The Embodied Vessel Podcast

Loren Lewis Cole

Podcast hosted by artist Loren Lewis Cole exploring themes around the vital necessity of artistic practice throughout the stages of our lives. From the conversation on depression and the 'meaning crisis', to our desire to dance a dance that only we can dance, the importance of creativity, curiosity and play are more important than they've been for some time. As we approach an age of increasing technological enmeshment and disembodied information hoarding, craft and the dexterous skillsets allow us to glimpse an ancient kinaesthetic intelligence that can completely revitalise our lives.  Art is medicine. We create art to heal, we heal to create Art.  @lorenlewiscolejewellery www.lorenlewiscole.com Gorgeous cover image by @raynjermain , Ben Rayner 

  1. 19H AGO

    Where are you afraid of within yourself?

    For an Artist, our primary material is our inner world. From the material we engage with there, we blend our internal energy with the force of upward moving inspiration, connecting with material of expression...clay, dance, the voice, the body, rocks, gold, food, sound....the list is endless. If we are full of ideas about how we have to be, we're unavailable for the energy of our voice to move through us, and everybody's voice is unique, stemming from an internal impulse.  Yet sometimes we might find we can't quite grab onto the feeling of Authentic Voice moving through us, because the current of authenticity is asking us to feel anger, ugliness, annoyance, desire, frustration, aggression, or anything else our sense of self has disassociated from.  There is medicine in the courage required to be fully alive.  Here are some ideas for how to create a short but potent deliberate experience of the very emotion we're hiding from, which brings relaxation and flow because it's energetically very expensive to hold ourselves in any shape other than what's natural.  To create work that's vibrant to us and others, we want to be in the authenticity of the body. May you be unafraid of the entirety of your inner experience, and alchemise it all in the cauldron of your practice. An introduction to Butoh, you can look into other videos and here might be a jumping off point... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RQcn55T-jNE The Aesthetics of Bhuto https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pcUuNF_o2gM Beauty in the Grotesque... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9f6R8Ry9qVo

    45 min
  2. 5D AGO

    How Do We Improve and Deepen Our Artistic Work If We Don't Have a Mentor?

    I've been speaking recently with other artists about how we recognise when we need to improve, or how we know when we're stuck in a sort of numb comfort of our work. It's so difficult to assess our incompetence or the vibrancy of our own work, the illusive and non-existent objectivity of our work. Within that, there are some parameters I use to scrutinise my own work and can be useful if you're wanting to deepen in really any area of applying complex skills.  The true pleasure of life for me is being in the vibrant heart of learning and challenge within my passions. I don't want to create easy and pleasant work, I want my work to ask something of me, really ask something of me, that's where Beauty always lives, not in what's easy, automated and without effort.  If effort is a given, the question then lies in what kind of effort and applied how and in what aspect of my life and skills. I assess my work within these frameworks but you could apply this filter to anything and find a place to improve or seek coaching or the improving of skills. Luck vs Skill (Annie Duke) Skill (technique, tradition, manual repetition) + Soul/Spirit (emotional expression, creative improvisation, energy, personal courage within using the technique) Freedom and constraint for artists, the paradox of limiting our options to make our work better, which requires discipline in the time of the tyranny of choice and seemingly unending possibility.  I hope this is helpful in your practice and learning any complex skillset. With love,  Loren https://www.instagram.com/lorenlewiscolejewellery/?hl=en Join the jewellery family  https://lorenlewiscole.lpages.co/jointhetribe/

    39 min
  3. JAN 24

    How Therapy Culture can Distrust Artistic Experience

    As an artist, our job is to pay attention to the imagery of our interior world, be it musical, kinaesthetic, poetic, based in painting, sculpture or anything at all. We live in a therapy culture that tells us everything we experience is some aspect of the self and can be analysed and understood through intellectual scrutiny stemming from Freudian ideas.  When we analyse something we kill it. It ceases to be shimmering with the vast potentiality of being here.  Day to day, rational and applied intellectual understanding of things is needed and welcomed in the appropriate setting- of which artistic experience is not. I'm saying that we need to see this experience as a non-ordinary state where we don't pounce on things and shit them down, second guess them or 'witness them dispassionately.' Rather, what's required is raucous and chaotic abandon, complete attention and interest in the thing, letting it have its way with us, chew us up and spit us out, the other side, after swimming in the depths, fresh faced and soulfully renewed, ready to take on the mundane activities of a mainstream artistically impoverished world. Dive baby, dive. Since feeling is first- e.e.Cummings since feeling is first who pays any attention  to the syntax of things will never wholly kiss you; wholly to be a fool while Spring is in the world my blood approves, and kisses are a better fate  than wisdom lady i swear by all flowers. Don’t cry —the best gesture of my brain is less than your eyelids’ flutter which says we are for each other: then laugh, leaning back in my arms for life’s not a paragraph And death i think is no parenthesis

    51 min
  4. JAN 17

    The Fractal Nature of Inspiration // ART, DOPAMINE and EFFORT

    You know that feeling when you look at something, either literally or imaginatively, and as soon as you land on it you can see a thousand things flowering off of the main thing, then a thousand more flowering off of those fractal children ..? Sometimes we can be so inspired the we become all imaginative vision and no earth based implementation, no connection with the elements other than space, and our art gets spaced out and we lose grounding in our lives.  This incredible fractal experience of the infinite potentiality of the world, of co-creating and contributing, can also be too much and completely overwhelming when we aren't actually creating. Artistic inspiration is in one lung staying open to spontaneity whilst in the other being disciplined, narrow and focused.  This is why as artists we walk between worlds. It is a mystical experience, deep in the sinew of our mitochondria, long before religion, agriculture, modern language and national borders. Human beings were bringing things from the formless into form, and navigating all the challenges associated with this immense yet choiceless task.  Because of this, from an evolutionary perspective, I'm thinking about AI and our dopaminergic pathways, the modern desire for reward without effort, and how that's deeply effecting our trust in ourselves as artists and as true human beings. The more we expect hormone drenching feel good rewards to be without exertion and effort, the less we will strive to dig deep within ourselves and bring out what's buried deep in our hearts.  An embodied life is nothing like a video game, a Netflix show, or social media, it is desperately more beautiful, intricately more alive, nuanced and activating.  You can follow my jewellery and craft enthusiast page over on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/lorenlewiscolejewellery/?hl=en Share this episode with someone whop would love it,  With love,  Loren

    1h 4m
  5. Conversation with Tallulah Rendall / Songstress, Ceremonialist, Facilitator sharing Qi Gong & Sound Meditation - Creative Practice as Medicine.

    12/09/2025

    Conversation with Tallulah Rendall / Songstress, Ceremonialist, Facilitator sharing Qi Gong & Sound Meditation - Creative Practice as Medicine.

    Tallulah Rendall is many things, a curious and explorative human being, blending her work as an artist with traditional Asian spiritual practices.  Why aren't we talking about how essential creative practice is in wellbeing? In 2010, Tallulah began her training in Qi Gong, sound therapy & creative facilitation leading to the creation of her Singing and Creative Facilitation workshops & retreats, Sound Bath Meditation sessions, Qi Gong courses, and one-to-one sound therapy sessions.  She has since trained in Authentic Relating and as a Systemic Coach. After years of extensive touring Tallulah experienced burnout in 2010.  This led to her learning to maintain her health through a mix of Chinese medicine, acupuncture and nutrition plus training in Qi Gong, sound therapy & creative facilitation.  Soon after Tallulah became inspired to support the wellbeing of others, leading to the creation of her Singing and Creative Facilitation workshops & retreats, Sound Bath Meditation sessions and Qi Gong courses, and one-to-one sound therapy sessions. She works worldwide with leading retreat centres and facilitators and is known for both her exceptional facilitation skills, professionalism and quality of care. I hope you adore my conversation with this deeply grounded and articulate human being. listen to Tallulah's music here https://open.spotify.com/artist/5DQdXQQCRyfMedkGbXnMCq?si=ohD9436CTkurCg3lATq9Dw https://www.instagram.com/tallulahrendall/

    2h 14m
  6. 11/06/2025

    Learning, adaptation, vulnerability and meaning. How do we remain at the centre of our experience?

    When I consider the people I meet and know who seem to have a radiance of activity, participation, contribution and generosity, these people have an astonishingly clear set of characteristics in common.  It's so important to ask ourselves what we're doing with our attention, what  we're cultivating. We're in a culture saturated with distraction and entertainment, externally projected ideas of success, yet very few people seem to really be able to plunge into their gifts, nurture them, be on a learning path and develop robust and consistent self esteem.  Part of the many consequences of late stage capitalism is that so many people have this phenomena of 'low self esteem', this is a modern concept. We've been programmed to believe we gain 'self esteem' from beauty, a fashionable body, a large house and many luxuries around us, yet we actually gain self esteem from being in participation with our environment, and through learning. What is learning? What is the learning zone? What is play? How does this differ from entertainment? Where does a sense of meaning and satisfaction, challenge and contribution really come from?  How can we bring ourselves back to the very centre and grit of our lives? So we experience a deep sense of creative control that doesn't seek to diminish challenges, or to retreat from life into a permanent zone of comfort and ease, essentially lobotomising ourselves,  but to have a robust enough spirit to view challenges  as the path itself, and to come alive in the real, raw, messy participation with the world. Solo episode that explores how play, learning and creativity are evolutionary adaptations that feel good in order that we keep doing them, and how most adults are living on autopilot, without genuine learning environments since 'school'  How to get back into the learning zone, out of entertainment and distraction and take our very real power back, for the arts, for culture, for embodiment, for our lives.

    1h 9m
  7. Ancestors and Mutual Indebtedness

    10/31/2025

    Ancestors and Mutual Indebtedness

    Today is Halloween, or All Hallow's eve, day of the dead in Mexico, which is well known. The Romans also celebrated this thinning of the veils as an opportunity to honour their ancestors, as well as make offerings to what we might now call ‘ghosts’, unrested spirits of dead souls who still try to communicate with the living.  Many people I know in different spiritual traditions, Neo melange traditions as well as traditions of in tact lineage, mark this time of year, by taking pause from the busy goings on of worldly life in order to acknowledge, in ceremony, in thoughts, in deeds, those who have died.  In modernity, we see everything as what we can get from life, we look at life with an extractive view and want to squeeze everything we can for the sake of our own enrichment. Traditional cultures, of which we all come from, whatever our skin colour, whatever we’ve come from, coloniser or colonised, we come from small, local traditions that varied depending on landscape, customs, materials available, climate, food and so on… modern humans all thinking and believing similar things is a very recent occurrence, evolutionarily speaking.  Thousands of years ago, the sun was worshipped, the first glyphs of all culture, long before formalised writing, centred around the symbol for the sun, if that was impersonated into a god or goddess, or simply worshipped as the sun, respect was paid daily to simply being here.  Modernity has us in a choke hold of thinking if we get everything we want we will be happy, and I so rarely hear people, at the institutional level or the individual level, considering what we can in fact GIVE. Isn’t it the act of sharing our gifts , of plunging all we have of ourselves and offering it to this life, isn’t that the point? Isn’t that what feels incredible, knits us into a wider geography of life, of the elements, of appreciation? The people I know who are the happiest are those who give daily from their gifts, who do what they do regardless of the money, and if it ends up with them being rich, great, but it was never what they taught.  Being rich is the natural state of being alive, having a body is such a rich experience, like ghee, or cream, its alive, thick, responsive to its environment.  Happy all Hallow's eve, you beautiful soul. With love,  Loren Secret Activations is an audio coaching feed for daily invitations to vivacity and embodiment in your art, life and emotional world. Musings and encouragement from speaking with clients, life and my own incessant path of trying to create more authentic artistic work in the time I have on this planet. more details are below 💋 https://loren-lewis-cole.mykajabi.com/the-embodied-vessel-secret-activations-audio-coaching

    1h 5m

About

Podcast hosted by artist Loren Lewis Cole exploring themes around the vital necessity of artistic practice throughout the stages of our lives. From the conversation on depression and the 'meaning crisis', to our desire to dance a dance that only we can dance, the importance of creativity, curiosity and play are more important than they've been for some time. As we approach an age of increasing technological enmeshment and disembodied information hoarding, craft and the dexterous skillsets allow us to glimpse an ancient kinaesthetic intelligence that can completely revitalise our lives.  Art is medicine. We create art to heal, we heal to create Art.  @lorenlewiscolejewellery www.lorenlewiscole.com Gorgeous cover image by @raynjermain , Ben Rayner