We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Molly W. Schenck a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Molly, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Was there an experience or lesson you learned at a previous job that’s benefited your career afterwards?

I was recently in a supervisor training class for a grant program I’m a part of and the “ice breaker question” was what was a lesson you learned from your first job. So, let’s set the stage. I grew up in the middle of the woods in Maine, down a bumpy dirt road and I was for a while the only kid on the street. Which meant I became the go-to for all dog walking, dog sitting or cat sitting – and eventually babysitting once I was no longer the only kid in the neighborhood. When I was in high school, my parents wanted me to get a “real” job. My best friend was able to get me a job as a receptionist at a car dealership. She had been working there for a while and wanted someone to take her weekend shifts. About six months in, I was tired of dealing with being a teenage girl surrounded by hungover car salesmen every weekend morning, so I told my parents that I wanted to quit. They asked what I would do instead – and I don’t recall how quickly I came up with this plan but – I said I was going to start teaching my own dance classes. And that summer, after quitting my first “real” job, I put an ad in the local paper and started teaching dance classes for younger kids. I fell in love with it instantly and ended up teaching throughout the rest of my time in high school. As a somatic movement therapist, I look for patterns. And this pattern of reaching a breaking point with a job I’m unhappy with and quitting without a solid plan in place has repeated itself a few times total in my professional life. But it has always led me to a better place. I learned the importance of leaving an environment that didn’t suit me and trusting my gut that I could find more fulfillment and passion elsewhere.

Molly, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

My body of work is rooted in a quest to understand humans. I am fascinated with human movement and what interrupts its full expression. This passion has been the foundation for all my studies and entire career. I specialize in navigating through the intersection of creativity and trauma. I am the creator of Trauma-Informed Creative Practices and author of Trauma-Informed Teaching Practices for Dance Educators. My writing on the arts has also been featured in HowlRound and Inside Higher Ed. I’ve led workshops and trainings for individuals, organizations, and arts leaders on the intersection of trauma and creativity locally, nationally, and internationally. I’ve been interviewed about this work on the Smartistry and Femme On podcasts. Most recently, my work as a performing and visual artist has been featured at the Art D’Core Gala, FOUND:RE Hotel, and Phoenix Center for the Arts. Additionally, I was a recipient of the Arizona Commissions’ Research and Development Grant where I focused on blending dance and painting practices on canvas. I have a private practice called the Simply Soma Method. Simply Soma Method utilizes movement as a catalyst for stress, trauma, and burnout recovery resulting in more dynamic, creative, and aligned livelihoods. Simply Soma Method houses somatic movement education/therapy and mind body personal training and uses a four part approach to ignite shifts in the clients. Reset, Restart, Reignite, Refresh.
I am the Founder and Creative Producer of Grey Box Collective (GBC) – an interdisciplinary, experimental, post-dramatic arts organization that produces projects around social and emotional wellbeing i.e. makes weird art about tough stuff. GBC is in its eighth year and has been supported by the City of Tempe, Scottsdale Arts, Phoenix Office of Arts and Culture, Arizona Commission on the Arts, and Arts at the Center Foundation at Mesa Arts Center.
I am a multi-hyphenated artist and somatic practitioner who is fascinated with human movement (including dance, physical theater, movement modalities in the fitness world, social justice movements, how people navigate societal systems/structures, and the movements of creativity). I am also interested in what interrupts the full expression of movement (ex. stress, trauma, burnout, physical obstacles, boundaries, chronic pain/illness, etc.). Whether I am devising a new performance piece or in the studio pushing paint around, I utilize the disciplines I work within as a catalyst to understand humans and promote transformation.
From an education perspective, I earned a BA in Theater, an M. Ed. in Higher Education, and an MFA in Dance. I am a certified Trauma Support Specialist and a Registered Somatic Movement Educator/Therapist.

We often hear about learning lessons – but just as important is unlearning lessons. Have you ever had to unlearn a lesson?

I think a self-preservation tactic in traditional work settings is to stretch workload to take up more time than it actually needs. I think we learn this in school too – if we finished our classwork first, then the teacher would just assign you more work, so we learned to dilly-dally to avoid more work and eventually that habit shows up in professional environments too. When I left working in higher education to work for myself full time, I realized quickly that this habit that at one-point served as a way to survive became something that interfered with my success as an entrepreneur. Making tasks take a long time turned into some bundle of procrastination, perfectionism, and self-sabotage. I have since focused on “right-sizing” work. For me, this means taking a moment to pause and look for ways to be most effective and efficient simultaneously.

Can you tell us about a time you’ve had to pivot?

I think there have been many forks in the road on my meandering entrepreneurial journey but the most important pivot was about a year after I had left being a professor and I was struggling. I found it a challenge to function most days due to my mental and physical health. My brain fog was really intense and I started to notice it would get better whenever I wrote. The fog would lift, my mind would clear, I’d feel physically lighter. This got me thinking about how it was almost as if my brain fog was full of ideas and thoughts that just needed an outlet. Instead of hoarding stuff and things, I had been busy hoarding ideas and thoughts that needed to be put down on a page. The writing (along with other creative projects) helped me clear the clutter in my brain. I had a need for output. I decided to lean into my roots as an educator and essentially create a 15-week curriculum to take myself through to get my mental and physical health back together. I called this course The Internal Purge. I listed all the thoughts and ideas that I needed to get out of me, along with practical things I needed to do to get life back on track. With that, I created a color coded calendar with time for every project booked out for 15 weeks. In hindsight, it was a very ambitious and slightly unattainable curriculum. I actually extended it to 21-weeks…and to be honest, probably only would give myself a C- as a grade! But it was incredible what I learned about myself in that period of time, not just in the work that I was able to create but the habits that I needed to unlearn and deep core beliefs. It was quite transformative. And while I’m still working through a lot of similar struggles, that pivot of deciding to fully commit to my vision of a new professional life has laid the groundwork for the success that I’m having today. In the fitness world, it’s often talked about getting our bodies in alignment before we add more weights to our workout. That’s what The Internal Purge did for me. It allowed me to realign with myself so that I was able to step forward with more strength in my personal and professional life than I could have imagined.

Contact Info:

• Website: mollywschenck.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/simplysomamethod/
• Other: https://open.spotify.com/show/7zFloOHx7D9RY2WplqGc5r https://open.spotify.com/show/6dn6MJAVil1TxxgoM5FGZ8

Image Credits
Personal, group shot, and partner work images: Jamie Olguin The paint photo: Robert Carter Performance shot: Jacob Bush