We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Marisa Lowenstein. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Marisa below.

Marisa , looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. We’d love to hear the backstory behind a risk you’ve taken – whether big or small, walk us through what it was like and how it ultimately turned out.

This’s the story of when I decided to leave my full-time job as a Senior Designer in NY to finish my studies so I could teach Vedic Meditation to other Creatives. As humans, we think that risk comes from change, but the key is to realize that it is safer to keep evolving than to hold on to something that is no longer serving us.

I have been practicing Vedic Meditation for more than a decade. This technique has changed how I face life and my creative process. Vedic Meditation takes you deeper into the pool where all ideas come from. You become more aware, more creative, more confident. I knew I wanted to teach this practice to other artists, designers, entrepreneurs, people who wanted to be more creative.

To do so, I had to finish my program which meant spending 3 months in Rishikesh, India, with a small group of teachers and students studying the benefits, history, and science behind Vedic Meditation, learning how to teach it and also doing long hours of Meditation myself.

I had started my program 2 years prior while working full-time as a Creative Director for Ralph Lauren, but I needed the time to finish.

I had just been promoted, I had a great job and a comfortable salary, and I was working with a terrific team of people, but something inside of me kept telling me it was time to move on.

One thing that happens to meditators is that the voice that guides our creative actions gets clearer and harder to ignore. That little whisper telling you what step to take next becomes easier to identify, even when your intellect tells you to stop, that your ideas are not good, that you are being crazy.

So, after months of setting myself up for it, I resigned from my job, sold my car, let go of my apartment, donated 70% of my belongings, and decided to travel for one year and go to India to finish my program. I didn’t know what I would do after, or even where to live! (My family was not happy about this…)

Now, I am back in NY, teaching creatives to meditate and taking design projects on a consulting basis.
It’s still amazing to me how when we have a technique like Meditation that helps us become precise on who we are, we can start taking risks, and our paths become so evident….

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.

Sure! I grew up in Argentina, a country with many political and economic problems but also a place that forces you to be resilient and creative. In Buenos Aires, I studied Industrial Design and, soon after graduating, started working at a theme park, building, and painting scenery for their shows.
Working there, I got introduced to set design and loved the combination of art, design, and problem-solving it required. I wanted to learn more about this discipline and was interested in living in other countries, so I applied to several schools and moved to Boston with a scholarship. Since then, my career and life in the US have been constantly evolving. While working in NY as a set designer, I was invited to submit a window display for a store in the Meat Packing District, and that’s how my experience in design for retail started.
Companies were seriously investing in their windows and interiors back then, so it was exciting. I have worked for companies like Ralph Lauren, Sony, Donna Karan, French Connection, ABC, DKNY.

Meditation came to me as a tool to handle life and the pressure of working in these fast-paced environments. Now it’s so rewarding to me to teach creatives to meditate. To see how my students overcome challenges after learning this technique. And I still consult in the design business, so I keep applying this practice myself!
When I teach Meditation to an artist or designer, I know their struggles. I know how it is to be in that creative fog, wondering if you’ll get a new idea.
Or having a great idea and needing more confidence to present it publicly. I know the feeling. I’ve been there. David Lynch talks passionately about the positive effects of Meditation on creativity. So do many other artists. It’s such an amazing tool.

What are the main things you want potential clients to know about you //your work/ etc.

I would love people to know that if they are stuck or struggling, can’t sleep well, or are anxious because they feel like they are losing their creative edge or can not make decisions, there’s a technique out there that can help them.
This is not some “woo-woo magic nonsense”. This technique has been studied and proven.
In my last newsletter, I talked about learning. We arrive on this planet not knowing how to do things. We start living, and people start teaching us how to eat, sleep and talk.
After our basics are covered, we are taught how to read, write, and play with others. We learn about art and nature; we learn how to take care of our bodies, how to drive, how to make money, and onward and upwards we go.
We keep learning, and we start doing. We live and learn from our experiences, we start to believe that we got this. Now we are on a roll.
But then something happens, and we realize we are not doing this “living thing” as well as we thought. Something feels off. We’re tired and anxious but too busy to stop, so we keep going. We’ll figure it out later.
That’s when we screw up. We forget that doing things better means learning how to. We have to learn techniques to live better. To keep improving.
That’s why I learn to meditate. And that’s why I teach it now.

Can you tell us about what’s worked well for you in terms of growing your clientele?

When I write my newsletters or design a course, I don’t think about my “clientele”; I think about 1 person. Somebody I know that I believe learning to meditate or taking one of my creativity courses would help them. I think about what she/he/ them are going through and how much better their work would be if they practiced these techniques.

Any resources you can share with us that might be helpful to other creatives?

Yes! When I started as a creative, I thought improving was all about honing my design skills. I would take design classes and composition, study other creatives’ work, and work long hours on my projects. Only later in my career did I realize that being an excellent creative means much more. You have to be well-rounded, learn how to present your ideas, learn how to socialize if that does not come naturally to you, learn how to rest, learn how to be productive, learn how to come up with good ideas, it all counts. I mean, I still work long hours, but the activities I do during those hours are much more diverse.
Anything can be learned; the resources are out there. The hard part is realizing what you don’t know yet.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://marisalowenstein.com
• Instagram: @marisalowenstein
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/marisalowenstein/
• Twitter: https://www.facebook.com/marisa.lowenstein
• Other: www.theconsciouscreativitylab.com