Creative Status is a podcast about using creativity as a vehicle for improving your life by deconstructing ego, integrating the shadow self, and designing and manifesting a real life.
Every episode explores how the creative process can help you GROW REAL by moving towards wholeness in yourself by making the unconscious conscious.
Dive deep into the realms of creativity with award-winning artist, author, and inspirational speaker Karen DeLoach on this week’s episode of Creative Status.
Unravel the mysteries of the right side of the brain as Karen shares her wealth of knowledge and experience in the realms of art, teaching, and personal growth.
Karen, armed with a BFA in painting/drawing and an MA in Studio Art, takes us on a journey beyond the canvas, exploring how tapping into the right side of the brain can unleash untapped wellsprings of creativity.
In this conversation, we debunk some common misconceptions surrounding creativity and learn how these insights can be applied not just to artistic endeavors but also to our daily lives.
We discover the profound connection between creativity and wholeness, with Karen weaving together her roles as a minister, wife, mother, and grandmother.
As the author of three influential art books, Karen imparts wisdom from her years of teaching, offering valuable insights on how creativity intertwines with personal growth, fostering a path to becoming truly REAL.
Whether you’re an artist seeking inspiration or someone intrigued by the power of the right side of the brain, this episode promises to be a thought-provoking exploration of creativity’s profound impact on our journey toward authenticity and growth.
Thanks a bunch,
Oli
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Leave a voice message to share your thoughts and to be (maybe) featured on future episodes of the podcast: anchor.fm/creativestatus
Episode Links:
Karen’s Website: https://www.karendeloachart.com
Creative Status Links:
The Creative Performance Transformation Lab: olianderson.co.uk/creativeperformance
Follow me on Instagram: instagram.com/olijanderson
My YouTube channel: youtube.com/olianderson
Get my books on Amazon: amazon.com/author/oli
7-Day Personality Transplant System Shock for Realness and Life Purpose: olianderson.co.uk/systemshock
Free one hour creative workshop to take your creative brand or project to the next level: olianderson.co.uk/creativeworkshop
Free 90-Day Journal Challenge: olianderson.co.uk/journal
The Law of Attraction for Realness (mini-course): olianderson.co.uk/lawofattraction
Show Transcript: The Right Side of the Brain & REALNESS
Intro
Oli Anderson: Oh, hi there. Oli Anderson here. You’re listening to Creative Status. This is a podcast about using your creativity to improve your life at the deepest possible level of using it as a vehicle for reconnecting to yourself so you can have a better connection to who you really are, your true values and intentions, a better connection to other people, and then a better connection to life itself, because you’re using the creative process to gain awareness and acceptance of what reality actually is and how life actually works.
If you don’t know, I’m a creative performance coach. I help people to bring more realness into their lives and businesses. Most of the people, uh, that I work with are creative, and that’s why this podcast focuses on that. Each episode I like to interview somebody who is creative at a deep level and has an understanding of the kind of journey that I’d like to talk about. Today is no different. I’m talking to Karen Deloach. She’s an artist, and she has a lot of really amazing, interesting things to say about the right brain. How the right brain helps us, how it can make us more creative, how we can tune into it.
A lot of the misconceptions that are out there in society about the right brain and how you actually need to be balanced and to use your left brain as well as the right brain. You don’t want to be so open minded that your brain falls out. So this is a really interesting conversation.
Karen, thank you so much for your time and your energy and all of the insight that you brought to this conversation. Everybody else, hope this helps you in some way, shape, or form. If it does, please leave a review somewhere so other people can find the podcast. But other than that, here’s the conversation. Boom.
Interview
Oli Anderson: Oh, hi there, Karen. Thank you so much for joining me on this episode of Creative Status. Um, we’ve had a quick chat previously about some of the deep thoughts you’ve had around the right brain and how we can get into it and all this kind of stuff. So that’s what we’re going to focus on in this conversation.
But before I start asking you questions and we dig into it, can you just introduce yourself, tell people what you’re all about, and also explain or share what you want to get out of this conversation specifically as well?
Karen Deloach: Well, thank you so much for having me, Oli. It’s a privilege to communicate with you and your listeners. I’m an artist, first and foremost. Uh, painter, sculptor, actor, filmmaker. That is my first love. And I’m also an art mentor because I also love to encourage the creative in others, and I consider myself a creativity specialist.
Uh, I teach art currently in art history appreciation in a college course using textbooks that I have written specifically for my students. I live in South Carolina, in the States, and we have a rural area. These students have never had art, most of them, nor will they have art. And I feel like this is my chance to really, truly stir up their creative right brains.
Oli: That’s awesome. It sounds like you’re a terribly, terribly artistic person. You work in all kinds of different mediums, and you got all kinds of different projects on the go. You help other people get in touch with their creativity, like you just said.
So before we crack open the left brain and the right brain and all that kind of stuff, what is your definition of creativity? I guess these days, after all this work you’ve been doing with yourself and others, how do you see creativity now?
Karen: I see creativity as the act of making something from nothing. There is only your imagination, your intuition, your vision, your dream inside, and you are actually bringing that into our tangible world in some way. And that, of course, is a wide variety of ways that people are creative.
Uh, and I’m only a small slice of that. Uh, but I appreciate my sons and husband are all musicians and singers and songwriters. I don’t have any of those gifts, but they are amazing creatives. And my daughter’s a writer, so there’s so many ways to be creative, and I’m totally convinced that we, as humans, will never feel fulfilled or satisfied with our lives if we are not in some way engaged in creativity.
Oli: Yeah, I 100% agree. So, actually, the main theme of this podcast is basically that the creative process is ultimately the process of being a real human being and going more deeply into having a real relationship with ourselves, the world, and reality at large. Because creative projects, they basically allow us to make the unconscious conscious. So all of the things that we’re hiding from ourselves, or all the things we don’t know about ourselves yet, we can bring them up to conscious awareness by bringing or making something out of nothing, like you just said.
So we’re on the same page there. Let’s get on to the, uh, left brain, right brain thing. So, one of the Topics that you’re super passionate about is just getting in touch with the right brain and how that can help us to kind of heal our lives, become more real, and move towards wholeness and all that kind of stuff. I like to talk about.
Karen: Absolutely.
Oli: Yeah, sorry. So, let’s start in a very simple way. So I think a lot of people have heard about the left brain, right brain thing. But should we just break it down? So how would you define the left brain? How would you define the right brain? And why do people need to get more in touch with the right brain than they probably are?
Karen: Uh, I guess that’s a really good question, because we don’t really think of our brains as being in two parts. We have one brain, and we think about things, but our training is so much a way of, uh, just engaging only one side of our brain, especially here in the States. Our education system rewards and develops left brain thinking, logic, memorization, critical thinking. And it’s not that they never encourage the right brain creativity, but often it squashes people’s creativity.
And here’s an example: You ask a room of five Year olds, do you like to dance, sing, color Crayon, bang on drums? And almost 100% will say yes, we love it. You ask a room of 15 year olds, maybe 10% will say yes while they’re listening to Led Zeppelin on their headphones from my generation. Uh, so what happened in those ten years?
And it’s not because they lost their creativity, it’s because it was squashed, it was discouraged. It was not developed. Um, for most people, they never known how to stir up their creativity and their right brain thinking or understand how it can enhance our left brain thinking as well.
Oli: Do you think, um, if we take that premise that, uh, our nature is to be creative, if that is true, then if people basically become conditioned to over-identify with their left brain, then ultimately they’re also being conditioned to kind of lose touch with who they really are.
And so a lot of the work that you do or that I do, like helping people get back in touch with their creativity. It’s ultimately about unlearning a lot of those left brain things they’ve picked up so they can get in touch with who they really are and then start doing something in a more authentic or real way?
Karen: Absolutely. Can I give an example from my own life?
Oli: Yeah, please.
Karen: Um, so I was a college student taking theatre and art and physical education, which I couldn’t decide, but I found art the most difficult. And they had some very good drawing instruction. But then I got into the painting department, and when I was learning in art school painting, it was the abstract expressionist world prevailed. And the truth is, they didn’t teach me how to paint.
And here I was: I love people and I love scenery, and I wanted to paint people and scenery, not in an abstract expressionist way, probably more impressionist. And they hated my work. They used four letter words every critique. I was humiliated in front of my peers. And after three years of that, I became convinced that I was a terrible painter and I would never paint. And I went into three dimensional work for my graduate school, which I love. I love working in clay and ceramics and sculpture, but I tried for 20 years to finish a painting, and I could not. My subconscious really kept me from ever feeling satisfied.
Um, and then what happened is I got a mentor, somebody who had been to the Chicago Art Institute who learned how to paint. When people taught you how to paint and used historical references and classical training, and he taught me how to paint, that gave me the confidence that I was lacking to help me overcome those negative thoughts.
And eventually, and I think this is important for what you do with your listeners, is I had to kind of forgive myself, my own brain and say, I’m so sorry I stifled you my whole creative life. I started agreeing with something that wasn’t true. I, um, could learn to paint, and that’s what gives me passion as a teacher. I can teach people how to draw. I can teach people that want to how to paint because I learned it. I’m sorry for those lost 20 years, but I tried to make up for it. I’m still a very energetic, almost 70 year old. And, um, I see in my generation sometimes have lost that zeal because they haven’t known how to fulfil that part of them, that creative part of them that I believe, like you said, we all have.
Oli: Yeah, that’s amazing. It’s a really kind of textbook example of the kind of thing we’re talking about. So what basically happened in your case is all of this criticism you got about your work from the outside world with these four letter words and all this stuff that you have thrown at you, you ultimately internalized that, and it became part of your identity for a while or a barrier to expressing your true identity.
And ultimately, it just gave your left brain loads of stories, like conceptual ideas that weren’t even really true to cling to, that acted as a barrier to expression, mainly. So I suppose the question now is 20 years later, when you started to wake up again to your real self and, um, stop sabotaging yourself as well, I guess, with these, uh, unconscious blocks, what happened? So you could kind of start making the unconscious conscious or go more into your right brain and kind of smash through all those left brain narratives that had prevented you from doing what you wanted to do.
Karen: Yeah. Besides having a mentor that walked me through the training and developing the skills I needed, I also got healing from our creator, who is the one that gave us our creativity, and we are in his likeness. And I’m so sorry. I agreed with lies, basically, and that’s what I see so many people do. Oh, I can’t draw. I can’t draw a stick figure. I can’t draw a straight line.
Well, I use a ruler just like normal people when I need to make a straight line. If you can throw and catch a ball, you can learn to draw, because it’s eye hand coordination. I can teach you to draw, and that’s been my joy, and I require that of my college students. Art history appreciation includes appreciation, and I think you need to try it to really appreciate it.
And I’ve discovered some real talent and latent talent that has been undiscovered in a lot of my students, no matter what their ages. I’ve worked with all ages, even people in my generation, and they have. It awoken in them, um, and stirred up. And it’s like there’s no time or distance. It’s just there for them to enjoy and to feel fulfilled in. And that’s the great part of it.
Oli: Yeah, you’ve tapped into something really important, and I think that’s going to open the conversation up even more. Now, your experience of kind of getting in touch with the creator, uh, is what I have experienced as well. But I normally refer to it as wholeness, or some people call it source or the universe or whatever.
Everybody talks about this experience and they use different words to describe it. But ultimately, all it is is a moment where we see the truth. And when we see the truth, we realize who we are, of course, but also the consequence of having that taste of wholeness, of truly being connected to life and seeing how things actually are. Um, it shows us all of the lies we’ve been believing in. And those lies or illusions, they only ever belong to the left brain.
Actually, that’s how I see it. Like the left brain, it ultimately worked in terms of fragments, but the real version of who we are, it’s not fragmented, it’s whole. It’s an experience of wholeness that I’m getting excited about, as you can now tell. And, um, if we believe in all these fragments and we identify with them and we think they’re who we actually are, and then we fall into this trap of, uh, basically believing that the left brain and left brain conceptual knowledge and interpretations of life are the truth about life, then we end up becoming detached from who we actually are.
And so the only way really to become healed is to have that taste of wholeness that you’re talking about, those kind of experiences. So, um, I guess the question needs to be, to go into this a little bit more. Can you tell us more about that process of letting go of the illusions and returning to your realness, which is what I call it here on the podcast and everywhere else. So, basically, when a lot of people struggle to let go of the stories they’re telling themselves that are causing them to hesitate and hold back on their real creativity, the painful part is letting go of the illusions that stop them from doing that.
So a, uh, saying I love to throw out there is the truth will set you free, which, as you have seen, is true. But first, it will piss you off, and it will make you miserable. Pardon my French. And the reason it does that, it’s not because the truth itself is painful. The truth is what we all need to be aligned with, and it’s where our creativity is leading all of us, if we have the courage to go with it. But it will piss people off and make them miserable initially, because they’re identifying with those lies that you talked about, and because those lies are comfortable, or, uh, they give them a sense of security, they try and cling to them, and the more they cling, the worse it gets. So I’m running at you a lot now. Sorry, you’ve made me excited. But what do you think about all that stuff?
Karen: Well, you’re asking the big questions of life, and I really admire you for that. Who are we? Where are we going, where we come from? And why are we here? And I don’t think we can answer that without the right brain connection. We admire and respect and honour our intelligent people with high IQs that do so much in that regard. But then we have our quote, unquote, starving artists, right? And not that I’m starving, but it’s like, what is the disconnect happening? And why? And it’s, why is it so disrespected? And I’ll tell you why.
Because they’re afraid of it. Because of the power of the creative part of us. We can never be overtaken by AI. I don’t care what kind of technology comes into about that is where our true, like you said, our true humanity is. That’s where we have our imagination. That’s where we have our intuition. That’s where we have that. When people talk about their gut, it’s connected to that internal knowing, and we can know and be known. And that’s what I believe, that there is a creator we can have relationship with.
When you talk about an experience, that’s the experience that changed my life, was connecting to my creator, and I still had a wounded right brain. Even though I was an artist, I wasn’t connected. I had to get healing, and I had to even repent of agreeing with those lies. We had to lay those lies down, let go of them like you described, and then embrace our purpose. And it’s always going to have a creative element, no matter who we are.
Oli: That’s amazing. So, a theme that comes up a lot on the podcast is the idea of self transcendence. So, ultimately, the short version of what that means is that a lot of the time, people are, uh, going through life, filtering everything through the ego, which is basically just an image they’ve created based on all of the left brain fragmentation that they’ve picked up.
And when they attach to that and they’re trying to defend it because of all the reasons we’ve just shared about, uh, needing to cling to illusions and everything, they end up forcing life to align with that image of themselves that they’ve picked up, which is an unreal image because it’s detached from Their creativity and the drive towards wholeness and all that kind of thing. If people are lucky, um, shall we say, although it’s not always about luck, something will happen where they realize that idea is flawed. It’s holding them back. That you can’t force life, you can’t control everything. That the only way you can actually heal and be happy is to submit to life itself and to realize that there are forces beyond your control that are kind of shaping your life. And you can work with those forces by embracing them and accepting them and seeing where they want to go and everything.
But ultimately, the only way you can, uh, trust life to take you where you need to go, uh, and to work with those forces in this way is to let go of your ideas about yourself. And so if you let go of those ideas, which is really just all of those illusions we were talking about, but in relation to ourselves, that’s when you get to this deeper level of being able to create, um, in this right brain way you’re talking about, where it’s not just about concepts and ideas, it’s not just about certainty and what you already think, you know.
It becomes about a journey of discovery, actually, and working with uncertainty and chaos to become more aligned with truth. And so, in relation to left brain, right brain, I guess we could say the left brain is the illusion of control, and the right brain is about working with chaos, actually, or the unknown, however you want to say it. And, um, all of the qualities that we need to embody to be able to ride with that chaos are basically about getting beyond ourselves, basically.
So I know I’m throwing loads at you, but how does all that align with your experience?
Karen: Yeah, that’s a great question. We talk about is, uh, it nature or nurture? And nature, I think it can be trapped in that right brain. That’s our nature. When we have been nurtured in a way contrary to our true self, that we’re always going to be in conflict with who we really are. And I’ll give another example from my life. It’s okay.
So I was raised the firstborn of a, uh, very intelligent left brain creative who had been stifling his creativity his whole life, was a Marine sergeant, of all things, but he had been on vaudeville. I mean, he truly was an Irish creative all the way a, um, know, but he was also a perfectionist. So here I was, his firstborn, definitely right brain creative kid. Okay. I’m going to do whatever I can to please my father. And that meant stifling that right brain. It meant that whoever you want is exactly who I’m, um, more than willing to be.
You’re probably too young to know that song, but it’s the emotional dependency theme song from Carly Simon. But it’s why I became a good actress. I’m going to hide myself behind these masks to please and being people pleasing all the way have to be first. Because if anybody could see behind that mask and see my flaws, I can’t accept my own flaws. How can I expect anybody else to accept me? So that perfectionism is a curse. I call it, um, the paralysis of perfectionism.
I can’t tell you how many truly creatives are stuck in that they don’t know how to get past. And I have such great techniques in my program to help people truly let go of that perfectionism, that stuck place. How to truly engage the right brain without left brain criticism, because that’s where criticism is. And I can tell you what, that sensitive nature is so easy to offend, easy to be damaged, that we can’t engage true right brain creativity while we’re under criticism because they try to teach you in school.
Well, this criticism is to make you better and excellent. And I’m going to come at you with my left brain logic all the way and totally defeat your right brain, um, sensitivities. And so you learn how to hide them, how to protect them so that they don’t get more wounded than they are. Every stifled creative is this place inside longing to be set free.
Stirred up. I call it being stirred up. Finding that discomfort that you’re talking about getting out of your comfort zone and allowing your life to overcome the fear of discovery, that fear of, wow, you’re going to find out I’m not really good enough, but what you’re going to find out is you are.
Oli: Yeah.
Karen: Because you don’t really believe you are.
Oli: Wow, I’ve got so many questions here, so I’m going to have to try and reel myself in so I don’t go off on a million different tangents, but I think what we’re now talking about is shame. Like the underlying shame that people have that makes it difficult for them to trust life and the right brain and chaos and all that kind of stuff. And when people have shame, I believe it’s always because they have become disconnected from the truth and the realness of themselves.
And when they are disconnected, basically, that’s when they create the ego version of themselves which is encapsulated in the left brain and all these concepts and ideas and so on and so forth. And then people, in order to hide from this lingering, toxic shame that gets worse and worse, the more disconnected from themselves they are, two things happen. One, they hypnotize themselves with their own left brain narratives and bullshit, pardon my French, again. And that self-hypnosis, that’s what it turns into. Perfectionism and hypercriticality and all these different things.
But it’s rooted in shame. But then on the other level, when people have shame, they also want other people to, uh, be as controllable as possible so that they don’t start bringing reality into the equation again with their chaos and their nature and all the things that are buried deep down there beneath in the shadow self, basically. And so you’ve got this situation where you have people who are ashamed because they’re not facing the truth about themselves, hypnotizing themselves to keep convincing themselves that they’re doing the right thing by hiding because it’s comfortable and familiar.
But then also they project that out onto others and they try and control other people by saying, right, you should do this. You should follow these left brain ideas that I’ve got, and blah, blah, blah. You should be in your left brain. You shouldn’t be creative, you shouldn’t do this because that’s going to trigger my shame. And then that just makes that person ashamed. If it’s a parent or somebody who’s kind of, uh, indoctrinating people with this shameful way of being. And then you get a whole world that values the left brain and, um, conceptual knowledge and all this stuff and rewards it and rewards it, because actually, we’re rewarding people for hiding from themselves, basically, and not triggering each other’s shame.
Even though the only way to get through the shame is to face that it’s there. And then as you look at it, it dissolves in the light of truth and all that stuff. And then you realize, okay, actually, everything’s amazing. And I’ve just wasted 20 years of my life, for example, on, uh, this left brain story I picked up. So what can we do about this?
So, basically, we’ve agreed, the left brain, you caused all these problems, although we still need it. We should probably get into that as well. And, um, the right brain, or get in touch with the right brain, and our nature is part of the solution. So I guess the question now is, first of all, how do we get into the right brain? But also, what are some of the myths that people have around the right brain?
Because I think there is a bit of an element where people hear conversations like this. They hear lunatics like me ranting and raving about it, and they’re like, right, that’s it. I am never getting engaged in my left brain ever again. I’m going all the way into my right brain. And then life gets kind of bad as well, because they’re just so open minded, their brains fall out. So how do we find balance?
Karen: Uh, well, our left brains are such a bully, it’ll never let us control it. So you can forget about the left brain being controlled by the right brain, other than it’s a cooperation. And that’s what we started this out as. It’s a balance. So how do we balance this gigantic ego, as you describe in our left brain, with this fragile, broken, stifled, frustrated right brain? And one way is to acknowledge that we’re not the same.
That’s the chaos, is we all want to wear the same jeans, wear the same tennis shoes or whatever, but the truth is, we have ten unique fingerprints, every one of us, um, billions of us on the planet. We don’t even have two ears that are the same. I can’t turn my glasses around and wear them the other way. It’s so amazingly creative, just our very being. I have doctor friends that are just like, there’s so many things that could go wrong. How many working parts does it take to get a human walking around? And it’s just the miracle of life. The total miracle of Life. And embracing that, you are a miracle.
Every single one of you is a miracle. And so you have half of your brain that needs to be in balance with this bully left brain. Not ignoring it, because just the act of creating. You’re using your left brain. You’re using your left brain and your right brain. It’s a matter of pushing the right brain in order to catch up with this gigantic ego left brain. And it’s just shame. You talk about guilt, um, unforgiveness. We’ve got an epidemic of abuse. We’ve got fatherlessness in our country. We’ve got people that have no clue who they are.
They didn’t get their identities. And we have mutilation of children happening because people don’t know who they are. And this is exactly what you’re talking about, getting in touch with the very true nature of ourselves. And no matter how old you are, it can happen. There’s no time or distance as far as age. It’s about really, truly finding ways to stir up that right brain. And there are wonderful techniques suited to everybody’s difference in personalities. Not everybody’s going to be an artist or a musician or a singer songwriter, actor. But do you like to walk in the woods?
Do you enjoy sunrises and sunsets? Do you love seeing pictures of your grandchildren or your babies? Do you love puppy pictures, kitten pictures? If you look online, what do people fill them with? Even beautiful food presentations? What is that about? We embrace this love of beauty that is unique to us in all of creation, we m appreciate beauty. What is beauty? What does it mean to me? What does it mean to you?
hat’s embracing our humanity in a way that we don’t even think about? You know, that just going to a museum, an art museum, and looking at art can release serotonin, the happiness chemical in your body. Um, uh, men have four times the amount of serotonin than women. And there are, like you were talking about shame and guilt in our gut that can actually hinder the release of serotonin. I don’t tell me that.
I’m not a scientist, but I love when science matches art. I mean, there is this balance that you’re talking about that we need to find in our own lives. And that’s why I call myself a creativity specialist. This is what I specialize as I work with people one on one to find out who they are, what they want to do. And I work with them, um, three to five times a week. Neuroscientists. There’s even a new field called neuroarts, that it only takes between 15 and 18 minutes a day to change your life.
Oli: Wow.
Karen: To stir up that part of our brain, to bring healing to it, to bring restoration, to start balancing the left brain, right brain in your own being and finding out what is your true nature. Who are you really? It’s never too late.
Oli: Wow. So this phrase that you keep using, stir it up, how do we do that? So you’ve mentioned somewhere, it’s like, obviously we can appreciate the beauty in life. That is a powerful way to do it, obviously, because I think when we acknowledge something beautiful, it’s kind of a peak experience where we transcend ourselves a little bit.
Because in that moment where we’re appreciating whatever the beautiful thing is in front of us, we kind of become one with it. Do you know what I mean? And when we become one with it, we get out of the ego, we’re in the right brain, we connected to everything and blah, blah, blah. So that’s a super powerful technique. But what are some other things that people could do in a practical sense, I guess, to get into the right brain or to start bringing it back into, uh, being a bit more music.
Karen: Music, yeah, music. Listening to music. Classical music is classical for a reason. I’m not a musician. I’ve never studied music. But there is something about classical music or, um, my easy listening music that does something to your soul. It does something inside that just brings you into, um, a serotonin type. Do you just feel better?
You can release the stresses and the anxiety and the fears and whatever’s been going on in your life and just get into that music. And people that are into yoga or meditation, they use music. They understand. Um, um, my husband and I are ministers. We have a small gathering that meets in our home of other artists and musicians. It’s called imagine Gathering. And music is a big part of what we do to get in touch, um, with God.
We use music to get out of ourselves and whatever. And we do art together, we do dance together. Uh, we do hands on projects. Anything you do when you are getting out of your left brain and using your hands, sculpting, drawing, painting, weaving, uh, knitting, um, writing, journaling. These things are all pursuits. Strumming the guitar, noodling on the piano, uh, whatever moves you. Singing, doing some scales. Why do you think people sing in the Shower? They can’t deny their right brain forever.
Oli: Yeah, actually, the Shower, it’s one of the places where people most commonly get in touch with the right brain. It’s kind of a phenomenon that people have noticed, uh, or noted, if you look into it. A lot of people, when they’re in the Shower, that’s when they have their best ideas, things like that. And it’s because outside in the world, they’re running around.
They’re just acting on all the dictates of the ego and the left brain and all these conceptual things they think they should be doing. And then in the Shower, that’s when they slow down and they get in their body, and all of a sudden, all these answers are popping up from the unconscious. Becoming conscious. Basically. In a way, it’s the same thing. Like, shower mode is the creative process that we’re kind of talking about.
Karen: Yeah, that’s right. And we create those connections that makes our left brain better. Uh, it’s more intuitive and creative and has think outside of the box kind of solutions happen. M in those times, throwing a basketball, I’ve heard that over and over again. Just throwing a basketball against the wall or making hoops. Just how many of these athletes have turned into incredible business people because they get these creative thoughts when their body is doing something else and they can let those thoughts come forward.
Oli: Does it count if you’re banging your head against the wall? Because I do.
Karen: Um, how about we do it with a pillow?
Oli: Okay, I’ll use that next time. So, um, how do we get more control of the left brain? Because the things you’re sharing are very real, very practical, and you’re not one of these people I was talking about who’s saying, right, I’m going to abolish the left brain, and then that’s it. I’m just going to be, like, flowing in the moment for the rest of my life, not thinking and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But how do we get mastery of the left brain so it’s not just giving us all this, um, hypercriticality and judgment and holding us back and yada yada.
Karen: Yeah, that’s an excellent question. And it’s really personal. We’re, uh, not wired the same. Like I said, we got ten different fingerprints, so that it’s not going to work the same for everybody. Everybody doesn’t sing in the shower, so it is in a creative place, but doesn’t work for everybody. If they have shame of their bodies, they can’t get out of that.
You know what I mean? So there’s certain things that are bigger than even our left brain, but, um, the practical things that I’ve learned and the systems that I do in the arts completely work, but it’s purposeful and like I said, even scientists said 15 to 815 minutes a day. So you purposefully choose. So, for 15 to 20 minutes a day, I’m going to journal, I’m going to look at nature. I’m Going to watch a sunset. I’m going to take a bike ride. I’m going to pick up my guitar again, sitting there collecting dust. Uh, I’m going to pick up my sketchbook and take some Online classes or sign up for one of mine. That’s what I love to do.
Oli: Yeah. Do you think ultimately, it comes down to discipline in a way? Like, a lot of the time, people who are attracted to the right brain think it’s going to help them to deal with all the problems in their life or whatever that they’ve kind of noticed because of the left brain. But in a way, we need both, like we keep saying, and the way to kind of unify them is exactly what you said. It comes down to discipline in a way. I mean, you didn’t literally say that.
Karen: That’s kind of me putting purposeful. But you’re right. That’s where cooperation between left brain. Now, here’s the truth. Left, um, brain was created to serve the right brain.
Oli: Yes. There we go.
Karen: We’re in our right brain. There is no time that left brain to say, okay, let’s establish a schedule that does help put parameters around our right brain. Chaos. Because our right brain, and you’ve seen artists and they live lives where they absolutely self-destroy their lives, their relationships. They might create fantastic masterpieces, but their lives are crap. Excuse the French, but what’s the balance?
We don’t want lives that don’t have love and people and community in it. So that’s where we have to cooperate with each other and have that left brain. And discipline is such a dirty word to most artists. Corralling artists is like corralling cats. Right? They all want to go their own way, and I get it, but we need those parameters. Okay, it’s 06:00 a.m. When I get up, I’m going to spend 15 minutes and I’m going to nurture my right brain. And I went to chat GPT to find other ways to right brain is we’re using technology and the left brain in order to know how to serve our right brain.
Oli: Yeah. Do you think there’s something beyond both the right brain and the left brain? So we are talking about them as, uh, okay, it’s all one system, and we can unify both of them. But there’s a part of us. That transcends both, I think. And it’s like when you, uh. Like, I do yoga and I meditate. I’m one of those guys, when I get into that deep state in a yoga session, it’s like I’m just observing everything that’s going on in meditation.
They always talk about the observer and observed, and it’s the same thing. And when you get into that place, that’s when you can kind of more easily ensure that what you’re doing with the left brain serves the right brain and vice versa. Because you’re not just reacting to everything that pops up, you’re responding. And I guess the responsiveness, it comes from the observer within us, if that makes sense. Is there anything there that you’ve seen with your work?
Karen: Well, I believe we’re triune beings that we, uh, live in a body that we have mind, will and emotion, soul, and we have a spirit. And that our Spirit, man, is really the core of our being. And it communicates through our mind, will and emotions which manifest in our body. And so I believe in God. I believe in Jesus Christ as my personal saviour. I believe in Holy Spirit that is here as my comforter. And so that is the core belief of my life that has changed everything.
And then I think a lot of people need healing for their right brain abuse that they can’t touch what you’re describing, can’t even touch beauty or enjoy anything if it’s outside of a lustful way because of so much hurt and wounds and shame and guilt and brokenness. And those fearful emotions hinder so much in their lives, including their natural relationships.
Uh, but even with one, with themselves and with their God. And if you believe in a creator God, then you believe that there is someone that cares who’s numbered your hairs, that cares every bit about you. And his care for us is what has changed my life. I feel cared for. I have long hair and I brush it every day, and my hair number changes today. So you can’t be a distant God watching me in the distance, okay? I gave you earth. Do it on your own.
I tried it on my own. I was raised by an atheist. I was raised by someone who said, you can do and be anything you want and do. And, um, I’m thinking, okay, m here’s the old song and dance. Are you fooled over here so you can’t see my weaknesses over there? I was very good at that, and it was not the real know. And your whole message and your whole, um, heart is to get to the reality of who we are. And I love that. I love that about what you’re doing, Oli. And I love how you’re connecting with people that feel this way also, and that you have a passion for. This is beautiful, and I appreciate you.
Oli: Well, thank you very much. I think what we’re just talking about is the truth. This is ultimately it, right? Mhm. If you break down all these universal principles of the human experience, whether someone’s, uh, an atheist or they believe in God or whatever other word people want to use, it’s all the same thing. Like, we’re all having the same experience, but we’re just in different parts of our minds and our bodies and our brains and our souls.
And so we filter everything through different interpretations, and the more we attach to those interpretations, the worse it gets, as we’ve seen. But ultimately, I think what you just shared kind of sums this all up. If we’re caught up in the left brain too much, everything feels. We feel isolated from everything. We feel detached from everything. I would say the ego is the illusion of separation and disconnection. We think that’s reality. And then if we go into the right brain, we start saying, okay, um, I’ve got out of my mind a little bit. I’m back in my body, I’m in my nature.
And then we can use the nature to kind of inform the nurture and we can make some more authentic decisions. But then there is another level where we realize, okay, there’s something about me that is more than just my brain. I’m not the left, I’m not the right, I’m not the combination of the two, but I’m actually this being that is connected to truth, basically.
And when you realize the Truth is about wholeness and that it’s always there, uh, and what’s real is always real. That’s what I say. Then you realize you’re not alone. And that illusion of separation and disconnection and everything, it fades away. And then you can flow with life, and everything is amazing. Until you die, obviously. And then that’s that topic. Yeah, we’ll do that one next time.
Karen: Next.
Oli: So this has been a great conversation. We’ve covered a lot. How would you sum all this up? Like, I guess, have you got any final words of wisdom? That’s what I always ask people.
Karen: Yeah, I would love to work with anybody that is hurting. They can get in touch with me. Karendeloachart.com – www dot karendelachart.com is my website. I have a free book, art, um, as Self therapy, wellness, uh, through creativity, which gives five tips on getting a healthier soul. So I recommend everybody get that download, um, and connect with me. I’ll talk with anybody and be able to help them see which direction might work best for them.
Um, we need each other, and that’s just the truth. We need each other’s generations. My generation needs to get out of the fear of brain fog and dementia. These things that could be solved with right brain creative acts. There’s so many things that can help. And then to be young, like, uh, you and my sons, that are still searching for their true identity, it’s just a wonderful walk, and I appreciate that so much. Don’t stop. Don’t stop. Keep going.
Oli: I won’t. Let’s keep going. Karen, uh, thank you so much for this conversation. I appreciate you.
Karen: God bless.
Oli: Thanks.
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