THE SYNCREATE PODCAST: EMPOWERING CREATIVITY
HOSTED BY MELINDA ROTHOUSE, PHD
WELCOME TO SYNCREATE, WHERE WE EXPLORE THE INTERSECTIONS BETWEEN CREATIVITY,
PSYCHOLOGY, AND SPIRITUALITY. OUR GOAL IS TO DEMYSTIFY THE CREATIVE PROCESS,
AND EXPAND THE BOUNDARIES OF WHAT IT MEANS TO BE CREATIVE.
SUBSCRIBE / FOLLOW US ON SPOTIFY, APPLE PODCASTS, YOUTUBE
OR WHEREVER YOU GET YOUR PODCASTS
HOSTED BY MELINDA ROTHOUSE, PHD
WELCOME TO SYNCREATE, WHERE WE EXPLORE THE INTERSECTIONS BETWEEN CREATIVITY,
PSYCHOLOGY, AND SPIRITUALITY. OUR GOAL IS TO DEMYSTIFY THE CREATIVE PROCESS,
AND EXPAND THE BOUNDARIES OF WHAT IT MEANS TO BE CREATIVE.
SUBSCRIBE / FOLLOW US ON SPOTIFY, APPLE PODCASTS, YOUTUBE
OR WHEREVER YOU GET YOUR PODCASTS
EPISODE 115: THE POWER OF PLAY - CREATIVITY, PLAY & EMBODIMENT
WITH DR. TAMARA RUSSELL
LISTEN TO THE FULL AUDIO EPISODE HERE:
WATCH THE FULL VIDEO VERSION HERE:
Dr. Tamara Russell is a clinical psychologist, neuroscientist, martial artist and mindfulness trainer. She works as an academic and clinician, exploring the use of embodied mindfulness in the work of transformation and self-development. Tamara is involved in international collaborations looking at how mindfulness training changes the structure and function of the brain. She is the Director of the Mindfulness Centre of Excellence, London, an organization dedicated to the wider dissemination of mindfulness, with a particular focus on innovation in the delivery of mindfulness across a variety of sectors and populations. In this episode, we discuss the importance of play and embodiment in learning, innovation, and personal development.
For our Creativity Pro-Tip, we encourage you to turn your daily to-do list into a compassionate to-to list, emphasizing gratitude and self-care. It might just change your whole relationship to your daily rhythm and workflow!
Credits: The Syncreate podcast is created and hosted by Melinda Rothouse, and produced at Record ATX studios with in collaboration Michael Osborne and 14th Street Studios in Austin, Texas. Syncreate logo design by Dreux Carpenter.
If you enjoy this episode and want to learn more about the creative process in a variety of contexts,
you might also like our conversations in:
Episode 2: Embodiment and Creativity with Thais Bicalho Silva
Episode 62: The Neuroscience of Creativity with Dr. Indre Viskontas
Episode 113: Music Mindfulness and Healing with Dr. AZA Allsop
At Syncreate, we're here to support your creative endeavors. If you have an idea for a project or a new venture, and you’re not sure how to get it off the ground, find us at syncreate.org. Our book, also called Syncreate, walks you through the stages of the creative process so you can take action on your creative goals. We also offer resources, creative process tools, and coaching to help you bring your work to the world. You can find more information on our website, where you can also find all of our podcast episodes.
Find and connect with us on social media and YouTube under Syncreate.
If you enjoy the show, please subscribe and leave us a review!
We’d love to hear your feedback as well, so drop us a line at [email protected].
For our Creativity Pro-Tip, we encourage you to turn your daily to-do list into a compassionate to-to list, emphasizing gratitude and self-care. It might just change your whole relationship to your daily rhythm and workflow!
Credits: The Syncreate podcast is created and hosted by Melinda Rothouse, and produced at Record ATX studios with in collaboration Michael Osborne and 14th Street Studios in Austin, Texas. Syncreate logo design by Dreux Carpenter.
If you enjoy this episode and want to learn more about the creative process in a variety of contexts,
you might also like our conversations in:
Episode 2: Embodiment and Creativity with Thais Bicalho Silva
Episode 62: The Neuroscience of Creativity with Dr. Indre Viskontas
Episode 113: Music Mindfulness and Healing with Dr. AZA Allsop
At Syncreate, we're here to support your creative endeavors. If you have an idea for a project or a new venture, and you’re not sure how to get it off the ground, find us at syncreate.org. Our book, also called Syncreate, walks you through the stages of the creative process so you can take action on your creative goals. We also offer resources, creative process tools, and coaching to help you bring your work to the world. You can find more information on our website, where you can also find all of our podcast episodes.
Find and connect with us on social media and YouTube under Syncreate.
If you enjoy the show, please subscribe and leave us a review!
We’d love to hear your feedback as well, so drop us a line at [email protected].
EPISODE-SPECIFIC HYPERLINKS
EPISODE TRANSCRIPT
Melinda: Creativity and community are absolutely vital in challenging times. Welcome to Syncreate, a show where we explore the intersections between creativity, psychology and spirituality. We believe everyone has the capacity to create. Our goal is to demystify the process and expand the boundaries of what it means to be creative. We talk with visionaries and changemakers, and everyday creatives working in a wide range of fields and media - from the arts to science, technology and business. We aim to illuminate the creative process, from imagination to innovation and everything in between. I'm Melinda Rothouse and I help individuals and organizations bring their dreams and visions to life.
At Syncreate, we’re here to support your creative endeavors. So if you have an idea for a project or a new venture and you're not quite sure how to get it off the ground, find us at syncreate.org. Our book, also called Syncreate, now available in both print and audiobook format, walks you through the stages of the creative process so you can take action on your goals. We also offer resources, creative process tools, and coaching to help you bring your work to the world.
My guest today is Dr. Tamara Russell. She's a clinical psychologist, neuroscientist, martial artist, and mindfulness trainer. She works as an academic and clinician, exploring the use of embodied mindfulness in the work of transformation and self-development. Tamara is involved in international collaborations, looking at how mindfulness training changes the structure and function of the brain. She is the director of the Mindfulness Center of Excellence in London, an organization dedicated to the wider dissemination of mindfulness, with a particular focus on innovation in the delivery of mindfulness across a variety of sectors and populations.
Welcome everyone, back to the Syncreate podcast, and I'm so delighted to be with Dr. Russell today, coming in from the UK. And our kind of focus… we had so many great brainstorms right before we actually came to today, but kind of settled on the topic of sort of the power of play, and the connections between creativity, embodiment and play. And I know you've straddle so many different worlds and different disciplines. So, excited to delve into these topics.
And so, you know, we know from the research - and I think, probably most of us from our own experience as well - that play and creativity are deeply interconnected and often when I lead, you know, creative workshops or retreats or things like that, the invitation is to return to play. Because as adults, so many of us have kind of lost that a little bit. So, like, going back to being a kid again and experimenting. And so much of that, as I can tell, I'm making all these movements, right? It's an embodied kind of experience.
So, Dr. Russell, tell us more about, you know, how you kind of see this intersection between creativity, embodiment and play, and what's salient there?
Dr. Tamara: Yeah, I think you're right. There's something about the developmental pathway, and how we play as children, and where does that get lost? And why is it that as adults, we'll be so reticent? And I suppose I'm mindful, you know, even in very dire circumstances, children will play.
Melinda: Yes.
Dr. Tamara: So, there's something very kind of innate there around the process of play as part of our development. And essentially, I see play - the function of play - as a safe space to start to explore a relationship to the world where, you know, in theory, there's not right or wrong. And, you know, it's the very act of doing it, that is rewarding. It's not so much the outcome. And so, thinking about it in those terms, the value of play for adults. And if we're thinking about innovation, for example, in any sector… but, you know, in the business sector, they’re quite interested in innovation, aren't they?
We want to think about play as this opportunity, as a safe space to make mistakes, to test things out, to have some different hypotheses about which things fit together, and can that stick go in that, you know, tire over there? (Laughter) And, you know, how do these objects relate to each other? How do I relate to the different objects? And I remember sort of way back when - I can't remember which company it was - but in order to kind of help some of the employees get over the fear of AI, they hired a director of play.
Melinda: Lovely.
Dr. Tamara: And her job was, I think it was to get accountants to play. (Laughter) Which I have to say, was probably quite a tricky task.
Melinda: Yeah. Exactly.
Dr. Tamara: But - how to get over the fear of the unknown by coming into this more playful mode?
Melinda: Yes.
Dr. Tamara: Adults are reticent… a lot of adults are very reticent.
Melinda: Particularly in corporate settings, right? Where we tend to be so focused on, you know, deadlines and bottom line, things like that, that people/executives often don't feel there's room for play or time for play. And yet, we know it is so important in innovation.
Dr. Tamara: And you could think about the embodiment piece. So, I would say that play definitely, you know, involves this kind of physical interacting with objects.
Melinda: Yes.
Dr. Tamara: So, you know, often when I'm doing work with senior leadership, you know, even if I can't get them to, you know, enact of the body and do these kind of performing (laughter) exercises, you know, I'm going to get little bits of Lego or little popsicle sticks or just something that invites, you know, relating to objects or bringing an object into an embodied sensing. It might just be with the hands. If you can put it into the body, it's so much more powerful. But you're into that sort of performance edge there.
Adults see it as performance, and the judging monkeys, the comparison monkeys, the status monkeys all come, you know, roaring up into the mind space. And it takes a very skilled person to really create the psychological safety that can let, you know, a team of workmates really play together. Now, if you're running a retreat and you got more of that social contracting about you're going to do those things, you can probably go a bit deeper, a bit quicker. But there was a great study that came - I mean, it's really informed my work - from King's College London Neuroscience Department.
And they were neuroscience students, and half of the students sort of literally read the book about what is a neuron and, you know, how the neurons work. And the other half had to enact what the neural growth cone does during development.
Melinda: Wow.
Dr. Tamara: So, this is like, the head of the neuron (laughter) that’s sort of - I mean, literally they were doing this, you know. They had to figure out with their bodies, and they could have some props, like bits of paper… like, how does that neural growth, you know, find its way to make the connections that it needs to make in the developing brain? So essentially, they had two groups. Embodied learners, but more playful. And of course, the students were all falling on the floor laughing and having a super fun time.
And then the more sort of book learning. And the test of understanding was drawing a neuron. So they just kept it creative all the way through, which I love. And so they got, you know, students that had the book to draw, students that did embodied learning to draw. And they also got post-docs and lecturers to draw, and they did some kind of analysis. It was sort of like a qualitative analysis looking at how sophisticated the drawings of the neurons were. You know, how much, you know, depth did they have? It how much detail did they have?
And essentially, the students that learned through play and embodiment, drew neurons that suggested that understanding was more aligned to the post-docs and the lectures.
Melinda: Interesting. Yeah.
Dr. Tamara: So, I call this accelerating the learning and deepening the learning, when you have to put it in your body, because all these questions start to come that when you're just thinking about it, they're not there.
Melinda: Well, and it strikes me also that when you're just learning something from a book, and I mean, I study these things as well. And you see the shape of the neuron and, you know, the axon and all the things, you might be able to draw what you saw in the book, but in the embodied, situation, you're experiencing it from the perspective of the neuron, not just looking at it from the outside.
Dr. Tamara: Yeah. And I think… I saw it referred to as differentiated learning. I mean, I think across disciplines, probably there's lots of different language. And maybe you're kind of listeners and your viewers might be like, “Oh no, we do that in my discipline.” But, you know, I'm always open to discover more. But I heard this woman say - unfortunately I can't remember her name - and she said, you know, “It illuminates the questions you didn't know you needed it to.”
Melinda: Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. That makes sense.
Dr. Tamara: So that's one part of it. That's the deepening the curiosity and deepening the learning. And then the other project, which I love, I love it so much - again, you can look this up - is something called Dance Your PhD.
Melinda: Okay. Love it.
Dr. Tamara: And it's… there's a guy - John Bonham, I think his name is - he did a Ted talk about it. And he basically said, you know, I'm trying to understand, you know, what is dynamic or fluid, something or other in physics, you know, some really complicated physics topic that if you were a non-specialist reading a book, it would be lost by sentence two.
Melinda: Sure.
Dr. Tamara: But he had dancers and he had a choreography of dancers behind him, showing with their bodies and showing with their movement, you know… well, when that atom heats up, it starts to disperse. And then when there's cooling, the atoms do this. And the bodies were like, moving. And I mean, obviously I can't quite remember it all, but I remember at the time just thinking, “I definitely understand this more than I ever thought I could.” (Laughter)
Melinda: Of course. Right. Right. Right.
Dr. Tamara: Given that it's a very complicated topic. So, he set up this challenge for students - Dance Your PhD - whereby you had to sort of show what your research was about in a 5 to 7 minute piece of choreography that you could either do yourself or you could get dancers to do. And it's so fascinating. Like, again, the student experience of trying to… like, does that dancer go there or does that one go there? And is that one behind or in front or underneath? Or on top or like, they move together? Or they… you know… so, suddenly all these relational dynamics come into play.
And then the second part is the person watching is like, I believe using these mechanisms of the perception of the human moving body, which are so developed in most human brains. Very, very developed. The intentionality, the relationships between body. It's like it's feeding our understanding through this different embodied route. And the final piece there is, some brains really like to learn like that.
Melinda: Yes. Right. Right. And it's giving me all kinds of thoughts about designing curricula and things. But yeah, I love that. And so, I know you also practice, and I think teach, also martial arts? And so, you know, how does that come into like… how does your training in these physical embodied - you also work with a lot with mindfulness - so, how does that inform, you know, your academic work? Your work within organizations and so forth?
Dr. Tamara: Well, I would… the answer is in a multi-layered way.
Melinda: Of course.
Dr. Tamara: So I'll try to again, just pick a few examples. I think there's some general philosophical principles from martial arts that are really great for leadership. And I was revisiting the other day, Arnold Mindell’s The Leader as Martial Artist book, which, I mean, I really love his work. I think he died a few years ago. But, you know, this was somebody that was rock solid with a multi and transdisciplinary approach. So, you know… and I often, my two quoting kind of sources are Bruce Lee and Kung Fu Panda. (Laughter)
Melinda: Yeah. Right.
Dr. Tamara: That brings the lightness to it. But it's interesting because often we know the quote, but then we don't know the core.
Melinda: What does that really mean? Yeah.
Dr. Tamara: What does it really mean? So, you know, there's some playful things that one can do there around you know, water can flow and it can crash. So, for example, I'm running something in London next week with executive education and we do an embodied exercise around how do we respond? Right. Whether it's to conflict or to a challenge. And so, we can respond in this kung fu way. With the like, yang… kind of really yang block… or how is it to respond? Same block, same movement, same intention, but the ‘how’ has changed.
Melinda: And such a difference in the energy right of these two. You know, one is more aggressive and kind of the movements - I'm trying to describe for people who might be listening and not seeing the video - but, you know, just kind of the fist and the sharp movements. Right? Versus that more Tai Chi/Qigong kind of flowing, soft movement. Yeah. And what a difference energetically that makes in any given situation.
Dr. Tamara: Yeah. And for leadership… or for anybody really… it’s about cognitive flexibility and choice. And so within that, we start to notice, well, what's my preference? What's my habit? What was my conditioning? What my preference was. And then what's my choice, is where we begin to develop that cognitive flexibility. And I do sometimes make that link with, you know, just as we might aspire to physical flexibility, particularly as we age, we want to keep up with the stretching. And we want to, you know, do just a lightweight training.
Not too much. But we want to keep the body flexible and moving. So, it is with our brain and with the neural pathways. You know, there is this kind of tendency towards rigidity and sinking into habitual ways of being in the world as we age. And maybe there's the invitation to maintain playfulness. In order to keep that neuroplasticity alive.
Melinda: Yes.
Dr. Tamara: But it's not easy, right? Because your brain is always looking for these shortcuts. (Laughter)
Melinda: Definitely. Definitely. But I mean, you know, it’s also making a case for, you know, as we get older to keep trying new things and keep exploring and keep playing. Right? Not just get kind of into the same routines all the time and so forth. Yeah.
Dr. Tamara: Yeah. And I mean, you asked about the mindfulness piece… I mean, I've been working for many years on a program called Body and Mind Training.
Melinda: Yes.
Dr. Tamara: It started in sort of 2010 as I was coming out of my academic research. I just finished my clinical doctorate, and I was initially… I was investigating how can my learnings from martial arts and tai chi be of use for the clients I was working with at that time with, sort of the more severe and enduring (what we call here in England), severe and enduring mental health. Not a very nice name, but, you know, these are the sort of the more chronic conditions, maybe like schizophrenia or bipolar, not just sort of a quick depression that you might get over, but, you know, this is probably something you're going to be managing for your life, you know?
So, how do we find ways to, you know, particularly get back to the body when the mind is getting a bit big and a bit fruity? You know, how do we get back into the body? And how do we start to play with that body/mind relationship in a way that maybe can help those who are having very intense or intrusive thoughts, and very intense experiences in the body. So, that was really the starting point. And then, you know, Mindfulness in Motion is the book that sort of lays that out. But it was this combination of the moving body, sort of drawing on some Tai Chi practices because they're just beautiful movements.
But then really coming in a little bit more with this pincer maneuver, which is, you know, movement sensations creating something for the mind to hold on to, but then very deliberately tuning it in. So you’ve got that attentional top down piece going on, and you’ve got the moving body, the bottom up. So… and it just works really, really well. (Laughter) And the worst case scenario is you've moved your body and you're feeling quite good. And the best case scenario is you're moving your body, you’re feeling good, you’re developing body awareness, you’re starting to train inhibitory networks of the brain, which is great for self control.
Attention networks of the brain. And, you know, of course, you're discovering so much about yourself when you really study your body and your posture, and the subtleties of approach/avoid.
Melinda: Yes.
Dr. Tamara: You know, it's happening all the time, you know… so much happening in the body. So you can go from just very sort of superficial like, “Oh my gosh, that feels amazing…”, to just, do that shoulder roll. Right? To, you know, a full understanding of your emotional intelligence through the expression of stress and emotion in the shoulders. (Laughter)
Melinda: Right. Right. Yeah. And that makes me think about, you know, how much stimuli we're all taking in all the time. And, you know, we can only attend to so much at any given time. But the body feels it all and senses it all, and holds a lot of things. And so, just like, as you say, just doing the shoulder roll or the mindful breath or shifting position… the more we can become aware of what is happening in our body and being able to connect with that and feel that and then articulate it also, is so important, right? Yeah.
Dr. Tamara: And I think there’s gradients and like, I think it's Christine Caldwell’s Bodyfulness is a wonderful book and she's really synthesized things very beautifully. She's got a number of videos on YouTube that people can search for Bodyfulness and she talks about this dichotomy. It's not really a dichotomy - maybe it's a continuum - or moving and being moved. And I love this because, you know, we've got kind of willful agency, goal directed movements that could be the forms or the Kata from martial arts or, you know, dance choreography and things like that.
And then somewhere over here you've got, you know, I am being moved or something moves me. More emergent where you might be finding some of the more somatic psychotherapies or dance psychotherapies or free movements or… and then maybe kind of five rhythms, it's sort of somewhere in the middle, isn't it? There's a bit of structure but you're encouraged to flow.
Melinda: Yes.
Dr. Tamara: And, you know, the pinnacle of martial arts, of course, is those to me. You know, you do the structural training and you do it to such a degree that then when you need it, you're in full flow, right? So I think the idea maybe, is somewhere in the middle is that sweet spot of, you know, a trained body that lets go. (Laughter)
Melinda: Yeah. Right. Right. Knowing when and how to let go is so important. Yeah. And I think this conversation is also kind of sparking for me - and we've talked about this in some of our conversations leading up to today, and also something I've been exploring and very interested in as well - is this, you know, especially in these times, of course, you know, questions of power and empowerment, right? And how, you know, some of these physical practices and body awareness can also help us connect with our sense of agency and empowerment. Right? So…
Dr. Tamara: Yeah. I mean, I think I've sort of got a quote that holds the thousands of things, like what I do on my social media, but it's something like, you know, “Never underestimate the power of a small intentional movement.”
Melinda: Yeah.
Dr. Tamara: You know, particularly when everything feels out of control. We feel like we're just being swept along, whether it's by sort of social media or that sort of information overload, and just cognitive load and tasks. And, you know, when we feel out of control, you know, again, (laughter) just the tiny small shoulder roll. It can be so powerful and there's, you know, underneath the brain's movement system - or I would say deeply connected to the brain's movement system - is this network of agency and intentionality.
And, you know, this is how I'm choosing my movements. And so, the control of movement is directly related to the control of consciousness.
Melinda: Absolutely. And this makes me think about how, you know, traditional education was “Sit still and be quiet”. Right? And now we're talking about experiential learning and getting into the body. But, you know, controlling people's movement is a way of controlling people's experience, and even thinking. Right?
Dr. Tamara: Yeah. And I mean, thinking about… I mean, my example is from North America, but I'm sure there's others, you know… the control of movement of Indigenous and First Nations people -
Melinda: Of course. Of course.
Dr. Tamara: - Is a very macro level example of that. Yeah. A more micro level might be, you know, sit still in the classroom or, I don't know, 15 minute sittings. (Laughter) So, you know, these sorts of things. Yeah. Which will be new to some of us… like this idea that I don't have freedom. And of course, we're extremely privileged, as you know, who we are and where we were born, that we've experienced that. And I'm aware that, you know, there's many women certainly in the world that don't have that. But those are the freedoms that we must protect. (Laughter)
Melinda: Yes.
Dr. Tamara: But, you know, can we change the world with the shoulder roll? That's where I'm starting.
Melinda: You know, you’ve got to start somewhere, right? And anyway, we each have to start individually, also.
Dr. Tamara: But I worked with a client… I mean, he works in a sort of what we call in the UK, this Magic Circle law firms, these sort of top five super, super duper law firms. And we were doing, you know, I start every session, you know, with an, you know, “Alert, relaxed posture, shoulder roll, maybe some dragon-y wings.” And we were just doing the shoulder and he was like, “Oh, gosh. This is so good. I really need to do this during the day. But I couldn't do this in the office. “ So, that's fascinating.
Melinda: Yes. Right. Like again, we have to do things in like, such controlled ways.
Dr. Tamara: Unseen kind of control mechanisms around what's appropriate, what’s allowed. And I mean, I wasn't saying like, “Sit on your desk and do a yoga pose.”
Melinda: Right? (Laughter)
Dr. Tamara: You know, but like, me suggesting a shoulder roll. Yeah. But in these environments where there's such a strong cultural - or maybe we could say a narrow bandwidth - of cultural…allowing people to move freely. Yeah. It's very interesting. And slightly scary. But, yeah, you're right. I mean, there’s a whole, pedagogy of how do we learn? Is one part. Explore and innovate is another part. You know, that's definitely part of the process, of course, when sitting still and cracking on is needed. (Laughter) I'm not saying we need to be jumping around like, all over the room, right?
Melinda: All the time, right? There's a time and place right? (Laughter)
Dr. Tamara: But some of those really forward thinking educators… I mean, they have essentially got, you know, boxes that you can climb up on the roof of the classroom and, you know, monkey bars in the classroom, and various things that kids can decide how their bodies want to be as they learn. And I mean, I always kind of do say, like, whenever I'm teaching, you know… online, it's a bit easier because everybody's sort of at home. Usually I say, “Look, if you need to be standing up for this, if you need to be wiggling around, if you need to, you know, do some jumping jacks, that's fine.”
And if it's a face to face, I say, you know, essentially like, “Don’t take the mickey, you know… don’t take the piss, right?” (Laughter) If you're going to… if your attention to what we're doing will be of a higher quality by getting… moving to the back of the classroom and sort of stretching a little bit, or opening their arms a little bit or walking, you know, please do that. You know, don't get up screaming and shouting and do cartwheels to the back of the classroom. But, you know, let's accommodate one another a little bit better, if we can. If we can.
Melinda: Definitely. Definitely. And that brings to mind also, I know you do a lot of work with, like adult ADHD and different strategies related to, you know, creativity and play and so forth… you know, to accommodate, you know, kind of neurodivergent ways of being. Right? So tell us a little more about that.
Dr. Tamara: Well, and there… I mean, what I've also found is they're good for ADHD. Well, they may be necessary for ADHD brains, but they're good for all.
Melinda: Of course. Of course. Right.
Dr. Tamara: Yeah. I mean, the main one is… I think, a top tip I would say is if you can have multiple workspaces. Because I can reset my brain by changing, moving from this, my kind of office space to another space. And if I notice that my attention is flagging or I'm moving to a particular kind of task, you know, literally just physically moving my body.
Melinda: And changing into a different environment. Yeah.
Dr. Tamara: Because I really feel my extended cognition. It feels very porous for me. You know, I'm kind of sensitive to the environment. When I can it changes, it can help to change my state. I've got things like - we did this on the weekend - weights while you're waiting. So, down in like… I work from home so, you know, down in my kitchen, I've got right literally next to the kettle, my two weights. And when I'm boiling the kettle for my coffee, I'm just there doing some, you know, mindful little bits of weight lifting and, you know, just small things.
I mean, not to get sweaty or anything, but, you know, using weights really can be a good way to increase the mindfulness because you're increasing the sensation just from the small strain. Small strain. Not crazy. The other one is, I think, many parents of children with ADHD, you know, I've got a movement mat. So essentially, again, down in my kitchen, I've got a yoga mat on the floor by the breakfast bar. And anytime I cross over that mat? I have to do some movement.
Melinda: I love it. I love it. (Laughter)
Dr. Tamara: And I did something with a parent once and she said, “Well, we haven't got a mat and that feels like a bit of a tripping hazard.” So she put bits of tape down. So, whenever the kids or anybody in the family like, crossed over this bit of green tape… and by the time they got to the next bit of green tape. And that worked really well because she could move it around.
Melinda: Oh, yeah.
Dr. Tamara: The novelty. To keep the normal space that you need, that was like, a little movement space. And the kids had to do a little, you know, ten jumping jacks or something like that.
Melinda: So it's a great reminder. Yeah. And it strikes me too, you know, when you're talking about the weights… you know, I noticed this when for example, like, I go on a walk because I'm trying to get my steps and get my exercise in, versus when I just, you know, happen to get a bunch of steps. And because I'm out doing functional movement, you know, so the weights, you know, rather than, “Okay. This is my time to go to the gym.”
And I may or may not make it that day. But if it's right in the kitchen next to the kettle and you just pick them up and do a few rounds, you know. Or just even one round, several times a day, you know, it gets in there, right?
Dr. Tamara: Well, yeah. It’s the little and often. Yeah. And if you, again, if you might hark back, I think some of it's a bit romanticized and idealized, but you know, the agricultural sort of old human way. (Laughter)
Melinda: Or where people were living all day long.
Dr. Tamara: Yeah. Slow and steady. And you were moving. And you might move from one task to another. You know, even the idea of the gym is sort of coming into question. You know, as a model for fitness and health. Not only what you do in the gym, but also just not doing bursts. Right? I think it's age related too, probably. I mean, you know, I love those crazy training, like, hours and hours of training in the Kung Fu, you know.
And then just collapsing for 2 or 3 hours afterwards. I mean, that was amazing. But you mentioned about walking, and I think where the mindfulness comes in is, is the intention behind the movement, you know, is the intention to pay attention to the moving body? Is the intention to pay attention to the breath? Is the intention to pay attention to sounds? Is the intention to be present with movement as a whole? I mean, there's so many variations of -
Melinda: And that can change the quality of the experience. Like, I have some spinal injuries. And, you know, I work with a physical therapist who's also a Feldenkrais practitioner. And, you know, she'll give me little exercises to do and things and like, you know, when I'm walking… like, I tried this, you know, for the past few days when I was walking, either to try and be really mindful about my posture, versus like, another day, I was like, I'm just going to let myself be completely natural. And what you're placing your attention on at any given time does affect your experience. Of course. Yeah.
Dr. Tamara: Well, I love running. And again, on my list of a thousand things that I want to do… but I probably will get around to it this year. This idea of, you know, it could be like, ten steps or it could be a certain part of the run (like the bit from my house to out of the village, or from the road at where I go up to the forest, you know, a segment of the run), I try to set the intention. You know, this part, I'm feeling feet. I want to hear the sound of the feet. I want to be feeling the feet, noticing the weight shifting. Noticing maybe a little bit… I mean, even length.
You’ve gone into something else, but because you're going into leg there, but, you know, feeling the feet, then I'm almost like, doing a, what we would call a traditional body scan, but on the run, you know. Now I'm on the breath. Now I'm tuning in to sounds, you know, with or without music, you know. Of course, because that's a whole other level. But it's kind of like, a mindful run where I'm selecting different focused attention objects. And it's so interesting to do that. But then there's also a beautiful moment when you say “Release all effort.”
Melinda: Yes. Yeah. And how freeing that is.
Dr. Tamara: That, you know, where do I land in the body then? Where does awareness land in the body then?
Melinda: Yes. And just the concept, I think, in these times. (Laughter) In this day and age, of releasing all effort. That’s radical.
Dr. Tamara: Again, so many people are sending me books and things. I think there's a book called Rest is Resistance.And maybe there's a particular piece around the feminine there, you know, the doing less and being more. But it's the paradox, isn't it? And woo. That woo way… woo way encourages us to step back into the willingness and into the surrender. But I think it's a mistake to think that that doesn't require training. So, there you've always got that yin yang balancing.
Melinda: Exactly. Exactly.
Dr. Tamara: Because the sort of untrained woo way is kind of just like, it could be bypassing -
Melinda: Totally. Loosey-goosey. Yeah.
Dr. Tamara: So, I love it. And how and where… how I find that in my body. That, you know, Tai Chi invites us to a lot. And kind of, I'm sort of like, shimmying a little bit to kind of get my body upright and slightly dropping the chin, and we imagine donkey ears. Little, long donkey is pulling up to the sky. I'm alert in the spine. The spine is alert, but then I'm soft everywhere else. I drop. And everything needs to just hang off the skeleton. And so, I'm not alert alert like a soldier, because then I'm going to get really tired.
Melinda: You're so tense, right? Yeah. Absolutely. It takes a lot of energy. Yeah.
Dr. Tamara: And I'm not too relaxed like a surfer because then I'm not really in it. I have to have this quality of inside, I'm a soldier, but outside I'm a surfer.
Melinda: Yeah, I love that. Like the Buddha said, “Not too tight, not too loose.” Right? And even in meditation, having that sense of, you know, upright posture. But then, I've heard the analogy of like, you know, allowing the body to relax like clothes on a rack or on a hanger, right? And, you know, the skeleton is the structure. And then we can relax within that. Yeah. Beautiful.
Well, this has been such a lovely conversation. We've gone so many places. So I usually like to bring things to a close with what I call a Creativity Pro Tip, and something that people can take and try out in their own. And I think we've already had many examples in our conversation today of things people could try. But, you know, for somebody who's maybe beginning to explore their embodiment or wants to find a way to come back to play, do you have like, a really good kind of go-to exercise that you might share?
Dr. Tamara: Well, I mean, I just… it's always like, trying to think too many. (Laughter) I mean, I think there's, you know, a really quick one I would say is, you know, a good relaxed posture and a shoulder roll. It sounds simple, but you'd be surprised (laughter) at how much you might forget to do that. But, you know, if you can do that throughout the day. I mean, if you're spending a long time sitting at your desk, these are like, improvements that you can make while you're sitting still.
Melinda: Absolutely. Yeah.
Dr. Tamara: You know, let's start with where we're at. Which is we are often sitting in front of our computers. You know, then I've given a few tips, you know, maybe setting some timers to get up and have a walk, maybe thinking, what are the meetings I can do while I can walk? Can I do any walk-and-talk meetings? So, when I'm doing line management, I'm always on the lookout for what meeting can we do walk-and-talk? (Laughter) So, you know… and that leads me to, you know, one of the things that saves my life every day is this compassionate to do list.
Melinda: Yes. Yes. I love that.
Dr. Tamara: And so, it's really to help the ADHD brain get organized. But as I go to this compassionate to do list, I set my intention. I write in big letters up at the top “Ease and Kindness.” That was the one that I wanted. But you could find more here. And, you know, ease and kindness. Sometimes I put (Focus). (Laughter) But what’s actually more important for me is ease and kindness at this point. For me, ease and kindness. Then I'm starting to plan my day and I'm trying to look for places where I can either… you know, I know this person is going to be able to, you know, accommodate shoulder rolls. Like, this person, don’t bother, you know? (Laughter)
Melinda: Right. Right.
Dr. Tamara: You know, who's acclimatized to it? Who isn't? I'm looking for moments when I can do what I call these greens. Which is, activating the rest and digest system, the soothing system of the brain to give me these little micro pauses and micro resets. And I'm also mapping, like, you know, what are the things that are going to be difficult? What am I avoiding? What am I procrastinating? So there's kind of like, a color system that's linked to the motivational systems of the brain, from somebody by Professor Paul Gilbert.
And, you know, when we're at work, we're in this kind of blue mode, getting things done, and we get so involved in it that we lose track of the body. We don't notice the shoulders coming up. And then somebody annoys us. We get a difficult email at work. It’s all adding and adding. (Laughter) It's almost like color coding through the day. You know, looking for opportunities. And it's the little and often. Because, you know, I mean, it'd be great if I could, you know, if I could walk every day or if I could, you know, do X or Y, or loads of things we know are good for us. But the reality is they often take, you know, three hours or more, including going to the gym.
Melinda: Right. Which we may not have, so -
Dr. Tamara: So, what have you got that takes 3 minutes or 3 seconds? You know, you have got the shoulder roll, right? I mean three and two would be a lovely slow shoulder roll.
Melinda: Absolutely. I'm gonna do it right now.
Dr. Tamara: Yes!
Melinda: That’s so good. I love the Compassionate To-Do List. And I think it's a great antidote to, you know, the traditional To-Do List where it's just like, all the things and we can get overwhelmed by it. So, like, building in those moments of relaxation, intentional, you know, breaks. Movement, mindful breathing, whatever it might be. Love that. Great. Well, it's been such a pleasure. And if people want to learn more about you, what you're up to, your work, your publications, what are the best ways for people to find you?
Dr. Tamara: Yeah, you can find me at thedragonacademy.co.uk.
Melinda: Great.
Dr. Tamara: Which is sort of, I mean, it's been a heart project of mine for some years now, but my creative ADHD brain just keeps wandering off and doing other things (laughter), so it's taken me quite a lot longer than I initially thought. But it is now a place where I'm building an online community, essentially of people that want to do mindfulness differently. So whether you're a regular ADHD person or just really creative, or a bit of a rebel, you don't want to sit still, you know, I'm just building in all my resources. And we have some live sessions, and some different activities there as well throughout the year.
Melinda: Wonderful.
Dr. Tamara: So that's thedragonacademy.co.uk. And I'm at @drtamararussell on Instagram. Again, trying to find mindful ways to use social media. (Laughter) It’s a real challenge. But occasionally, I mean, when I'm having fun, I like it. But that's sometimes the downside of playing too much. It’s like, my strategy goes by. My carefully designed social media strategy goes out the window because I'm just having too much fun posting things that are like, taking my fancy. (Laughter)
Melinda: It’s always a balance, right?
Dr. Tamara: Yeah. Yeah.
Melinda: Well, thank you so much. It's been such a pleasure. And, yeah, well, perhaps we'll have a chance to talk and meet again.
Dr. Tamara: Yeah. Thank you so much.
Melinda: Absolutely.
Dr. Tamara: Yeah. And I really, really appreciate your work. And I've been sharing some of your podcasts -
Melinda: Thank you.
Dr. Tamara: - with my Dragon Warriors crew, and pointing them to your episodes so, yeah. Please receive my appreciation.
Melinda: Yes. Thank you. I appreciate that so much. Find and connect with us on YouTube and social media under @syncreate. If you enjoy the show, please subscribe and leave us a review. We're recording today at Record ATX Studios in Austin, with Dr. Russell joining us from the UK. The podcast is produced in collaboration with Mike Osborne at 14th Street Studios. Thanks so much for being with us and see you next time.
At Syncreate, we’re here to support your creative endeavors. So if you have an idea for a project or a new venture and you're not quite sure how to get it off the ground, find us at syncreate.org. Our book, also called Syncreate, now available in both print and audiobook format, walks you through the stages of the creative process so you can take action on your goals. We also offer resources, creative process tools, and coaching to help you bring your work to the world.
My guest today is Dr. Tamara Russell. She's a clinical psychologist, neuroscientist, martial artist, and mindfulness trainer. She works as an academic and clinician, exploring the use of embodied mindfulness in the work of transformation and self-development. Tamara is involved in international collaborations, looking at how mindfulness training changes the structure and function of the brain. She is the director of the Mindfulness Center of Excellence in London, an organization dedicated to the wider dissemination of mindfulness, with a particular focus on innovation in the delivery of mindfulness across a variety of sectors and populations.
Welcome everyone, back to the Syncreate podcast, and I'm so delighted to be with Dr. Russell today, coming in from the UK. And our kind of focus… we had so many great brainstorms right before we actually came to today, but kind of settled on the topic of sort of the power of play, and the connections between creativity, embodiment and play. And I know you've straddle so many different worlds and different disciplines. So, excited to delve into these topics.
And so, you know, we know from the research - and I think, probably most of us from our own experience as well - that play and creativity are deeply interconnected and often when I lead, you know, creative workshops or retreats or things like that, the invitation is to return to play. Because as adults, so many of us have kind of lost that a little bit. So, like, going back to being a kid again and experimenting. And so much of that, as I can tell, I'm making all these movements, right? It's an embodied kind of experience.
So, Dr. Russell, tell us more about, you know, how you kind of see this intersection between creativity, embodiment and play, and what's salient there?
Dr. Tamara: Yeah, I think you're right. There's something about the developmental pathway, and how we play as children, and where does that get lost? And why is it that as adults, we'll be so reticent? And I suppose I'm mindful, you know, even in very dire circumstances, children will play.
Melinda: Yes.
Dr. Tamara: So, there's something very kind of innate there around the process of play as part of our development. And essentially, I see play - the function of play - as a safe space to start to explore a relationship to the world where, you know, in theory, there's not right or wrong. And, you know, it's the very act of doing it, that is rewarding. It's not so much the outcome. And so, thinking about it in those terms, the value of play for adults. And if we're thinking about innovation, for example, in any sector… but, you know, in the business sector, they’re quite interested in innovation, aren't they?
We want to think about play as this opportunity, as a safe space to make mistakes, to test things out, to have some different hypotheses about which things fit together, and can that stick go in that, you know, tire over there? (Laughter) And, you know, how do these objects relate to each other? How do I relate to the different objects? And I remember sort of way back when - I can't remember which company it was - but in order to kind of help some of the employees get over the fear of AI, they hired a director of play.
Melinda: Lovely.
Dr. Tamara: And her job was, I think it was to get accountants to play. (Laughter) Which I have to say, was probably quite a tricky task.
Melinda: Yeah. Exactly.
Dr. Tamara: But - how to get over the fear of the unknown by coming into this more playful mode?
Melinda: Yes.
Dr. Tamara: Adults are reticent… a lot of adults are very reticent.
Melinda: Particularly in corporate settings, right? Where we tend to be so focused on, you know, deadlines and bottom line, things like that, that people/executives often don't feel there's room for play or time for play. And yet, we know it is so important in innovation.
Dr. Tamara: And you could think about the embodiment piece. So, I would say that play definitely, you know, involves this kind of physical interacting with objects.
Melinda: Yes.
Dr. Tamara: So, you know, often when I'm doing work with senior leadership, you know, even if I can't get them to, you know, enact of the body and do these kind of performing (laughter) exercises, you know, I'm going to get little bits of Lego or little popsicle sticks or just something that invites, you know, relating to objects or bringing an object into an embodied sensing. It might just be with the hands. If you can put it into the body, it's so much more powerful. But you're into that sort of performance edge there.
Adults see it as performance, and the judging monkeys, the comparison monkeys, the status monkeys all come, you know, roaring up into the mind space. And it takes a very skilled person to really create the psychological safety that can let, you know, a team of workmates really play together. Now, if you're running a retreat and you got more of that social contracting about you're going to do those things, you can probably go a bit deeper, a bit quicker. But there was a great study that came - I mean, it's really informed my work - from King's College London Neuroscience Department.
And they were neuroscience students, and half of the students sort of literally read the book about what is a neuron and, you know, how the neurons work. And the other half had to enact what the neural growth cone does during development.
Melinda: Wow.
Dr. Tamara: So, this is like, the head of the neuron (laughter) that’s sort of - I mean, literally they were doing this, you know. They had to figure out with their bodies, and they could have some props, like bits of paper… like, how does that neural growth, you know, find its way to make the connections that it needs to make in the developing brain? So essentially, they had two groups. Embodied learners, but more playful. And of course, the students were all falling on the floor laughing and having a super fun time.
And then the more sort of book learning. And the test of understanding was drawing a neuron. So they just kept it creative all the way through, which I love. And so they got, you know, students that had the book to draw, students that did embodied learning to draw. And they also got post-docs and lecturers to draw, and they did some kind of analysis. It was sort of like a qualitative analysis looking at how sophisticated the drawings of the neurons were. You know, how much, you know, depth did they have? It how much detail did they have?
And essentially, the students that learned through play and embodiment, drew neurons that suggested that understanding was more aligned to the post-docs and the lectures.
Melinda: Interesting. Yeah.
Dr. Tamara: So, I call this accelerating the learning and deepening the learning, when you have to put it in your body, because all these questions start to come that when you're just thinking about it, they're not there.
Melinda: Well, and it strikes me also that when you're just learning something from a book, and I mean, I study these things as well. And you see the shape of the neuron and, you know, the axon and all the things, you might be able to draw what you saw in the book, but in the embodied, situation, you're experiencing it from the perspective of the neuron, not just looking at it from the outside.
Dr. Tamara: Yeah. And I think… I saw it referred to as differentiated learning. I mean, I think across disciplines, probably there's lots of different language. And maybe you're kind of listeners and your viewers might be like, “Oh no, we do that in my discipline.” But, you know, I'm always open to discover more. But I heard this woman say - unfortunately I can't remember her name - and she said, you know, “It illuminates the questions you didn't know you needed it to.”
Melinda: Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. That makes sense.
Dr. Tamara: So that's one part of it. That's the deepening the curiosity and deepening the learning. And then the other project, which I love, I love it so much - again, you can look this up - is something called Dance Your PhD.
Melinda: Okay. Love it.
Dr. Tamara: And it's… there's a guy - John Bonham, I think his name is - he did a Ted talk about it. And he basically said, you know, I'm trying to understand, you know, what is dynamic or fluid, something or other in physics, you know, some really complicated physics topic that if you were a non-specialist reading a book, it would be lost by sentence two.
Melinda: Sure.
Dr. Tamara: But he had dancers and he had a choreography of dancers behind him, showing with their bodies and showing with their movement, you know… well, when that atom heats up, it starts to disperse. And then when there's cooling, the atoms do this. And the bodies were like, moving. And I mean, obviously I can't quite remember it all, but I remember at the time just thinking, “I definitely understand this more than I ever thought I could.” (Laughter)
Melinda: Of course. Right. Right. Right.
Dr. Tamara: Given that it's a very complicated topic. So, he set up this challenge for students - Dance Your PhD - whereby you had to sort of show what your research was about in a 5 to 7 minute piece of choreography that you could either do yourself or you could get dancers to do. And it's so fascinating. Like, again, the student experience of trying to… like, does that dancer go there or does that one go there? And is that one behind or in front or underneath? Or on top or like, they move together? Or they… you know… so, suddenly all these relational dynamics come into play.
And then the second part is the person watching is like, I believe using these mechanisms of the perception of the human moving body, which are so developed in most human brains. Very, very developed. The intentionality, the relationships between body. It's like it's feeding our understanding through this different embodied route. And the final piece there is, some brains really like to learn like that.
Melinda: Yes. Right. Right. And it's giving me all kinds of thoughts about designing curricula and things. But yeah, I love that. And so, I know you also practice, and I think teach, also martial arts? And so, you know, how does that come into like… how does your training in these physical embodied - you also work with a lot with mindfulness - so, how does that inform, you know, your academic work? Your work within organizations and so forth?
Dr. Tamara: Well, I would… the answer is in a multi-layered way.
Melinda: Of course.
Dr. Tamara: So I'll try to again, just pick a few examples. I think there's some general philosophical principles from martial arts that are really great for leadership. And I was revisiting the other day, Arnold Mindell’s The Leader as Martial Artist book, which, I mean, I really love his work. I think he died a few years ago. But, you know, this was somebody that was rock solid with a multi and transdisciplinary approach. So, you know… and I often, my two quoting kind of sources are Bruce Lee and Kung Fu Panda. (Laughter)
Melinda: Yeah. Right.
Dr. Tamara: That brings the lightness to it. But it's interesting because often we know the quote, but then we don't know the core.
Melinda: What does that really mean? Yeah.
Dr. Tamara: What does it really mean? So, you know, there's some playful things that one can do there around you know, water can flow and it can crash. So, for example, I'm running something in London next week with executive education and we do an embodied exercise around how do we respond? Right. Whether it's to conflict or to a challenge. And so, we can respond in this kung fu way. With the like, yang… kind of really yang block… or how is it to respond? Same block, same movement, same intention, but the ‘how’ has changed.
Melinda: And such a difference in the energy right of these two. You know, one is more aggressive and kind of the movements - I'm trying to describe for people who might be listening and not seeing the video - but, you know, just kind of the fist and the sharp movements. Right? Versus that more Tai Chi/Qigong kind of flowing, soft movement. Yeah. And what a difference energetically that makes in any given situation.
Dr. Tamara: Yeah. And for leadership… or for anybody really… it’s about cognitive flexibility and choice. And so within that, we start to notice, well, what's my preference? What's my habit? What was my conditioning? What my preference was. And then what's my choice, is where we begin to develop that cognitive flexibility. And I do sometimes make that link with, you know, just as we might aspire to physical flexibility, particularly as we age, we want to keep up with the stretching. And we want to, you know, do just a lightweight training.
Not too much. But we want to keep the body flexible and moving. So, it is with our brain and with the neural pathways. You know, there is this kind of tendency towards rigidity and sinking into habitual ways of being in the world as we age. And maybe there's the invitation to maintain playfulness. In order to keep that neuroplasticity alive.
Melinda: Yes.
Dr. Tamara: But it's not easy, right? Because your brain is always looking for these shortcuts. (Laughter)
Melinda: Definitely. Definitely. But I mean, you know, it’s also making a case for, you know, as we get older to keep trying new things and keep exploring and keep playing. Right? Not just get kind of into the same routines all the time and so forth. Yeah.
Dr. Tamara: Yeah. And I mean, you asked about the mindfulness piece… I mean, I've been working for many years on a program called Body and Mind Training.
Melinda: Yes.
Dr. Tamara: It started in sort of 2010 as I was coming out of my academic research. I just finished my clinical doctorate, and I was initially… I was investigating how can my learnings from martial arts and tai chi be of use for the clients I was working with at that time with, sort of the more severe and enduring (what we call here in England), severe and enduring mental health. Not a very nice name, but, you know, these are the sort of the more chronic conditions, maybe like schizophrenia or bipolar, not just sort of a quick depression that you might get over, but, you know, this is probably something you're going to be managing for your life, you know?
So, how do we find ways to, you know, particularly get back to the body when the mind is getting a bit big and a bit fruity? You know, how do we get back into the body? And how do we start to play with that body/mind relationship in a way that maybe can help those who are having very intense or intrusive thoughts, and very intense experiences in the body. So, that was really the starting point. And then, you know, Mindfulness in Motion is the book that sort of lays that out. But it was this combination of the moving body, sort of drawing on some Tai Chi practices because they're just beautiful movements.
But then really coming in a little bit more with this pincer maneuver, which is, you know, movement sensations creating something for the mind to hold on to, but then very deliberately tuning it in. So you’ve got that attentional top down piece going on, and you’ve got the moving body, the bottom up. So… and it just works really, really well. (Laughter) And the worst case scenario is you've moved your body and you're feeling quite good. And the best case scenario is you're moving your body, you’re feeling good, you’re developing body awareness, you’re starting to train inhibitory networks of the brain, which is great for self control.
Attention networks of the brain. And, you know, of course, you're discovering so much about yourself when you really study your body and your posture, and the subtleties of approach/avoid.
Melinda: Yes.
Dr. Tamara: You know, it's happening all the time, you know… so much happening in the body. So you can go from just very sort of superficial like, “Oh my gosh, that feels amazing…”, to just, do that shoulder roll. Right? To, you know, a full understanding of your emotional intelligence through the expression of stress and emotion in the shoulders. (Laughter)
Melinda: Right. Right. Yeah. And that makes me think about, you know, how much stimuli we're all taking in all the time. And, you know, we can only attend to so much at any given time. But the body feels it all and senses it all, and holds a lot of things. And so, just like, as you say, just doing the shoulder roll or the mindful breath or shifting position… the more we can become aware of what is happening in our body and being able to connect with that and feel that and then articulate it also, is so important, right? Yeah.
Dr. Tamara: And I think there’s gradients and like, I think it's Christine Caldwell’s Bodyfulness is a wonderful book and she's really synthesized things very beautifully. She's got a number of videos on YouTube that people can search for Bodyfulness and she talks about this dichotomy. It's not really a dichotomy - maybe it's a continuum - or moving and being moved. And I love this because, you know, we've got kind of willful agency, goal directed movements that could be the forms or the Kata from martial arts or, you know, dance choreography and things like that.
And then somewhere over here you've got, you know, I am being moved or something moves me. More emergent where you might be finding some of the more somatic psychotherapies or dance psychotherapies or free movements or… and then maybe kind of five rhythms, it's sort of somewhere in the middle, isn't it? There's a bit of structure but you're encouraged to flow.
Melinda: Yes.
Dr. Tamara: And, you know, the pinnacle of martial arts, of course, is those to me. You know, you do the structural training and you do it to such a degree that then when you need it, you're in full flow, right? So I think the idea maybe, is somewhere in the middle is that sweet spot of, you know, a trained body that lets go. (Laughter)
Melinda: Yeah. Right. Right. Knowing when and how to let go is so important. Yeah. And I think this conversation is also kind of sparking for me - and we've talked about this in some of our conversations leading up to today, and also something I've been exploring and very interested in as well - is this, you know, especially in these times, of course, you know, questions of power and empowerment, right? And how, you know, some of these physical practices and body awareness can also help us connect with our sense of agency and empowerment. Right? So…
Dr. Tamara: Yeah. I mean, I think I've sort of got a quote that holds the thousands of things, like what I do on my social media, but it's something like, you know, “Never underestimate the power of a small intentional movement.”
Melinda: Yeah.
Dr. Tamara: You know, particularly when everything feels out of control. We feel like we're just being swept along, whether it's by sort of social media or that sort of information overload, and just cognitive load and tasks. And, you know, when we feel out of control, you know, again, (laughter) just the tiny small shoulder roll. It can be so powerful and there's, you know, underneath the brain's movement system - or I would say deeply connected to the brain's movement system - is this network of agency and intentionality.
And, you know, this is how I'm choosing my movements. And so, the control of movement is directly related to the control of consciousness.
Melinda: Absolutely. And this makes me think about how, you know, traditional education was “Sit still and be quiet”. Right? And now we're talking about experiential learning and getting into the body. But, you know, controlling people's movement is a way of controlling people's experience, and even thinking. Right?
Dr. Tamara: Yeah. And I mean, thinking about… I mean, my example is from North America, but I'm sure there's others, you know… the control of movement of Indigenous and First Nations people -
Melinda: Of course. Of course.
Dr. Tamara: - Is a very macro level example of that. Yeah. A more micro level might be, you know, sit still in the classroom or, I don't know, 15 minute sittings. (Laughter) So, you know, these sorts of things. Yeah. Which will be new to some of us… like this idea that I don't have freedom. And of course, we're extremely privileged, as you know, who we are and where we were born, that we've experienced that. And I'm aware that, you know, there's many women certainly in the world that don't have that. But those are the freedoms that we must protect. (Laughter)
Melinda: Yes.
Dr. Tamara: But, you know, can we change the world with the shoulder roll? That's where I'm starting.
Melinda: You know, you’ve got to start somewhere, right? And anyway, we each have to start individually, also.
Dr. Tamara: But I worked with a client… I mean, he works in a sort of what we call in the UK, this Magic Circle law firms, these sort of top five super, super duper law firms. And we were doing, you know, I start every session, you know, with an, you know, “Alert, relaxed posture, shoulder roll, maybe some dragon-y wings.” And we were just doing the shoulder and he was like, “Oh, gosh. This is so good. I really need to do this during the day. But I couldn't do this in the office. “ So, that's fascinating.
Melinda: Yes. Right. Like again, we have to do things in like, such controlled ways.
Dr. Tamara: Unseen kind of control mechanisms around what's appropriate, what’s allowed. And I mean, I wasn't saying like, “Sit on your desk and do a yoga pose.”
Melinda: Right? (Laughter)
Dr. Tamara: You know, but like, me suggesting a shoulder roll. Yeah. But in these environments where there's such a strong cultural - or maybe we could say a narrow bandwidth - of cultural…allowing people to move freely. Yeah. It's very interesting. And slightly scary. But, yeah, you're right. I mean, there’s a whole, pedagogy of how do we learn? Is one part. Explore and innovate is another part. You know, that's definitely part of the process, of course, when sitting still and cracking on is needed. (Laughter) I'm not saying we need to be jumping around like, all over the room, right?
Melinda: All the time, right? There's a time and place right? (Laughter)
Dr. Tamara: But some of those really forward thinking educators… I mean, they have essentially got, you know, boxes that you can climb up on the roof of the classroom and, you know, monkey bars in the classroom, and various things that kids can decide how their bodies want to be as they learn. And I mean, I always kind of do say, like, whenever I'm teaching, you know… online, it's a bit easier because everybody's sort of at home. Usually I say, “Look, if you need to be standing up for this, if you need to be wiggling around, if you need to, you know, do some jumping jacks, that's fine.”
And if it's a face to face, I say, you know, essentially like, “Don’t take the mickey, you know… don’t take the piss, right?” (Laughter) If you're going to… if your attention to what we're doing will be of a higher quality by getting… moving to the back of the classroom and sort of stretching a little bit, or opening their arms a little bit or walking, you know, please do that. You know, don't get up screaming and shouting and do cartwheels to the back of the classroom. But, you know, let's accommodate one another a little bit better, if we can. If we can.
Melinda: Definitely. Definitely. And that brings to mind also, I know you do a lot of work with, like adult ADHD and different strategies related to, you know, creativity and play and so forth… you know, to accommodate, you know, kind of neurodivergent ways of being. Right? So tell us a little more about that.
Dr. Tamara: Well, and there… I mean, what I've also found is they're good for ADHD. Well, they may be necessary for ADHD brains, but they're good for all.
Melinda: Of course. Of course. Right.
Dr. Tamara: Yeah. I mean, the main one is… I think, a top tip I would say is if you can have multiple workspaces. Because I can reset my brain by changing, moving from this, my kind of office space to another space. And if I notice that my attention is flagging or I'm moving to a particular kind of task, you know, literally just physically moving my body.
Melinda: And changing into a different environment. Yeah.
Dr. Tamara: Because I really feel my extended cognition. It feels very porous for me. You know, I'm kind of sensitive to the environment. When I can it changes, it can help to change my state. I've got things like - we did this on the weekend - weights while you're waiting. So, down in like… I work from home so, you know, down in my kitchen, I've got right literally next to the kettle, my two weights. And when I'm boiling the kettle for my coffee, I'm just there doing some, you know, mindful little bits of weight lifting and, you know, just small things.
I mean, not to get sweaty or anything, but, you know, using weights really can be a good way to increase the mindfulness because you're increasing the sensation just from the small strain. Small strain. Not crazy. The other one is, I think, many parents of children with ADHD, you know, I've got a movement mat. So essentially, again, down in my kitchen, I've got a yoga mat on the floor by the breakfast bar. And anytime I cross over that mat? I have to do some movement.
Melinda: I love it. I love it. (Laughter)
Dr. Tamara: And I did something with a parent once and she said, “Well, we haven't got a mat and that feels like a bit of a tripping hazard.” So she put bits of tape down. So, whenever the kids or anybody in the family like, crossed over this bit of green tape… and by the time they got to the next bit of green tape. And that worked really well because she could move it around.
Melinda: Oh, yeah.
Dr. Tamara: The novelty. To keep the normal space that you need, that was like, a little movement space. And the kids had to do a little, you know, ten jumping jacks or something like that.
Melinda: So it's a great reminder. Yeah. And it strikes me too, you know, when you're talking about the weights… you know, I noticed this when for example, like, I go on a walk because I'm trying to get my steps and get my exercise in, versus when I just, you know, happen to get a bunch of steps. And because I'm out doing functional movement, you know, so the weights, you know, rather than, “Okay. This is my time to go to the gym.”
And I may or may not make it that day. But if it's right in the kitchen next to the kettle and you just pick them up and do a few rounds, you know. Or just even one round, several times a day, you know, it gets in there, right?
Dr. Tamara: Well, yeah. It’s the little and often. Yeah. And if you, again, if you might hark back, I think some of it's a bit romanticized and idealized, but you know, the agricultural sort of old human way. (Laughter)
Melinda: Or where people were living all day long.
Dr. Tamara: Yeah. Slow and steady. And you were moving. And you might move from one task to another. You know, even the idea of the gym is sort of coming into question. You know, as a model for fitness and health. Not only what you do in the gym, but also just not doing bursts. Right? I think it's age related too, probably. I mean, you know, I love those crazy training, like, hours and hours of training in the Kung Fu, you know.
And then just collapsing for 2 or 3 hours afterwards. I mean, that was amazing. But you mentioned about walking, and I think where the mindfulness comes in is, is the intention behind the movement, you know, is the intention to pay attention to the moving body? Is the intention to pay attention to the breath? Is the intention to pay attention to sounds? Is the intention to be present with movement as a whole? I mean, there's so many variations of -
Melinda: And that can change the quality of the experience. Like, I have some spinal injuries. And, you know, I work with a physical therapist who's also a Feldenkrais practitioner. And, you know, she'll give me little exercises to do and things and like, you know, when I'm walking… like, I tried this, you know, for the past few days when I was walking, either to try and be really mindful about my posture, versus like, another day, I was like, I'm just going to let myself be completely natural. And what you're placing your attention on at any given time does affect your experience. Of course. Yeah.
Dr. Tamara: Well, I love running. And again, on my list of a thousand things that I want to do… but I probably will get around to it this year. This idea of, you know, it could be like, ten steps or it could be a certain part of the run (like the bit from my house to out of the village, or from the road at where I go up to the forest, you know, a segment of the run), I try to set the intention. You know, this part, I'm feeling feet. I want to hear the sound of the feet. I want to be feeling the feet, noticing the weight shifting. Noticing maybe a little bit… I mean, even length.
You’ve gone into something else, but because you're going into leg there, but, you know, feeling the feet, then I'm almost like, doing a, what we would call a traditional body scan, but on the run, you know. Now I'm on the breath. Now I'm tuning in to sounds, you know, with or without music, you know. Of course, because that's a whole other level. But it's kind of like, a mindful run where I'm selecting different focused attention objects. And it's so interesting to do that. But then there's also a beautiful moment when you say “Release all effort.”
Melinda: Yes. Yeah. And how freeing that is.
Dr. Tamara: That, you know, where do I land in the body then? Where does awareness land in the body then?
Melinda: Yes. And just the concept, I think, in these times. (Laughter) In this day and age, of releasing all effort. That’s radical.
Dr. Tamara: Again, so many people are sending me books and things. I think there's a book called Rest is Resistance.And maybe there's a particular piece around the feminine there, you know, the doing less and being more. But it's the paradox, isn't it? And woo. That woo way… woo way encourages us to step back into the willingness and into the surrender. But I think it's a mistake to think that that doesn't require training. So, there you've always got that yin yang balancing.
Melinda: Exactly. Exactly.
Dr. Tamara: Because the sort of untrained woo way is kind of just like, it could be bypassing -
Melinda: Totally. Loosey-goosey. Yeah.
Dr. Tamara: So, I love it. And how and where… how I find that in my body. That, you know, Tai Chi invites us to a lot. And kind of, I'm sort of like, shimmying a little bit to kind of get my body upright and slightly dropping the chin, and we imagine donkey ears. Little, long donkey is pulling up to the sky. I'm alert in the spine. The spine is alert, but then I'm soft everywhere else. I drop. And everything needs to just hang off the skeleton. And so, I'm not alert alert like a soldier, because then I'm going to get really tired.
Melinda: You're so tense, right? Yeah. Absolutely. It takes a lot of energy. Yeah.
Dr. Tamara: And I'm not too relaxed like a surfer because then I'm not really in it. I have to have this quality of inside, I'm a soldier, but outside I'm a surfer.
Melinda: Yeah, I love that. Like the Buddha said, “Not too tight, not too loose.” Right? And even in meditation, having that sense of, you know, upright posture. But then, I've heard the analogy of like, you know, allowing the body to relax like clothes on a rack or on a hanger, right? And, you know, the skeleton is the structure. And then we can relax within that. Yeah. Beautiful.
Well, this has been such a lovely conversation. We've gone so many places. So I usually like to bring things to a close with what I call a Creativity Pro Tip, and something that people can take and try out in their own. And I think we've already had many examples in our conversation today of things people could try. But, you know, for somebody who's maybe beginning to explore their embodiment or wants to find a way to come back to play, do you have like, a really good kind of go-to exercise that you might share?
Dr. Tamara: Well, I mean, I just… it's always like, trying to think too many. (Laughter) I mean, I think there's, you know, a really quick one I would say is, you know, a good relaxed posture and a shoulder roll. It sounds simple, but you'd be surprised (laughter) at how much you might forget to do that. But, you know, if you can do that throughout the day. I mean, if you're spending a long time sitting at your desk, these are like, improvements that you can make while you're sitting still.
Melinda: Absolutely. Yeah.
Dr. Tamara: You know, let's start with where we're at. Which is we are often sitting in front of our computers. You know, then I've given a few tips, you know, maybe setting some timers to get up and have a walk, maybe thinking, what are the meetings I can do while I can walk? Can I do any walk-and-talk meetings? So, when I'm doing line management, I'm always on the lookout for what meeting can we do walk-and-talk? (Laughter) So, you know… and that leads me to, you know, one of the things that saves my life every day is this compassionate to do list.
Melinda: Yes. Yes. I love that.
Dr. Tamara: And so, it's really to help the ADHD brain get organized. But as I go to this compassionate to do list, I set my intention. I write in big letters up at the top “Ease and Kindness.” That was the one that I wanted. But you could find more here. And, you know, ease and kindness. Sometimes I put (Focus). (Laughter) But what’s actually more important for me is ease and kindness at this point. For me, ease and kindness. Then I'm starting to plan my day and I'm trying to look for places where I can either… you know, I know this person is going to be able to, you know, accommodate shoulder rolls. Like, this person, don’t bother, you know? (Laughter)
Melinda: Right. Right.
Dr. Tamara: You know, who's acclimatized to it? Who isn't? I'm looking for moments when I can do what I call these greens. Which is, activating the rest and digest system, the soothing system of the brain to give me these little micro pauses and micro resets. And I'm also mapping, like, you know, what are the things that are going to be difficult? What am I avoiding? What am I procrastinating? So there's kind of like, a color system that's linked to the motivational systems of the brain, from somebody by Professor Paul Gilbert.
And, you know, when we're at work, we're in this kind of blue mode, getting things done, and we get so involved in it that we lose track of the body. We don't notice the shoulders coming up. And then somebody annoys us. We get a difficult email at work. It’s all adding and adding. (Laughter) It's almost like color coding through the day. You know, looking for opportunities. And it's the little and often. Because, you know, I mean, it'd be great if I could, you know, if I could walk every day or if I could, you know, do X or Y, or loads of things we know are good for us. But the reality is they often take, you know, three hours or more, including going to the gym.
Melinda: Right. Which we may not have, so -
Dr. Tamara: So, what have you got that takes 3 minutes or 3 seconds? You know, you have got the shoulder roll, right? I mean three and two would be a lovely slow shoulder roll.
Melinda: Absolutely. I'm gonna do it right now.
Dr. Tamara: Yes!
Melinda: That’s so good. I love the Compassionate To-Do List. And I think it's a great antidote to, you know, the traditional To-Do List where it's just like, all the things and we can get overwhelmed by it. So, like, building in those moments of relaxation, intentional, you know, breaks. Movement, mindful breathing, whatever it might be. Love that. Great. Well, it's been such a pleasure. And if people want to learn more about you, what you're up to, your work, your publications, what are the best ways for people to find you?
Dr. Tamara: Yeah, you can find me at thedragonacademy.co.uk.
Melinda: Great.
Dr. Tamara: Which is sort of, I mean, it's been a heart project of mine for some years now, but my creative ADHD brain just keeps wandering off and doing other things (laughter), so it's taken me quite a lot longer than I initially thought. But it is now a place where I'm building an online community, essentially of people that want to do mindfulness differently. So whether you're a regular ADHD person or just really creative, or a bit of a rebel, you don't want to sit still, you know, I'm just building in all my resources. And we have some live sessions, and some different activities there as well throughout the year.
Melinda: Wonderful.
Dr. Tamara: So that's thedragonacademy.co.uk. And I'm at @drtamararussell on Instagram. Again, trying to find mindful ways to use social media. (Laughter) It’s a real challenge. But occasionally, I mean, when I'm having fun, I like it. But that's sometimes the downside of playing too much. It’s like, my strategy goes by. My carefully designed social media strategy goes out the window because I'm just having too much fun posting things that are like, taking my fancy. (Laughter)
Melinda: It’s always a balance, right?
Dr. Tamara: Yeah. Yeah.
Melinda: Well, thank you so much. It's been such a pleasure. And, yeah, well, perhaps we'll have a chance to talk and meet again.
Dr. Tamara: Yeah. Thank you so much.
Melinda: Absolutely.
Dr. Tamara: Yeah. And I really, really appreciate your work. And I've been sharing some of your podcasts -
Melinda: Thank you.
Dr. Tamara: - with my Dragon Warriors crew, and pointing them to your episodes so, yeah. Please receive my appreciation.
Melinda: Yes. Thank you. I appreciate that so much. Find and connect with us on YouTube and social media under @syncreate. If you enjoy the show, please subscribe and leave us a review. We're recording today at Record ATX Studios in Austin, with Dr. Russell joining us from the UK. The podcast is produced in collaboration with Mike Osborne at 14th Street Studios. Thanks so much for being with us and see you next time.
