Open Heart with Lu Leslan

Lu Leslan
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Join musician and filmmaker Lu as she shares intimate stories about finding unexpected connections in life. From exploring identity through names to navigating between cultures, from creative breakthroughs to encounters with nature - each episode digs into moments of genuine human experience. Through vulnerable storytelling and reflection, Lu invites listeners to discover their own surprising connections in everyday life. Send your questions and stories - let's explore these connections together.

  1. Aug 21

    Season 4 Trailer

    Tick tock hear the clock Wake me up and say good night Kiss my salty tears DESCRIPTION Season 3 asked who we are. Season 4 asks how we can look after each other as neighbors. This season, we look outward — at who we become when we truly show up for each other. It'll be surprising, terrifying, and unpredictable. Open Heart returns September 3rd. SHOW NOTES A new season of Open Heart with Lu Leslan will ask more questions, sharing new ideas and observations. Together we continue the journey in the mystery about what it means to be human, here on Earth. CONNECT WITH OPEN HEART PODCAST: 🌐 Website: leslancreativestudio.com  🎧 Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/open-heart-with-lu-leslan/id1861169448 🎵 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/2duSwoSJVHFG8wn7SsC1F9 ▶️ YouTube: https://youtu.be/C47yEyI19CM SHARE YOUR STORY:  lu@leslancreativestudio.com RESOURCES MENTIONED: Lu's first documentary: Take a Bow: The Ingrid Clarfield Story (2011)

  2. Aug 13

    A New Philosophy for Living

    What does it mean to live well, knowing everything will vanish without a trace? In the Season 3 finale of Open Heart, Lu gathers the threads of the whole season into one philosophy — the wisdom of effortless action. From the flow of playing the piano, to the pain and joy that arrive together, to the anger she has learned to turn into art, to the ancient words of Chuang Tsu — this is an episode about how to hold a finite life with an open hand. Not to grasp. Not to keep. Only to live it, fully, while we can. SHOW NOTES EPISODE 10 — A NEW PHILOSOPHY FOR LIVING Everything vanishes without a trace. Everything. So let's enjoy the ride. This episode asks: What if our existence is meaningless?Why do we care if anyone remembers us?How do I want to live my life, knowing everything will vanish without a trace?IN THIS EPISODE: Effortless action does not mean to do nothing — it means to act without force or expectationThe flow zone — losing yourself in playing the piano, letting it play by itselfPleasure and pain arrive together — one cannot exist without the otherThe day my mother gave birth to me: joy and pain, the first human connectionHow depression taught me to be a true friend to myselfThe demon within us is not our enemy — it is a part of us that has yet to be heardTurning anger into creativity, creativity into art, art into humanityThe wisdom of Chuang Tsu and the Inner Chapters — to serve the mind, unmoved by sadness or joyThe perfect human mind is like a mirror — it reflects but does not holdAt the core of our existence, there is no label, no color, no category — just a human beingThe brokenness itself is the wisdom for livingTHE EPISODE IN ONE LINE:  "Everything vanishes without a trace. Everything. So let's enjoy the ride." END OF SEASON 3:  Open Heart will return September 3rd with Season 4 — more ideas, observations, and questions about what it means to be human, here on Earth. SHARE YOUR STORY:  lu@leslancreativestudio.com CONNECT WITH OPEN HEART PODCAST: 🌐 Website: leslancreativestudio.com🎧 Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/open-heart-with-lu-leslan/id1861169448🎵 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/2duSwoSJVHFG8wn7SsC1F9▶️ YouTube: https://youtu.be/C47yEyI19CMOpen Heart with Lu Leslan is for anyone who aspires to understand themselves and the world more deeply. Through honest personal stories, philosophical insights, and practical wisdom, each episode invites you to live with more clarity, courage, and compassion. Subscribe and share with someone ready to open their heart. RESOURCES MENTIONED: Lu's first documentary: Take a Bow: The Ingrid Clarfield Story (2011)

  3. Aug 6

    The Invisible Connection

    EPISODE 9 — THE INVISIBLE CONNECTION DESCRIPTION We spend so much energy drawing lines between ourselves and everything else — classifying, ranking, deciding what matters. But what if the deepest connection is the one we cannot see? Episode 9 of Open Heart Season 3 follows a widening circle — from the self, to a cricket saved from a swimming pool, to a sky over Prince Edward Island that seemed to breathe with loving kindness — and asks whether we are all one living thing under the same watchful sky. SHOW NOTES EPISODE 9 — THE INVISIBLE CONNECTION The will to live doesn't ask what species you are. It just asks — is anyone there? This episode asks: How does the connection with ourselves change over time?Can we cultivate a connection to all living beings — and would it make us less self-serving?Are we all connected as one gigantic organism, under the same sky watching over us?IN THIS EPISODE: The connection with the self goes through many doors of knowledgeThe more we learn about who we are, the less we knowHow family, appearances, and the years between thirty and fifty blur our connection to ourselvesFinding a cricket drowning in a swimming pool — and one small act of noticingAll creatures great and small are born with an innate drive to liveA botanical garden, and paying attention to where we stepWe spend so much energy drawing lines between ourselves and other living thingsAll living things deserve care and respect — the cricket, the plants, the person standing next to youA sky over Prince Edward Island, melting into pink, blue, and violetThe sky spoke with a loving kindness, breathing with me, transmitting the energy of life and mysteryTHE EPISODE IN ONE LINE:  "To live with more courage, more beauty, more heart." NEXT EPISODE:  A New Philosophy for Living. SHARE YOUR STORY:  lu@leslancreativestudio.com CONNECT WITH OPEN HEART PODCAST: 🌐 Website: leslancreativestudio.com🎧 Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/open-heart-with-lu-leslan/id1861169448🎵 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/2duSwoSJVHFG8wn7SsC1F9▶️ YouTube: https://youtu.be/C47yEyI19CMOpen Heart with Lu Leslan is for anyone who aspires to understand themselves and the world more deeply. Through honest personal stories, philosophical insights, and practical wisdom, each episode invites you to live with more clarity, courage, and compassion. Subscribe and share with someone ready to open their heart. RESOURCES MENTIONED: Lu's first documentary: Take a Bow: The Ingrid Clarfield Story (2011)

  4. Jul 30

    The Source Within

    Some of us learn early to carry other people's pain. We become the healer — the one who shows up, who gives, who lights the way for others. But what happens when we never turn that healing toward ourselves? Episode 8 of Open Heart Season 3 traces the story of the wounded healer from a first, unexpected moment in Lu's teens to a foggy shoreline in Prince Edward Island — and arrives at a quiet, radical idea: the brokenness itself may be the wisdom for living. SHOW NOTES EPISODE 8 — THE SOURCE WITHIN There is nothing we need to do to make ourselves whole again. Because the brokenness itself is the wisdom for living. This episode asks: Do we have control over our own suffering?Do we trust the source within ourselves?Do we have the wisdom to heal ourselves?IN THIS EPISODE: Trust the body's signals — the nervous system and intuition as our first line of defenseThe first memory of playing the role of a healer, and the guilt that arrived without warningGrowing up — marriage, motherhood, and never learning what healthy attachment really wasHaving gone through breakups, we are completely exposed to unknown forcesGiving too much — and paying the price with our own physical and psychological well-beingTrue partnership is rare. Not everyone can find it. But it needs a solid foundation of trust, respect, and mutual support.Through self-reflection and talk therapy — releasing the pain stored insideA walk through the fog at Covehead Lighthouse in Prince Edward Island, and the woman who showed the way backI need to be the lighthouse for my own salvationThe brokenness itself is the wisdom for livingClosing with an original haiku — Healer's SongTHE EPISODE IN ONE LINE:  "There is nothing we need to do to make ourselves whole again. Because the brokenness itself is the wisdom for living." NEXT EPISODE:  The Invisible Connection. SHARE YOUR STORY:  lu@leslancreativestudio.com CONNECT WITH OPEN HEART PODCAST: 🌐 Website: leslancreativestudio.com🎧 Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/open-heart-with-lu-leslan/id1861169448🎵 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/2duSwoSJVHFG8wn7SsC1F9▶️ YouTube: https://youtu.be/C47yEyI19CMOpen Heart with Lu Leslan is for anyone who aspires to understand themselves and the world more deeply. Through honest personal stories, philosophical insights, and practical wisdom, each episode invites you to live with more clarity, courage, and compassion. Subscribe and share with someone ready to open their heart. RESOURCES MENTIONED: Lu's first documentary: Take a Bow: The Ingrid Clarfield Story (2011)

  5. Jul 23

    Parody in Paradox

    All life begins with shit. That's not a metaphor — it's biology. And it might be the most honest thing anyone has said about the human condition. Episode 7 of Open Heart Season 3 traces the same cycle across three scales — the biological, the personal, and the planetary — and arrives at the most uncomfortable question of the season: are humans the cancer cell of their own planet? SHOW NOTES EPISODE 7 — PARODY IN PARADOX Everything turns to shit. That's the bloody truth about life. And yet — we keep building. This episode asks: Why do we feel so good after we eliminate waste from our bodies?Why do we destroy our relationships in order to start over again?And why must we live in perpetual conflict in order to feel alive?IN THIS EPISODE: All life begins with shit — the biological truth no one talks aboutPlants, animals, compost, soil — the cycle that sustains all lifeWe enter every relationship believing this one will be different. That is the parody. It always is different. And it never is. That is the paradox.Human emotional energy — a circular current flowing through us without purpose or destinationMost of us confuse being needed with being valuedThat asymmetry is the loneliest human experienceThe body keeps the recordWe loved a possibility — and yet what we imagined was not false. It was real. It was simply ours.The last 300 years of human progress built at the expense of ecology and biodiversityLike a cancer cell — multiplying exponentially, guaranteeing its own destructionWe are all innocent and guilty. We are all capable of deception and honesty. We are all trapped in the illusion of what we want to believe.What's the chance of that happening is anyone's guess.Everything turns to shit. That's the bloody truth about life.THE EPISODE IN ONE LINE: "We enter every relationship believing this one will be different. That is the parody. It always is different. And it never is. That is the paradox." NEXT EPISODE: Next time — The Source Within. The most terrifying and beautiful place you will ever find. SHARE YOUR STORY: lu@leslancreativestudio.com CONNECT WITH OPEN HEART PODCAST: 🌐 Website: leslancreativestudio.com🎧 Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/open-heart-with-lu-leslan/id1861169448🎵 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/2duSwoSJVHFG8wn7SsC1F9▶️ YouTube: https://youtu.be/C47yEyI19CMOpen Heart with Lu Leslan is for anyone who aspires to understand themselves and the world more deeply. Through honest personal stories, philosophical insights, and practical wisdom, each episode invites you to live with more clarity, courage, and compassion. Subscribe and share with someone ready to open their heart. RESOURCES MENTIONED: Lu's first documentary: Take a Bow: The Ingrid Clarfield Story (2011)

  6. Jul 16

    From Apology to Forgiveness

    S-O-R-R-Y. The most spoken word in everyday conversation — and perhaps the least understood. Episode 6 of Open Heart Season 3 takes apart the word sorry letter by letter, examines what apology actually does versus what we hope it does, and asks the harder question — if we are the enablers of our own suffering, what exactly are we forgiving? SHOW NOTES EPISODE 6 — FROM APOLOGY TO FORGIVENESS Apology without respect is performance. Apology without appreciation is hollow. This episode asks: Does apology and forgiveness open the door for an endless loop?Can we forgive what was never acknowledged?And if we are the enablers of our own suffering — what exactly are we forgiving?IN THIS EPISODE: S-O-R-R-Y — the acronym that takes apart the most overused word in the human vocabularyApology as habit, reflex, and emotional crutchThe deeper damage — invisible, living inside the person who kept believingThe multilayered, multidimensional human beingA childhood of physical abuse — never acknowledged, never discussedThey did what they knew at the time. I did what I could at the time.The enabler — how we create our own suffering again and againForgiveness as mirror — in order to forgive anyone else we must first forgive ourselvesThe tears that flow from our own eyes are the beginning of real awakeningThe unavoidability of life itself is Continuation. With a capital C.THE EPISODE IN ONE LINE: "And perhaps it is the core of humanity. The unavoidability of life itself is Continuation. With a capital C." NEXT EPISODE: Parody in Paradox. Everything turns to shit. That's the bloody truth about life. And yet — we keep building. SHARE YOUR STORY: lu@leslancreativestudio.com CONNECT WITH OPEN HEART PODCAST: 🌐 Website: leslancreativestudio.com🎧 Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/open-heart-with-lu-leslan/id1861169448🎵 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/2duSwoSJVHFG8wn7SsC1F9▶️ YouTube: https://youtu.be/C47yEyI19CMOpen Heart with Lu Leslan is for anyone who aspires to understand themselves and the world more deeply. Through honest personal stories, philosophical insights, and practical wisdom, each episode invites you to live with more clarity, courage, and compassion. Subscribe and share with someone ready to open their heart. RESOURCES MENTIONED: Lu's first documentary: Take a Bow: The Ingrid Clarfield Story (2011)

  7. Jul 9

    The Border

    Every border we live inside — we inherited. Episode 5 of Open Heart Season 3 asks what it cost in human lives — and tells the story of one woman alone in a motel room with yellowish curtains in Tijuana in 1979 — who crossed a border she wasn't supposed to cross. And a woodcarver on the Victoria Falls Bridge who crosses one every day just to feed his family. SHOW NOTES EPISODE 5 — THE BORDER The border between nations is the history of human suffering. It will take curiosity and humility to understand the ground we are standing on. This episode asks: Do we know we inherited the border between nations without knowing the human suffering?Do we have a choice to pick a side to stand on?Do we abandon rules when our livelihood is at stake?IN THIS EPISODE: The inherited border — drawn before we arrivedTijuana 1979 — alone in a motel room with yellowish curtainsThe vase — the small plane — the pounding heartThe naturalization question I didn't understand but answered anywayThe friend who drove me — who later became my husbandHonor and pride go out the window when survival is the only thing that mattersThe woodcarver on the Victoria Falls Bridge crossing the Zambezi RiverThe randomness of the cards handed down to us — the absurdity of life itselfTHE EPISODE IN ONE LINE: "The randomness of the cards handed down to us makes who we become who we are — it is the absurdity of life itself." NEXT EPISODE: Forgiveness. What it costs. What it frees. And whether we can forgive what we never fully understood. SHARE YOUR STORY: lu@leslancreativestudio.com CONNECT WITH OPEN HEART PODCAST: 🌐 Website: leslancreativestudio.com🎧 Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/open-heart-with-lu-leslan/id1861169448🎵 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/2duSwoSJVHFG8wn7SsC1F9▶️ YouTube: https://youtu.be/C47yEyI19CMOpen Heart with Lu Leslan is for anyone who aspires to understand themselves and the world more deeply. Through honest personal stories, philosophical insights, and practical wisdom, each episode invites you to live with more clarity, courage, and compassion. Subscribe and share with someone ready to open their heart. RESOURCES MENTIONED: Lu's first documentary: Take a Bow: The Ingrid Clarfield Story (2011)

  8. Jul 2

    Superiority vs. Dignity

    Where does superiority come from — and what does it cost us? Episode 4 of Open Heart Season 3 traces the origins of superiority from a ten year old girl winning a woodwind competition to the labels we use to divide ourselves. And then shows what dignity looks like in the faces of people who never needed a stage to prove their worth. SHOW NOTES EPISODE 4 — SUPERIORITY VS. DIGNITY Superiority needs a stage to show off. Dignity is a quiet recognition of mutual respect. This episode asks: Do we know where our superiority originates?Do we question our own superiority?Do we need superiority to survive?IN THIS EPISODE: The woodwind competition at age ten — where pride became the seed of arroganceThe Golden Rule — superiority disguised as empathyProgressive language — superiority disguised as sensitivityThe onion — is it necessary to name every layer?At the core of our existence — just a human beingRene — eleven years old — whose favorite subjects are math and scienceBeauty — camp director at the Okavango — fifteen years of quiet leadershipMC — whose patience and kindness never waveredRespect is the soil for dignity to flourishTHE EPISODE IN ONE LINE: "At the core of our existence — there is no label, no color, no category. Just a human being." NEXT EPISODE: The Border. We inherited it. We live inside it. And sometimes — survival demands we cross it without permission. SHARE YOUR STORY: lu@leslancreativestudio.com CONNECT WITH OPEN HEART PODCAST: 🌐 Website: leslancreativestudio.com🎧 Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/open-heart-with-lu-leslan/id1861169448🎵 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/2duSwoSJVHFG8wn7SsC1F9▶️ YouTube: https://youtu.be/C47yEyI19CMOpen Heart with Lu Leslan is for anyone who aspires to understand themselves and the world more deeply. Through honest personal stories, philosophical insights, and practical wisdom, each episode invites you to live with more clarity, courage, and compassion. Subscribe and share with someone ready to open their heart. RESOURCES MENTIONED: Lu's first documentary: Take a Bow: The Ingrid Clarfield Story (2011)

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About

Join musician and filmmaker Lu as she shares intimate stories about finding unexpected connections in life. From exploring identity through names to navigating between cultures, from creative breakthroughs to encounters with nature - each episode digs into moments of genuine human experience. Through vulnerable storytelling and reflection, Lu invites listeners to discover their own surprising connections in everyday life. Send your questions and stories - let's explore these connections together.

Information

  • Creator
    Lu Leslan
  • Years Active
    2025 - 2026
  • Episodes
    33
  • Rating
    Explicit
  • Copyright
    © 2026 Open Heart with Lu Leslan
  • Show Website
    Open Heart with Lu Leslan