What if relief doesn’t come from fixing your thoughts, but from moving your body and putting words on the page? In this episode of The Spiritual Artist Podcast, CJ Miller sits down with poet Jodie Kennedy, an observer, mumbler, overthinker, and accidental creative writer from Elkhorn, Wisconsin. Jodie is the author of Clumsy Beauty, a debut poetry collection rooted in anxiety, attention, and the quiet work of noticing what it feels like to be alive.

Jodie shares how writing poetry helps her listen to herself again when anxiety pulls her into mental loops. For her, writing is not about performance or polish. It is a way of coming back into alignment, hearing her own voice, and seeing herself with fresh eyes. Alongside writing, she turns to simple physical tasks like scooping chicken poop, washing dishes, brushing her teeth, or working in the barn. Not intense focus. Not productivity. Just mindful movement.

CJ reflects on how the body itself can become a source of healing, especially when paired with creative expression. Writing poetry and engaging in gentle physical labor both bring attention out of the head and back into the present moment. Together, they explore how many of us drift away from ourselves as we grow older, turning outward to fit into the world, and how art can become a way home.

CJ reads from Jodie’s work, including a passage that wrestles with the fear of an unintended existence and the longing to live passionately. Jodie also shares how life disruptions, toxic work, illness in her family, and walking with someone through the dying process pushed her to write daily on Instagram, what she calls “mental illness in small squares.”

This conversation explores why good art doesn’t sort life into good or bad, why presence matters more than answers, and why Jodie believes we are living in a time that calls for what she names exquisite love.

Her book is available on Amazon and wherever books are sold.
Visit her at www.jkkennedywrites.com

Sometimes the way out of anxiety is not thinking harder.
It is writing honestly.
And doing the next small, ordinary thing with care.

Want to learn more about CJ Miller? Check out his Spiritual Artist Retreats, 1:1 Personal Coaching, and Speaking Engagements at www.spiritualartisttoday.com. His retreats are designed to help you reconnect with your Creative Intelligence and express your true artistic voice. You can also find his upcoming schedule there, and his book, The Spiritual Artist, is available on Amazon.

REWIND: After a conversation with Rabbi Rami Shapiro, CJ reflects on why spiritual independence matters—especially for those burned by religion. Drawing from the Gospel of Thomas, mystic traditions, and insights echoed by Eckhart Tolle, CJ explores the difference between belief and realization, form and essence, doing and being. When presence becomes primary and effort softens, coherence emerges—and the Field of Creative Intelligence reveals itself.

Want to learn more about CJ Miller? Check out his Spiritual Artist Retreats, 1:1 Personal Coaching, and Speaking Engagements at www.spiritualartisttoday.com. His retreats are designed to help you reconnect with your Creative Intelligence and express your true artistic voice. You can also find his upcoming schedule there, and his book, The Spiritual Artist, is available on Amazon.

In this wide-ranging and deeply human conversation, CJ sits down with Rabbi Rami Shapiro—award-winning author of more than three dozen books, longtime contributor to Spirituality & Health Magazine, and co-founder of the One River and One Foot Judaism Foundations.

Together, they explore what it truly means to live as a spiritually independent person—not as an idea or belief system, but as a way of being in the world.

Rabbi Rami speaks candidly about 12-Step spirituality, surrender, and the illusion of control, offering a liberating reframe: we don’t surrender to a greater power—we awaken to the fact that we are already part of it. From there, the conversation moves into the nature of the observer, the “Greater I,” and what happens when identity loosens and language begins to fall away.

Drawing from Zen, Judaism, mysticism, and lived experience, Rabbi Rami shares insights on active stillness, mantra practice (including Ein od milvado—“there is nothing else besides this”), and why struggling to feel connected only reinforces the false belief that we are separate.

CJ and Rabbi Rami also explore creativity as a spiritual practice—whether standing in front of an easel, writing without preconception, or drawing an Enso in a single embodied moment. Writing, art, and speech become portals for presence rather than acts of effort or control.

The conversation touches on necessary versus unnecessary suffering, the breakdown of ego through language, the role of laughter as spiritual liberation, and why mystics—ancient and contemporary—continue to point us beyond the madness of dogma and division.

This episode is an invitation to remember who you are.
To re-member yourself back into the whole.
And to live joyfully and ethically without needing certainty to hold it all together.

Want to learn more about CJ Miller? Check out his Spiritual Artist Retreats, 1:1 Personal Coaching, and Speaking Engagements at www.spiritualartisttoday.com. His retreats are designed to help you reconnect with your Creative Intelligence and express your true artistic voice. You can also find his upcoming schedule there, and his book, The Spiritual Artist, is available on Amazon.

In this Rewind episode, CJ reflects on what stayed with him after his recent conversation with intuitive artist Cameron Cohen. While re-listening to the interview, he shares a new morning ritual of doodling and how it deepened his understanding of body-led intuition.

CJ explores key lessons from Cameron’s approach to energetic sensitivity and her ability to feel and register emotional information through the body. The episode weaves into CJ’s evolving somatic framework, asking simple but powerful questions: Where do you feel emotion in your body? What happens when you let it move instead of trying to fix it?

Together, they point to practical grounding techniques—directing attention, engaging texture, gentle movement, and honoring sensitivity as a strength. This Rewind is an invitation to let the body lead, quiet the monkey mind, and rediscover intuition through presence, motion, and awareness.

Want to learn more about CJ Miller? Check out his Spiritual Artist Retreats, 1:1 Personal Coaching, and Speaking Engagements at www.spiritualartisttoday.com. His retreats are designed to help you reconnect with your Creative Intelligence and express your true artistic voice. You can also find his upcoming schedule there, and his book, The Spiritual Artist, is available on Amazon.

In this deeply embodied conversation, CJ is joined by Cameron Cohen, a Los Angeles–based intuitive artist known for her Manifestation Paintings—custom works created as living tools for clarity, alignment, and intention.

Together, they explore why words often fall short and how the body becomes our most reliable guide. Cameron shares how she listens for a full-body Yes through sensation—tingling, warmth, chills, and goosebumps—and how those signals guide both her life and her art. For her, the body is a receiving instrument, like a microphone tuned to Creative Intelligence.

Cameron walks CJ through a real-time fear process, gently reshaping sensation through curiosity, imagination, and joy—turning “icky into Mickey.” They discuss co-creation, guided visualization, color as personal language, and how intuitive art invites clients into the creative process itself. Whether working over Zoom or in person, Cameron’s approach honors sensitivity as strength and intuition as practical wisdom.

The conversation also touches on silence, digital detox, energetic boundaries, and learning to protect your field without shutting down. Cameron speaks candidly about her bipolar diagnosis, reframing it as a superpower once she learned how to work with her nervous system instead of against it.

This episode is an invitation to listen differently—to your body, your emotions, and the subtle signals that say yes, no, or not yet. As CJ reminds us, honoring the full spectrum of who you are creates space for coherence, truth, and authentic expression.

Learn more about Cameron’s work, including her Love Mural project, at www.cameroncohenart.com

Want to learn more about CJ Miller? Check out his Spiritual Artist Retreats, 1:1 Personal Coaching, and Speaking Engagements at www.spiritualartisttoday.com. His retreats are designed to help you reconnect with your Creative Intelligence and express your true artistic voice. You can also find his upcoming schedule there, and his book, The Spiritual Artist, is available on Amazon.

After the recent events in Venezuela, I noticed my mind looping and my body tightening. I’ve always considered empathy a strength—but every strength has a shadow side. When sensitivity turns into over-identification, it stops being a gift and becomes a burden.

In this video, I share a simple awareness framework: noticing thoughts, bodily sensations, and emotional tone—without becoming them. You are a drop of Spirit, not the whole ocean. You can care deeply without carrying the weight of the world. Coherent alignment comes from balance, not force—and when thinking, feeling, and emotion realign, clarity and guidance naturally arise. Creative Intelligence meets you.

Before we close, think of a trait you’re proud of.
Empathy. Sensitivity. Responsibility.

Ask gently:
Where might this be too much?
Where might it need balance instead of suppression?

That awareness alone can change everything.

Learn more in my book Spiritual Parable: A 40-Day Practice.

Want to learn more about CJ Miller? Check out his Spiritual Artist Retreats, 1:1 Personal Coaching, and Speaking Engagements at www.spiritualartisttoday.com. His retreats are designed to help you reconnect with your Creative Intelligence and express your true artistic voice. You can also find his upcoming schedule there, and his book, The Spiritual Artist, is available on Amazon.

In this special podcast episode, CJ turns on the record button during one of his real counseling sessions with breathwork and Somatic Experiencing specialist Jonathan Schechter, offering listeners an intimate look into embodied healing in real time. Together, they explore how we’re often taught to view life—and healing—through a strictly material lens, while our medical system is far less equipped to address emotional states, stress, and the nervous system. Jonathan encourages listeners to become their own practitioners by cultivating curiosity and awareness, likening it to discovering new colors beyond a limited palette—and even noticing the space between the colors, where real power lives.

CJ shares a simple but revealing moment from daily life: while folding laundry, he noticed he wasn’t breathing, unconsciously waiting until the task was finished to take a breath. Inspired by Jack Kornfield’s After the Ecstasy, the Laundry, the conversation turns toward bringing meditative awareness into ordinary chores—and celebrating the awareness itself. As Jonathan reminds us, without awareness there can be no change.

The discussion deepens as CJ talks openly about chronic pain, rushing habits, and resisting sadness following the loss of a close friend and mentor. Jonathan explains how the nervous system adapts to its environment and why somatic healing takes time. He guides CJ through a gentle practice of finding areas of ease in the body, then slowly returning to the emotional “epicenter” without becoming flooded—a process known as pendulation, developed by Peter Levine, founder of Somatic Experiencing. Like building strength at the gym, healing happens gradually, by moving between discomfort and safety.

Jonathan also introduces Levine’s SIBAM model, which breaks experience into five layers—Sensation, Image, Behavior, Affect, and Meaning—allowing overwhelming experiences like pain to be gently separated and processed in manageable pieces. They recommend Levine’s book In an Unspoken Voice as a key resource and discuss how pendulation and SIBAM can become practical tools during pain or flare-ups.

Later in the episode, CJ shares a new healing power statement—“I open my fist to healing; my body and mind harmonize”—and reflects on releasing old coping strategies that once served him but are no longer needed. Jonathan reframes this not as failure, but as safety: now the body is safe enough to heal. CJ even shares a creative way to reinforce intention by turning power statements into daily-use passwords.

The episode closes with Jonathan recommending meditation teacher and author Shinzen Young, whose work focuses on working skillfully with physical pain and discomfort—offering listeners yet another doorway into mindful, embodied healing.

For more information on Jonathan Schecter visit: https://bluemagicalchemy.com/

Want to learn more about CJ Miller? Check out his Spiritual Artist Retreats, 1:1 Personal Coaching, and Speaking Engagements at www.spiritualartisttoday.com. His retreats are designed to help you reconnect with your Creative Intelligence and express your true artistic voice. You can also find his upcoming schedule there, and his book, The Spiritual Artist, is available on Amazon.

In this end-of-year episode, CJ reflects on the highlights and growth points that shaped his 2025. He speaks openly about “hitting the wall” when chronic pain entered his life, and how choosing to share his struggle created unexpected openings. By practicing presence instead of isolation, CJ found himself in deeper relationship with others.

He describes trying countless approaches to find relief—medications, exercise, physical therapy, breathwork and more. While nothing offered a quick fix, the experience “cracked him wide open,” and deepened his empathy. And it reminded him that living in a physical body brings challenges that aren’t always the result of our thoughts, despite what some New Thought teachings suggest.

Some seasons of life require patience and a long, committed effort. They invite us to stay present, even when the journey feels uncertain.

CJ recommends his interview with Jonathan Schechter on breathwork along with two books that supported him this year: Mark Nepo’s The Book of Awakening and Amoda Maa’s Embodied Enlightenment. Both writers speak beautifully about meeting life as it is and discovering presence even in discomfort.

Sharing this journey with his students has been one of the most meaningful parts of his year. As CJ says, we are here to walk each other home. Not to fix one another, but to witness each other with tenderness. To show up with presence. To remind each other that we don’t have to navigate the hard moments alone.

As we move into the holiday season, CJ invites you to practice presence with the people in your life. Hold a sense of love in your heart. Allow yourself to slow down, listen, and walk beside those you care about. We are Spirit expressed in physical form, and our presence is often the greatest gift we can offer.

He closes with an exciting announcement: beginning January 4, he will launch an online Daily Doodle Contest. Each day he will read a parable from his new book Spiritual Parable as a Daily Practice. Listeners are invited to submit drawings inspired by each story, and selected pieces will be included in a published coloring book next year.

Want to learn more about CJ Miller? Check out his Spiritual Artist Retreats, 1:1 Personal Coaching, and Speaking Engagements at www.spiritualartisttoday.com. His retreats are designed to help you reconnect with your Creative Intelligence and express your true artistic voice. You can also find his upcoming schedule there, and his book, The Spiritual Artist, is available on Amazon.