We recently connected with Vicki Dello Joio and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Vicki, thanks for joining us today. We’d love to hear about when you first realized that you wanted to pursue a creative path professionally.

I grew up in an artistic household, with a mother who was a ballet dancer with 3 different companies before she married and a father was an award-winning classical composer. Arts and creativity were valued highly in our home.

As a kid, I loved the intersection between stories and healing. I created healing remedies for my stuffed animals and every day created stories of interactions and adventures. My favorite toy was a big plastic theater called “Showboat” which had little figures you could move around a stage, so I think the idea of directing stories was born there.

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.

As a speaker coach, I work with visionary speakers and holistic entrepreneurs, who want to get on stages so they can make a bigger impact in the world.

What’s unique about my business is that I have taken over 50 years of experience in both qi/energy practices and as a theater director and performer. I’ve combined the best skills of both worlds to empower speakers to step into the spotlight and stand out.

I began studying martial arts when I was 17. I was introduced to Tai Chi Chuan when in a teen theater program at American Conservatory Theater in San Francisco. It was a Tai Chi class for actors and I was struck by how familiar the moves seemed to me although I have no lineages or background in the Chinese arts. When I went to college, I was able to deepen my study of Tai Chi and other martial arts including qigong. This birthed a life-long interest in qigong that has carried me through the last 50+ years. In 1992, founded The Way of Joy™, A Spiritual Fitness Program that is an integration of my work as a master teacher. This work allows people to connect to their internal guidance and empowerment, feel grounded and centered, so they are able to present themselves with openness and confidence — to be fully who you truly are.

My signature system, Your Power Presence™, was developed from my years of experience onstage and directing and as a master trainer in Powwerful Non-Defensive XOmmuiaton works with effective communication, whether 1 to 1, to small groups or on larger stages. My clients learn how to share their work to
• Solve a problem or inspire transformation, Tell a story about personal triumph that people will relate to in their own lives
• Speak to a committee or board to reach an important outcome
• Have a difficult conversation with a family member to mend long-time fences
• Perform or present to touch emotional heartstrings through creativity

I do this by teaching speakers how to tell their stories in out-of-the-box ways so their audiences remember their message. I also help them expand that more intangible aspect of expanding what is called “Wei Qi’ in Chinese arts, which is the secret sauce behind charisma, the energy that can attract people to you or put them off.

I am most proud of the amazing clients I get to work with and the impact I get to see them have. (They are often surprised to move from having a lackluster response to seeing their audiences jump to their feet at the end of their presentation.)

For example
• One client who is a lawyer recently presented to the Supreme Court of Canada, moving the needle in an important social justice cause…She has since been asked to represent to more cases for the SCC.
• Another client went from being a shy immigrant with an important story to tell to speaking before thousands at a Women’s March, moving people to tears.
• A third client recently gave a keynote to global leaders in Zimbabwe about redefining leadership in response to current world issues, connecting the dots between Climate Change, Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, Gender Equity and so on. Her keynote led to invitations to deliver her program to different global companies as well as invitations to do keynotes in other countries. She was recently invited to deliver her presentation to the United Nations

We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.

I love this question because it feels so timely for us, as a world, to remember resilience

For me, resilience means the ability to stay centered, present, even peaceful with “what is”, even during challenging times. So resilience depends on my ability to connect with what I call my “Observer Self”. While we can’t control what’s happening around us, we can control how we are BEing with it.

In 1990, I hit by a car as I was walking across a street in San Francisco. Thrown up into the air by the impact, I felt as though my awareness had shrunk to a size that could fit on the head of a pin. This awareness was located at the pit of my belly, right in the middle of my lower tan tien (also known by the Japanese word, hara). I was surprised because in spite of my years doing martial arts, I somehow would have expected my consciousness to go to my upper tan tien (or sixth chakra, the third eye).

I had the distinct image in that moment that my body was like a hull and my consciousness, my very essence or being, was a seed inside of that hull. Time suspended. As I floated in that suspension, I looked around at my inner silhouette with awe. I realized I had a choice. I could stay inside of this hull, my body, or I could leave. I felt no judgment, no despair, no fear, not even hope. I would say if I had any emotion at all, it was curiosity–what would I choose to do? After a while, I made an intentional decision to stay and opened my eyes. The pavement appeared to be coming up at me very fast. Instinctively, I tucked into an Aikido roll as I came down for a landing several car lengths from where I was hit.

I was ambulanced to the ER and released after an astonished revaluation by a the medical team. I remember murmurs that I should have been broken, if not killed from the double impact of the car hitting my body at 30+ miles an hour and my landing on the pavement. But I was fine — other than some soft tissue, nothing was broken, or seriously damaged. I walked out of the hospital a few of hours later.

Although I was thrown up in the air for only a fraction of a second, it was long enough for me to have a whole internal discussion. Time stopped and my spirit, my larger Self, the Observer, was aware that I had a choice.
It was not a given at that point in my life that I would choose to live. Even with the many privileges that I’ve had, I had experienced many periods when living seemed too painful, the world around me—personally and globally—seemed too out of balance, or simply wrong.

But at that moment of stillness, hovering between life and death, I had a clear sense I was being called to embrace life in a renewed and different way.

What do you find most rewarding about being a creative?

What I love most about being a creative is those times I get live, breathe, and be “in the zone”. I mean those timeless moments when I am co-creating something with someone, whether I am helping to develop and co-create their keynote or story, directing a performer to go beyond expectations, or times working with my theater company to find new modes of expressing something improvisational. And also those precious times of being on stage and experiencing that flow of reciprocity pour back and forth between me and the audience. This aliveness I experience in both the creative process and expressive performance of creative work fuels my heart even when it confounds my brain.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.vickidellojoio.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/vickidellojoiohttps://www.linkedin.com/in/vickidellojoio/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/vickidj
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/vickidellojoio/
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@WayofJoyQigong
• Other: https://yourpowerpresence.com/

Image Credits
Photographer: Lily Dong