Integration of Emotions and Thoughts for Creative Liberation

Dear Creative Awakening Students:

Thank you for flowing with me as I integrated these two chakra classes into one richer experience. This blog integrates our discussions from the Sacral Chakra (April 2, 2025) and Solar Plexus (April 9, 2025). 

The Scene: Integrating Sacral & Solar Plexus Chakras

Over these next two classes, we dove deeper into the 5 koshas (introduced in the second class re: Root Chakra; Reclaiming Quantum Creativity). Particularly, we focused on the emotional and mental components of the koshas, deconstructing it from both the Queen Mindset Leadership™ lens and creativity. See below for an overview of what these two represent. 

• Theme: Emotions, embodiment, personal power, identity coherence.
• Why: Sacral (Svadhisthana) is emotional alchemy and sensuality; Solar Plexus (Manipura) is personal willpower and integration of identity. 

Why emotions and thoughts? Because their relationship is both intuitive and explicit. Instead of just telling my students that these were important, I showed them. Through a series of interactive exercises, I invited the class to co-create the class with me, allowing us to intuitively and collectively design an exploration around what we really thought and felt about being creatively free.

To kick off, we wrote down the artist dates we'd been exploring. I asked students to tell a story of their experience through the lens of the 5 koshas so they could deepen their experiences.

In both instances across the two classes, students got to practice active storytelling and deep presence. By the time they finished telling their 2-minute stories of their experiences, everyone felt not just excited about what they'd heard, but moved; and isn't that the point of creating?

The Wisdom: Exploration of Emotions and Thoughts

1. Emotional Alchemy: Instead of focusing on just emotional intelligence, I introduced emotional alchemy, a process whereby we can convert an emotion into something of greater value for us.

• The emotion becomes the messenger instead of the enemy. 
• I passed around the Wheel of Emotions I hang in my office and asked the students to identify two types of feelings: those they were deeply familiar with, and those that were unfamiliar.

Take a look below to see what we came up with.

2. Connecting Emotions to Life: Part of the "stuckness" that I see most people in when it comes to designing a life and calling that integrates all that they are, is that feelings are involved.

• Mastering emotional alchemy is not just about identifying emotions in self and others during times of conflict, but also about identifying the general feelings we have about the lives we're living.
• Without plugging into the feelings we hold, we will create successful and traditional lives without feeling connected to it.
• For some people, the traditions work, so there might not be any feeling of dissonance.
• But for those of us who want to design a life that fits who we are, the only way to do that is to get in touch with how we feel. This became an assignment of reflection.

3. Identifying Limiting Beliefs: One of my favorite parts of integrating the deep healing and coaching work I've done is the dexterity and swiftness with which I'm able to identify and disrupt others' limiting beliefs.

• When my students were telling the stories of the artist dates they'd done, I started writing some of the things they'd said — and then I called them out on it.
• I then introduced the idea of naming their inner critic (mine is named Conor) and an inner coach (mine is named Isabella) as a way of separating themselves from the thoughts they hold. (This was inspired by the book Chatter).
• Instead of hating their inner critic, I invited them to create curiosity around themselves, as our inner critics can often be the fearful inner child within us who wants to be soothed.

4. Permission to Talk Shit: Now is when things got spicy.

• This was an idea that I got the week before class.
• I typically write down short musings of what comes to mind as I prepare for the class, and experiment with different exercises to see if they resonate.
• This one landed hard. The assignment was simple: Everyone would get 1 minute to talk shit about someone that reallyyyy pissed them off. The two rules were: mention no names, and no cursing.
• They went innnnnnn on the folks that really grinded their gears (Family Guy, anyone?).
• There was passion and fire in their energy and voices as they said these things lol.
• When everyone finished, I had them review what I'd written and said: 'Welcome to your shadow.' :))
• It is often the things about others that piss us off the most that need the most love within ourselves.
• From the previous class, we'd learned that empathy without boundaries was self-abandonment, but empathy with boundaries was compassion.
• The more compassion they extended toward themselves and others, the more that would circle back.

5. Closing with Emotional Frequencies: I read my audience super well, and I knew that they were ready to integrate the feelings we'd discussed the previous week with the thoughts we'd explored this week.

• Being able to hold space for both the scientific and metaphysical amplifies your capacity for duality, and minimizes the need to only live in the "material" world, where everything is logical and must be proven.
• As a scientist myself, I'm a healthy skeptic, but I also have learned to find value in what I hear and discard what doesn't work.
• Because I mix in a variety of science-based and metaphysical teachings, I thought it apt to introduce an emotional frequency scale with the inner coach and inner critic overlayed.  
• It was a powerful close, as they left with both a greater understanding of the power of their emotions and thoughts, as well as how their interconnection could shape the reality they wanted to create. 
• The question is, how much do they want to open themselves up to examine these things within themselves? How ready are they to be led into the mystery that lies within? 

The Embodiment: Dreaming without Edges

• Liberation Lesson #1: Emotions are messengers, not enemies.

When we name our feelings — both familiar and unfamiliar — we soften the edges of our fear of feeling. This is emotional alchemy in motion.

• Liberation Lesson #2: Feeling is a form of truth.

We can’t think our way into alignment. The body always knows. Getting honest about how our lives feel is the beginning of designing a life that’s truly ours.

• Liberation Lesson #3: Not every thought deserves your trust.

Just because you think it doesn’t mean it’s true. Naming your inner critic and inner coach creates distance and choice. Which voice gets the mic today?

• Liberation Lesson #4: Anger is sacred fuel.

Giving myself (and my students) permission to express unfiltered rage — safely and intentionally — cracks open the heart. Repression stifles creation; expression unlocks it.

• Liberation Lesson #5: Co-creation is the real curriculum.

When students shape the container with you, it’s no longer a class — it’s a ceremony. Creative freedom expands in spaces where intuition and structure dance together.

The closing homework for these classes was meant to challenge my students to think more deeply about their work and artistry in the world. We'd spent the classes exploring both the feelings and thoughts that we allowed / didn't allow ourselves to have, which allowed them to see how intentionally their lens could be shifted.

I invite you to reflect on the questions I left them with:

• Who would you be and what would you do if:
  • You could be anyone?
  • You could do anything?
  • Money was no issue?

And lastly, as we'd spent time "talking shit" about others, thereby finding our shadow, I invited them to "talk praise" about others as well, which is an area we explored in a future class on the throat chakra.