We were lucky to catch up with Joanna Read recently and have shared our conversation below.

Joanna, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today. Can you talk to us about a project that’s meant a lot to you?

Thanks so much for inviting me into this conversation! The most meaningful project I’ve worked on to date is the E M E R G E N C E Oracle Deck, available this holiday season via EmergenceOracle.com. Taking action on this project helped me evolve my relationship with myself, with others, and with creative expression at large. I’d love for this story to serve as an example of what it can look like to channel creative energy into transcending the very thinking patterns that inhibit its flow and expression, creating a vivid, tangible reflection of the inner transformation that can benefit others, physically and energetically.

Comprised of mandalas, mythological archetypes, and repeating motifs of the natural world, each of the 63 images intuitively emerged in support of the last 12 years of transformation (launching my online business in 2010, leaving my marriage, leaving my full-time job, becoming a yoga teacher and creativity coach, and healing a deep-rooted relationship with shame, burnout, and self-destructive behaviors.)

Over the years, each painting has served as a container for cultivating resilience, strength, healing, and wholeness from within, with the Oracle itself being a larger expression of the same grounding principles. The images within the deck now serve as mirror reflections to the inner strength, wisdom, and creativity that unites us as a greater Living System.

For a long time, I struggled with debilitating self-doubt and anxiety around taking action on this dream, which mirrored a creative pain that I’ve encountered for most of my life. My mind was so focused on narratives of fear and confusion around how this would be perceived or be of benefit to others, along with anxiety around the time and technical demands of the project, that I could barely find a way forward.

At the same time, situations were playing out in my life that continued to reveal heartbreaking patterns that I deeply desired to transcend.

I saw how giving myself a project that would challenge me to focus, stretch, grow, and commit to myself on a whole new level would allow me to take full responsibility for my healing and integration: creating a container to become who I truly desired to become, while also providing an outlet that I could pour my love and care into with all of my heart, bearing witness to the rooting, rising, and thriving of Love’s expression.

This project became the scaffolding and mirror that lovingly invited and challenged me to become everything I had been seeking externally, while at the same time, empowering me to evolve my consciousness through developing a greater intimacy with my true self. I began to see how the outward expression of these inner intentions, revealed as the Oracle, provided tangible benefit and contribution to the world, and at the same time, I was seeing how the physical form was also symbolic of the true contribution, which was my own inner commitment to Love.

Once I allowed myself to accept the possibility of how powerful it could be to let this project serve as a container for transcending and transmuting the very limitations my mind was imposing on creative expression, through creative expression, it was as though the ember idea of the Oracle began to fan itself into a flame that ignited me in its promise of inner liberation.

I made the commitment not only to show up fully and take the necessary steps to realize this vision, but to do so from an adventurous, bliss-filled state of joy, flow, pleasure, trust, and nurturing fulfillment through deep connection with Nature’s beauty and fellow creatives. As I took inspired action, I began seeing how this project was liberating me not only in re-templating my relationship with inaccurate thinking patterns, but also in transforming my paradigm around work, prosperity, and creative expression at large.

As I practiced redirecting fear and overthinking into trusting and allowing the joy of creative expression to flow through inspired action, gifts and insights that my thinking mind had so much initial anxiety about began to emerge all on their own- including a forthcoming mind/body/soul curriculum, and an exciting new integrative healing modality combining mandala art, color psychology, numerology, and subconscious mind affirmations.

Most exciting of all is, it feels as though the messages and medicine contained within the Oracle itself continues to emerge and evolve as more and more people come into contact with it.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers?

While I’ve been an artist for all of my life, for the majority of my teens and 20’s, I wrestled with a tremendous amount of shame, fear, and distrust related to creative expression. While attending art school from 2003-2007, I found myself struggling with depression, anxiety, and fear of losing my scholarship, along with debilitating feelings of unworthiness and self-hatred, which manifested as destructive behaviors.

I felt disconnected from myself, from the academic community, and from the very thing I was there to explore- my inner creative world. While this separation led me to further avoid, deny, shame, and suppress the very creative essence of my Soul, discovering yoga in 2005 helped me begin to find my way out of this downward spiral. I’ve since made it my life’s work to support the reclamation of creative expression from within, through the unification and harmonization of mind/body/soul, head/heart/hands, thinking/feeling/acting.

Today, as a yoga & mindfulness teacher and creativity guide, I offer coaching, public speaking, and workshops for corporations, small groups, and individuals designed to spark and enhance self-awareness and ignite creative transformation and the elevation of consciousness through the lens of integrative, evidence-based practices. Engaging and sharing these practices with others is deeply rewarding and infinitely fulfilling: it’s what grounds, shapes, and further motivates me in my desire to express and contribute.

I also intuitively weave my professional background and love of nature and adventure with my passion for drawing and painting, creating and selling original canvas paintings, art prints, yoga mats, and vibe-raising merchandise that explores and encourages the inward journey of growth and transformation.

Is there a mission driving your creative journey?

The mission that drives my creative journey is emergence itself. Emergence, in simplistic terms, is when something new arises, or when a deeper mystery is revealed through the subtlest of movements.

The E M E R G E N C E Oracle continues to reveal deeper levels of understanding of how the journey and the destination are one, and how listening, attuning to, and courageously allowing the dreams within our hearts to be expressed, is not what only transforms and liberates us from within, it’s also what allows for a more beautiful, harmonious world to emerge in the world around us.

I’ve been learning so much about how committing to a vision, aligning with who we desire to be in relationship with the journey towards the vision, and allowing the joy and curiosity that naturally emerges as a result of following one’s heart and intuition, brings healing, fulfillment, prosperity, harmonious relating, and heightened creativity, not only to the individual, but to the greater living system.

It’s almost as though this process is a formula for emergence itself, in that it provides a pathway for how we as individuals can steward the very evolution of consciousness, beginning from within. It reveals how we can uniquely, joyfully, and creatively become active participants in the emergence of a more beautiful, just, innovative, and harmonious planet.

For you, what’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative?

The most rewarding aspect of being a creative, for me, is realizing just how powerful, limitless, and capable we each are in transcending the conditioning and programming that inhibits creativity, and continuously rising victoriously through every courageous expression of our unique gifts, great and small.

There is a Sanskrit mantra, “Om Vardhanam Namah”, which translates as “I nourish the Universe, and the Universe nourishes me.”

I believe that as we allow our creativity to express, we embody this symbiotic concept, contributing to greater levels of love, harmony, and creative, world-changing solutions within the Collective at large, while at the same time, experiencing deep fulfillment and nourishment from within.

Whether we express our creativity through art, music, dance, teaching, coaching, mathematics, science, invention, or even in the way we care for others and relate with the world at large, whether or not we can see it, every act of creative expression nourishes and supports the elevation and evolution of consciousness itself.

Contact Info:

• Website: joannaread.com
• Instagram: instagram.com/joannaeread
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/expressionsbyjo
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/joannaread/
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCrw9Eb-Dbp1SBcSPOhxF9eQ
• Other: joannaeread.etsy.com