The Embodied Vessel Podcast

Loren Lewis Cole
  • 0.0 (0)
  • Medicine

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.  How can we go from a performative mode of engagement with the world to a participatory one? Living from the inside out, sharing what we've come here to share. 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. 2d ago

    35 - Being Quenched by the Aesthetic Moment

    I'd love to hear your thoughts in this podcast Join the LLC Jewellery Family  https://lorenlewiscole.lpages.co/jointhetribe/ Come say hi on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/lorenlewiscolejewellery/?hl=en "Being Quenched by the Aesthetic Moment" I open this episode by sharing a voice note I received from a listener — a thank you that genuinely moved me — and I use it to explore why art matters: not for mass adoption, but for its ability to create direct, wordless connection between human beings. Art as truth. Art as the thing that drops everything else. The central theme is being quenched by the aesthetic moment — that state of total absorption in creative work where time shifts, attention becomes prayer (I cite Simone Weil), and nothing else exists. I talk about the difference between chasing outcomes and surrendering to the aesthetic experience itself, and why the deepest creative work only comes when we stop trying to control the result. I share a reel by Boyd Bishonga, a painter and metal sculptor from Africa, whose studio footage moved me — particularly his trust in the self-evident nature of his work, his refusal to explain it, and his understanding that art comes from a pre-verbal, non-rational place. I talk about how over-rationalising creative work can actually damage it. I speak honestly about depression — not as something to be ashamed of, but as an inflammation marker, a signal that something essential is going unmet. For me, that thing has always been creating. I trace this through my family history of mental health struggles, my own near-edges, and the decade I spent trying to find peace through spiritual practice before realising my art was always the answer. I talk about my son at jujitsu — exhausted after double classes and a full school day, finding something extra when asked to be accountable — as a metaphor for growth feeling uncomfortable. Discomfort at the edge isn't a trauma response. It's what growth feels like. On creative discipline: you don't need to be full-time. It can be the kitchen table when the kids are asleep. What matters is making the pilgrimage to that sacred space regularly, protecting it, not explaining it to people riddled with fear and logic, and understanding that inspiration follows movement — not the other way around. I talk about living at the threshold between the seen and unseen as the essence of being an artist, and how the twilight language of mystics and the language of artists are the same thing. I reference Polly Wales as an example of what happens when you trust an innovation that has no precedent — years of risk, financial pain, and courage that eventually becomes the thing everyone else copies. I close with this: pursuing your art is not selfish. It is regenerative medicine — for you and for everyone who comes into contact with you. Your desire to create is the invisible world showing you where the medicine of your life is. "Our job is to stay in the creative engine, in the fire of our lives, forging talismans day by day."

    51 min
  2. 34 - We can't utilise the energy of the emotions we don't feel.

    Jun 13

    34 - We can't utilise the energy of the emotions we don't feel.

    I'd love to hear your thoughts in this podcast Join the LLC Jewellery Family  https://lorenlewiscole.lpages.co/jointhetribe/ Come say hi on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/lorenlewiscolejewellery/?hl=en This is essentially a second part to episode 33- how art heals deep exhaustion. Deeply coming into the body is where healing happens and is integrated. I love you. Keep going, courageous human. You are not broken, and you cannot get things wrong when you give your all, even when you're trembling and unsure, be brave. How do we know when we're going it our all? We're completely absorbed and feel raw and unsure, but our hearts are open and we so deeply care. Loren  xxx

    37 min
  3. 33 - How Art Heals Deep Exhaustion.

    Jun 5

    33 - How Art Heals Deep Exhaustion.

    I'd love to hear your thoughts in this podcast Join the LLC Jewellery Family  https://lorenlewiscole.lpages.co/jointhetribe/ Come say hi on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/lorenlewiscolejewellery/?hl=en If you are exhausted, you are safe to feel exhausted, and you do not need a retreat or a holiday to recover, you need to remember your Art. We heal when we let ourselves completely feel.  It’s only when I let my whole body genuinely feel the fragility and exhaustion, that the freeze can move, and all that armour energy can be liberated again into generosity, creativity and inspiration. Yesterday I was so exhausted. My entire spirit was fatigued. Despite walking, eating well, exercising and getting lots done, my vitality was on the floor. I’d been running on action and interaction for over a month, getting so much done, with quiet time but no time for poetry, open ended creative space that’s quiet enough for me to hear my heart again. I don’t know what ‘most people’ need. But I know what I need, and what so many sensitive, intuitive artistic people need. We need our art, we need the medicine of diving into the ocean of imagination, sensuality and the undefined.  Possibility that’s unknown, exciting, beautiful. What’s always fascinated me is how energy moves when I recover from overextended interaction. What took a month to get out of balance and overexerted can be genuinely reinvigorated in a few hours. Sometimes we need to feel really unwell to remember the medicine we need. Vitality slowly creeps away until we feel unrecognisable to ourselves, energetically impotent. Art heals this, and if your an artist you’ll know this medicine. Restoring sumptuous energy throughout the entire system. The tangible body and the intangible vibe we emit. We’re in a poetically illiterate over culture, modernity is beige and predictable, the poet is starving, and so we must know how to feed ourselves. Sometimes we eat a bit each day, other times we forget to eat for so long. Art is medicine. Maybe it’s a song you listen to with your entire body on the drive home, feeling it fully for the first time. Maybe it’s truly dancing with closed eyes so you can feel your body from the inside out. A cry, some connection, the generosity of beauty. Our ancient bodies are primed for this medicine which is why reconnection can happen so easily  if we know how to treat ourselves. When we trust our deepest ability to reinvigorate dehydrated psychic soil, we don’t fear feeling disconnected. If you know you can eat, you don’t fear hunger. As Artists, knowing how to reinvigorate our creative river means we always have the tools to heal. Art is the free movement of healing energy in the body.

    24 min
  4. 32 - The Wingspan of Courage & The Rawness of the Path Home

    May 9

    32 - The Wingspan of Courage & The Rawness of the Path Home

    I'd love to hear your thoughts in this podcast Every time I connect back to the courage of my heart, life rewards me. My energy grows, my inspiration deepens and my world gets bigger, bigger, bigger.  Wildly. The bigger it gets, somehow the smaller it gets. It gets big then the edges start to touch each other again. You fly somewhere you've never been before and meet kindred spirits that feel like family, because you're feeling so yourself that you find people wherever you go. I'm really interested in what makes us feel in our flow, inspired, connected, wanting to create, and what stops us from experiencing that. What's the bridge, how does the thing function?  Being in flow, experiencing synchronicities, inspiration and the collaboration of others in the direction of our collective dreams, most people might say they want that, but why do sometimes we feel so disconnected to that? How do we stay potent? That's always what I'm interested in, always. Courage, potency, vision, how do we stay in that focused, trusting zone that scares us but inspires us more?? Join the LLC Jewellery Family  https://lorenlewiscole.lpages.co/jointhetribe/ Come say hi on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/lorenlewiscolejewellery/?hl=en

    55 min
  5. 31 - The gifts of women, a fragrant economy.

    Apr 10

    31 - The gifts of women, a fragrant economy.

    I'd love to hear your thoughts in this podcast The etymology of 'economy' comes from the ancient greek 'oikos' which is the word for home. Economy is the sharing of gifts from the home.  Let's reclaim the movement of trade as an exchange of gifts forged in the home, in small workshops, in the gifts of people's efforts. There's a radiant economy alive at all times.  The everyday gifts of women. In a season of such tenderness and expansion, deepening roots into the fertile soil, I feel so in tune with the gifts of women, so supported by people's unique contributions. Some tired musings on this fragrantly alive economy... let's intentionally strengthen it day in day out with our verbal praise. The more on our path we are, the more we can see others, clearly, in their radiance. This is the balm for the wounds of competition. Sit back and receive the gifts of women, then praise.  What are your thoughts? Join the LLC Jewellery Family  https://lorenlewiscole.lpages.co/jointhetribe/ Come say hi on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/lorenlewiscolejewellery/?hl=en

    21 min
  6. 30 - Remaining fully alive and responsive in the presence of doubt and fear.

    Apr 3

    30 - Remaining fully alive and responsive in the presence of doubt and fear.

    I'd love to hear your thoughts in this podcast Fear and doubt tend to make our experience and world smaller. We take less risks and play things safe and reasonable.  There's no way we can live a life fully expressed without falling on our faces, feeling consumed with doubt and fear, and wondering if we should just quit.  If we're playing it safe artistically or in any other area of life, we won't feel doubt. Doubt is going to come, and what matters is who we are and how we work with it WHEN it comes. Because it will baby, and instead of running from it, we can learn to dive into the ego death of a portal that is doubt, and instead of crumbling, we can find presence there, find aliveness there, find the spirit to continue there.  What we run from has power over us. What we face courageously we internalise the power of.  Greatness is forged in the fire of emotional intensity, what I often see is the desire to make what could be acute emotional experiences more diluted and chronic. chronic fear can actually ruin our lives, but acute fear fully embodied just makes us deeper, stronger and more alive. We all feel good when we feel confident, but what really makes us, where we earn our stripes is how we deal with the times we're tired and doubt ridden, fearful and uninspired. We don't rise to the level of our confidence, we grow our confidence by our ability to inhabit and metabolise doubt, fully alive, through the portal of uncertainty, into a new awareness and more powerful ground. Doubt and fear are inescapable on a true path of heart, it means you're not playing it safe, welcome to the human race my love. Keep going. There is no security in life, in our work, in our futures, only the courage we have to keep going no matter the circumstances, to choose to celebrate being here in an imperfect circumstance,  only full aliveness is here, no security. So keep going, keep working, keep bringing your gifts forward. With love,  Loren Go to the Limits of Your Longing- Rilke . God speaks to each of us as he makes us, then walks with us silently out of the night. These are the words we dimly hear: You, sent out beyond your recall, go to the limits of your longing. Embody me. Flare up like a flame and make big shadows I can move in. Let everything happen to you: beauty and terror. Just keep going. No feeling is final. Don’t let yourself lose me. Nearby is the country they call life. You will know it by its seriousness. Give me your hand. Book of Hours, I 59 Join the LLC Jewellery Family  https://lorenlewiscole.lpages.co/jointhetribe/ Come say hi on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/lorenlewiscolejewellery/?hl=en

    1h 21m
  7. 29 - Life itself is the sharing circle

    Mar 7

    29 - Life itself is the sharing circle

    I'd love to hear your thoughts in this podcast 'To love anything, at any cost, is a bargain.' Wendell Berry Some recent reflections on my own confusion around spirituality and the artistic path. Because Art is not seen as a path in many circles, I didn't trust my own gifts when I was young, and in an unconscious attempt to overcomplicate my life and do something more meaningful, I tried to do all manner of things, all of which left me depleted and uninspired. Being on an artistic path, which includes of course anything we're bringing from our heart into the world- in craft of not, requires a level of rawness and vulnerability that leaves us feeling defeated on a daily basis.  This sense of being defeated I have come to realise, is in itself a spiritual experience, because what we're trying to do feels so immense, we grapple with vast currents of energy, and always fall short, and that is how it should be.  We transcend the limited individualist trauma culture of our times by stretching out into a vaster cosmology that includes wild beings not human not animal- whispers we feel but cannot truly see because when we focus on them they vanish. The slippery nature of the creative inspiration is in itself a frustrating and soulful experience. In this way, the creative path brings us to our knees as well as to exalted states of wonder and connection, and a sense of feeling raw pervades. A full human being, not a perfectly healed or optimised human being. The last two stanzas of 'The Man Watching', R.M.Rilke When we win it’s with small things, and the triumph itself makes us small. What is extraordinary and eternal does not want to be bent by us. I mean the Angel who appeared to the wrestlers of the Old Testament: when the wrestlers’ sinews grew long like metal strings, he felt them under his fingers like chords of deep music. Whoever was beaten by this Angel (who often simply declined the fight) went away proud and strengthened and great from that harsh hand, that kneaded him as if to change his shape. Winning does not tempt that man. This is how he grows: by being defeated, decisively, by constantly greater beings. –Translated by Robert Bly Join the LLC Jewellery Family  https://lorenlewiscole.lpages.co/jointhetribe/ Come say hi on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/lorenlewiscolejewellery/?hl=en

    1h 24m
  8. 28 - How PLEASURE and OBSESSION redirect and heal the distortion of 'people pleasing'.

    Feb 19

    28 - How PLEASURE and OBSESSION redirect and heal the distortion of 'people pleasing'.

    I'd love to hear your thoughts in this podcast How PLEASURE and OBSESSION redirect and heal the distortion of 'people pleasing'. OBSESSION WILL SAVE YOUR LIFE- RECLAIMING THE SACREDNESS AND NATURALNESS OB CREATIVE OBSESSION AND HOW WE ARE TAUGHT TO FEAR AND QUESTION IT, BE GOOD AND FIT IN. NO BABE, NO. NOT US. WE ARE ARTISTS, ONE CANNOT CREATE WITHOUT OBSESSION. Join the LLC Jewellery Family  https://lorenlewiscole.lpages.co/jointhetribe/ Come say hi on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/lorenlewiscolejewellery/?hl=en https://mundoshabitables.com/media/pages/biblioteca/los-usos-de-lo-erotico/a52dc8c4d7-1754436835/the-uses-of-the-erotic-audre-lorde.pdf Patti Smith on creativity https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FocA9OECFy8

    1h 37m
See All (35)

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.  How can we go from a performative mode of engagement with the world to a participatory one? Living from the inside out, sharing what we've come here to share. Art is medicine. We create art to heal, we heal to create Art.  @lorenlewiscolejewellery www.lorenlewiscole.com Gorgeous cover image by @raynjermain , Ben Rayner 

Information

  • Creator
    Loren Lewis Cole
  • Years Active
    2025 - 2026
  • Episodes
    35
  • Rating
    Explicit
  • Copyright
    © 2026 The Embodied Vessel Podcast
  • Show Website
    The Embodied Vessel Podcast