invitation to reignite lost parts of ourselves/dreams/visions, move out of conditioning and expectations into something more true to ourselves, and discover new surprising landscapes.
What if it's a time to partner with life the way life naturally wants to emerge and access more of the mystery?
Second Wind is for the creative soul that is re-emerging, and still wants to be in service of something greater than yourself in some way (working, volunteering, writing a book, leading an initiative that fills your soul, showing your art, taking more time off for renewal, or creatively putting something out there) in your second or third act. The Landscape is Real Midlife isn't an imaginary transition. Things really do change. Health can be more complicated. We may find ourselves with more care-giving responsibilities, and facing other new realities. Some things that once felt easy may become harder.
Second Wind isn't about bypassing that or pretending those realities aren't real. It's about asking what's still possible within those constraints, and what may be possible because of who we have become. We're working with different conditions, different questions, and a different kind of knowing. The creative spirit is ageless, and it's used to creating within constraints. It can adapt and find a way in almost any circumstance. It can take on new forms and shapes. It can make something meaningful with the life that is actually here. The terrain has changed, so now the discovery is how to feel vital in this new terrain.
Second Wind is for the creative soul that is re-emerging, and still wants to be in service of something greater than yourself in some way (working, volunteering, writing a book, leading an initiative that fills your soul, showing your art, taking more time off for renewal, or creatively putting something out there) in your second or third act. The Landscape is Real Midlife isn't an imaginary transition. Things really do change. Health can be more complicated. We may find ourselves with more care-giving responsibilities, and facing other new realities. Some things that once felt easy may become harder.
Second Wind isn't about bypassing that or pretending those realities aren't real. It's about asking what's still possible within those constraints, and what may be possible because of who we have become. We're working with different conditions, different questions, and a different kind of knowing. The creative spirit is ageless, and it's used to creating within constraints. It can adapt and find a way in almost any circumstance. It can take on new forms and shapes. It can make something meaningful with the life that is actually here. The terrain has changed, so now the discovery is how to feel vital in this new terrain.
Who is This For?
- You are a mid-lifer (40s, 50s, 60s+) feeling something different wanting to emerge.
- You may be a leader, coach, consultant, therapist, healer, creator, or anyone else who has spent years being useful, capable, and responsible. You’ve had a decent level of success, and now something else is stirring.
- You may feel restlessness, a creative impulse, or a desire to make, speak, move, contribute, or serve differently. Maybe a part of you that went unseen while you were building a life is beginning to reawaken.
- You have wisdom earned, and want to claim and distill that wisdom into a business or service, or upgrade your current set of offerings. You want more than maintaining.
- You may want to create new work, a new offering, a new work structure, or a new way of working
- Your mind feels alive with ideas, but your body or energy might not feel expansive enough to carry them out.
- You know you are intuitive, but haven't fully trusted or used that part of yourself.
- You feel a deep knowing that this is your time.
Renewed Vitality
The desert flower blooms boldly and unapologeticallyin places and ways we might not expect.
Midlife can look sparse, dry, and flat if we only measure it by the unwanted changes.
But another landscape is also forming that has more freedom and wholeness, less concern with what others think, and more capacity to create from who you are.
Second Wind is an invitation to meet and engage that landscape, supported by other midlifers.
But another landscape is also forming that has more freedom and wholeness, less concern with what others think, and more capacity to create from who you are.
Second Wind is an invitation to meet and engage that landscape, supported by other midlifers.
"I feel so fortunate to have spent my day with an incredibly diverse and wisdom-filled group. Your workshop was everything I had been anticipating and more! In only 5 short hours you unlocked in me something I had almost given up on."
~ Audrey White, Professional Facilitator and HR Consultant
What is Second Wind?
Second Wind is a 5-week, highly creative, experiential midlife incubator for people who want to treat midlife as a time of exciting creative potential. It is a space to meet this time in a container for aliveness, creativity, meaning, and a more vital relationship with the life that wants to move through you.
Over the five weeks, we move through the Second Wind Emergence Framework™, a 7-part living framework for cultivating what wants to emerge in the next chapter of your life, unique to this program. It provides structure and direction while leaving room for emergence, discovery, and the nonlinear nature of the process.
Over the five weeks, we move through the Second Wind Emergence Framework™, a 7-part living framework for cultivating what wants to emerge in the next chapter of your life, unique to this program. It provides structure and direction while leaving room for emergence, discovery, and the nonlinear nature of the process.
Woven throughout the process are three important dimensions of the work, such as exploring mythic midlife, embodying new ways of being, and discerning the gems - knowing which to carry forward.
Expand your vessel. Sometimes the desire is there, but the vessel has contracted. You can be genuinely excited about what's emerging and still find that old patterns can limit the new life trying to come through. We will explore how to expand your vessel (somatically, energetically, vocally, conceptually) and mindset, so habitual patterns, conditioning, and limited views of what is possible in midlife don't inhibit your creative flow.
- Past, present and future stories. We’ll explore the belief systems, stories, and conditioning that have shaped who you have been, identities that helped you succeed, roles you learned to inhabit, and the narratives that may no longer be large enough for what is coming next.
- Making room for juicy discovery and develop a living relationship with emergence - the capacity to notice what has energy, follow what's life-giving, create with what is actually here, and sense what is emerging.
- Boundary Building. Every life-giving YES to ourselves comes with some healthy NO’s we must say to other things, to our habitual self, or to other people. That can be uncomfortable at times. We will practice dynamic ways to build boundaries that support your emergence.
The Group Field. A safe nourishing, supportive container makes all the difference. We'll take time up front in each session to create a nourishing, safe, generative group field, where the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. The field is great for bonding and support, and it also helps participants co-create new insights and ideas. The group field is part of our process.
"I was feeling out of alignment with what I should be doing with my work based on who I am. Michelle’s coaching process helped bring clarity with support and understanding. As a result, I became clear on the direction I wanted to take. Things have fallen into place with my new business, and I already have several clients." ~ Cheryl Harlan, Artist and Educator
How we work
The work we’ll engage is theatrical, artful, colorful, embodied, at the edges, and integrative. Expect creative practices, improv and theater-based exploration, art, embodiment, creative expression, storytelling, energy dynamics, playful experiments, reflection, coaching, connection, and practical play sheets that help you continue the work between sessions.
Through a variety of whole-brain creative approaches - and engaging the mythic realms and imaginal realms - we'll give different parts of you a voice, even the parts that have been hidden and dormant, or parts that are struggling with midlife challenges.
Through a variety of whole-brain creative approaches - and engaging the mythic realms and imaginal realms - we'll give different parts of you a voice, even the parts that have been hidden and dormant, or parts that are struggling with midlife challenges.
The Hallmarks of this Program
- The assumption of emergence. It assumes something is already calling to emerge within you
- A container for uncertainty. It provides a structured way to hold that uncertainty until what's emerging reveals itself.
- Creativity at the center. It treats whole-brain and embodied creativity as central to cultivating what's emerging.
- Deepening inner guidance. It focuses on the relationship with you animating life force to inform navigating what's next.
- Cultivating agency. It grounds you more in your own inner authority and confidence in a world filled with distractions.
- Energy-led. It is centered entirely around what lights you up and gives you energy, not the "shoulds"
- Generative reframing. It helps shift limiting, old stories into expansive, generative new perspectives.
- Creating within constraints. It isn't focused on problem-solving, but on moving forward creatively w in current realities.
- Layered clarity. Direction, clarity, inspired action, next steps unfold from engaging the process, one layer at a time.
The Experience
- Second Wind as an intimate living container combining experiential workshops, creative practices, group coaching, meaningful connection, and guided work between sessions. These 5 weeks are a deep dive into your inner landscape, midlife wonder, deep creation, and the initial stages of your next chapter.
"Michelle was the answer to my question of 'What's next in my life?' Going through her unique Creative Emergence Coaching process I discovered my most dominant strengths and have tapped into a joyful and creative energy that allows me to confidently redefine myself and express myself in a way that's been beneficial to my well-being, and life-enhancing for others!"~ Peter Colwell, Author, Poet, Trainer, and Motivational Speaker
What’s Included
• 5 Experiential Workshops Fridays. October 16, 23 & 30 and November 6 & 13 • 2:00–3:30pm EDT • One Private Coaching SessionYou’ll receive one private 1:1 coaching session during the program. • Studio Play DateWednesday, October 28 • 12:00-1:15pm EDT Bring a creative project you’re working on.
• Midliveness Playbook™ A collection of practices, concepts, and reflections to support your journey during the program and beyond.• BONUS! Post-Program Group MastermindFriday, November 20 • 2:00-3:30pm EDT An optional additional session to share where you are, bring questions or challenges, and brainstorm together.
What You Receive
it's different for each person as this is not about a one-size-fits-all goal. Instead, it's about creating the conditions for you to access and engage what's calling to emerge as it emerges. Together, we will discover and shape your unique outcomes naturally as we go through the process.
If you show up to each session, dive into the creative practices between sessions, and stay committed, here's what you can expect:
If you show up to each session, dive into the creative practices between sessions, and stay committed, here's what you can expect:
- A deeper connection to your inner compass (creative self/creative source)
- An energetic uplift
- More confidence when facing unknowns
- A sense of the thread running through your past, present, and emerging future
- Old habits giving way to more life-giving ones for where you are now
- A renewed relationship with midlife
- Organic breakthroughs
- Expansion as a creative multidimensional human
- Clarity around next directions
- Inspired-action steps
Registration
Investment: $697
Spaces are limited for maximum attention.
Registration is now closed.
To get info on the next one, or learn about other offerings, click here to sign up for our newsletter.
Questions?
Let’s talk! Email michelle@creativeemergence.com with questions, or to set up a phone conversation.
About Michelle James
Michelle James is a pioneering creativity catalyst, creative facilitator, and founder of The Center for Creative Emergence and Creative Emergence Coaching. For more than 25 years, she has worked with thousands of individuals, leaders, and organizations - including corporations, government agencies, startups, and nonprofits - as a trusted creativity cultivator and emergence "midwife". Organizational clients have included Microsoft, GEICO, Federal Executive Institute, PepsiCo, National Institutes of Health, PBS, The World Bank, Dominos, Clean Air Institute, and NOAA among many others.
Michelle brings a blend of grounded structure, intuitive wisdom, multidimensional creativity, and light-hearted play to her work. Through her own "soul path" experiences and her study of emergence, creativity, organizational change, somatic and depth psychology, neuroscience, group process, integral theory, and complexity, she helps people move beyond habitual ways of thinking and learn to co-create with what is emerging within and around them.
Michelle learned what it takes to making a living doing work that feeds her creative soul, and she loves supporting others in that. At the heart of Michelle’s work is the premise that there is an intelligence in aliveness itself. She helps people reconnect with their own animating life force - their creative source/true self - and discover what wants to come alive, take shape, or become possible next. She helps people and groups move from “What’s wrong?” to “What’s here, what's alive, and what's next?"
Michelle is a CoreSomatics® Master Practitioner and spent many years performing full-length improvised plays. She currently performs with Virginia Playback Story Theatre and is also an artist, hiker, pole fitness enthusiast, and author of Pattern Breaks: A Facilitator’s Guide to Cultivating Creativity. Read more of Michelle’s story here.
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