Hey everybody. Welcome to my guest tonight. I'm your host, Jeff Revilla.
I've got an amazing guest joining me tonight, Mari
Reisberg. Therapist, podcaster, circus
performer.
From the trapeze to the therapist's chair, she's danced through life with
creative flair, lifting spirits of movement in my. Murray
Reesburg loves joy unwind.
Tune in now. Take a creative flight. It's my guest tonight with Jeffrey Vil.
Lot of sights, stories that soar, laughter that heals. This is the pockets
where life gets real.
Amari, welcome to the show. Did you like your song? Oh my
gosh, Jeff, that was amazing. I, I just, I
want that to play whenever I enter a room
or whenever I have to show up somewhere. It's
fantastic. Thank you so much for putting holiday.
Parties the grocery store. It's a mar.
Exactly. It's going to be stuck in my head for the rest of the night
for sure. Well, I teased that break going into
your song with circus performer and
quite a. A longevity. Seventeen years in the circus. How did
you get into that lifestyle? Sometimes it's, it's family related. It's
passed down. But how did you start in into the circus
and into studying trapeze? Yeah, so I
was a rowdy 3 year old. No one else in
my family is in the circus or just trapeze,
but I was a very rowdy three year old and my mom, who was pregnant
with my younger brother at the time, wanted me out of the house. And we
happened to live down the street from the trapeze
school in Portland, Oregon and I started
taking trapeze lessons. And then at three I was
invited to be a part of their
adult performing troupe in one of their
shows. Needed a redheaded kid and
so every night my dad would walk me to the theater, I would
do my performance and then I'd walk back home with him. But
that's how I got my start in the
the circus physical theater performing world.
And trapeze was a huge part of that. And so
that's where it all began. You were like a rowdy, like a. You had a
lot of energy as a three year old and you went to study
this and did you get hooked right away? Was it something that you
love doing right from the start? Absolutely.
I think the sensation of flying
was so magical and
incredible that I remember having dreams
of flying and then being on a trapeze. You literally feel
like you're flying even though you're holding onto a bar
and moving through the air. But it was,
you could never get high enough on a Swing on the
playground, but on a trapeze, now that was a whole
different experience. Feeling like you were really flying.
And I think from the very beginning I was hooked.
And I live in the east coast and I never even heard of the, of
a school for trapeze artists. My daughter did gymnastics and dance.
Dance. And I understand that world, but what does it, what does
gymnastics look like for a three year old? I can't imagine they put you 20ft
up in the air on day one. Definitely not. Definitely
not. We were learning the basics of
trapeze. You know, your feet could touch the ground and you were holding onto the
bar and running one direction and then turning your body and running back the
other way. And the bar was, you know,
fit a three year old's hands. It wasn't a big
dowel that you couldn't hold on to and the
triangle that was the bar and then the padding
connected to the ceiling, you know, was the size
for a child to use because as a three year old
your legs aren't wide enough to grip
the edges of a full size trapeze.
So there were modifications that were made as children
and that was, I don't know, there was just something so
magical about being a part of
the circus world and
experiencing what aerial dance was and
physical theater and learning all the components and pieces
of this, this world of performance,
of how to use your body to convey story.
Because it wasn't through lyrics or
dialog. And as you go through the years, you,
17 years of studying are there like, like
in dance and gymnastics, there's recitals and competitions. What,
what does that look like? As do you go through a year of study and
then you put on a performance or is that something you do on summer break?
You, you go out and perform at different fairs and community
places. So when you're taking
classes like you would with a dance class, yes, you have a recital at the
end of the class session. But by the
time I was six, I was a member of their children's performing
troupe. And so that was a part
of, we did regular shows. We had,
I want to say memory serves, we had a
summer show and a winter show that we did. And then sometimes
we'd tour and go to other little towns
or fairs in Oregon and put on
the show that we had created for audiences. But
it wasn't, there weren't any competitions, there weren't levels other than
like the children's performing troupe and the adult performing troupe.
And you kind of moved up into the adult
performing troupe and that happened As I hit high school
and got to participate in so many
amazing opportunities. After I graduated
high school, I took a year off between high school and college and toured with
the adult performing company in Washington
state, Oregon. And then we got the opportunity to perform off
Broadway in New York City for a month. And that was an
incredible experience. Being in
a theater that size, performing eight times
a week and navigating what trapeze
and physical theater do to your body that many times
a week as well. Did you have a favorite maneuver or like a
signature one that you. You love to perform during shows?
Oh, you know, I think my favorite was
literally just to swing and feel the. The
air blowing past you, whether you were hanging on the bar,
sitting on top of the bar, or hanging by your knees
on the bar, or your ankles on the bar and just
feeling the freedom and again, feeling like you were
flying. And those years performing, is that
where you caught this bug of performing, of getting in front of a
crowd, of just showcasing some sort of
talent or some sort of emotion? Did that all come
from starting here in the trapeze school?
Absolutely. From that first time I got to
perform in front of an audience, I was absolutely hooked. If
you ask my parents, I put on many a show for them in my living
room, and then it just kept growing
and continuing on. And getting
to share a piece of your heart and soul
with an audience is unlike anything
else. It's such a wonderful experience to be able
to walk onto a stage and share a part of yourself
and impact other people by the story you're telling,
and then be able to finish that performance
and walk off stage and feel like
you. You really, you were
able to impact someone and share a little piece
of you with someone else that you may never meet,
you may never know, and then head back to the
rest of your life. You mentioned traveling and you. And
you went to New York City. Did you stay there for a while or did
you end up moving to New York City for a little bit? Yeah. So
the first time we were there for a month performing off
Broadway. And then after that, I went
to college in Connecticut and got a degree in acting.
And then following my acting degree, I moved
back to New York and lived there for three, about three years. And
at that point, I was singing with an Irish band. On
auditioning and working as a nanny. As you do
in New York, you got a lot of things to help you survive.
And most important, you were started out as performing. You go to school
for acting, and then you end up in. In New York City.
You Know, auditioning, getting roles and trying to, you know, establish
yourself. But there was a little thing you just skipped over real quickly.
You started singing in an Irish band. How did that
happen? How did you. How did you connect with that group? Yeah,
so I. Growing up, my cousin
is, oh, 10, 12 years older.
Maybe she's a little bit older than that. She plays the Irish
fiddle and had lived in New York for years and years and years,
and she was always looking for a singer, and. And
I happened to move to New York, and she knew that I sang and knew
that I was a performer and asked if I wanted to
come and sing a couple of songs at one of her gigs. And
I did, and things worked out really well. And
so I just started getting to perform with her band
and singing at the Coney Island
Irish Festival and for a lot of weddings, which is a
curious thing, I will say. There aren't a lot of Irish,
like, uplifting songs for weddings.
There's a lot of traditional Irish songs about famine and,
like, the burden and surviving
and drinking and a lot of drinking songs. Because some of
those Irish pubs can get pretty rowdy, you know, after midnight. Yeah,
this is very, very true. And so much fun and
so welcoming. And everyone knows the
songs, and everyone knows the lyrics. So you.
It's such a community that you get to be a part of. And
that was such a gift, being a
young performer in New York, to really get to be a part of
this experience. Because as performing, if you know
the material and you can deliver it fairly well, that
whole bar, you know, if you're at a club or a pub, they're in
the palm of your hands. That whole. They're singing along and having their.
Their bottles, and it's a great time. And if you
have that talent and that training and you're singing
these songs that people love, what better gig is there in the world?
None. Absolutely none. Yeah, you captured it so beautifully
to be able to have everyone join in
and participate and get to lead them and
play. And that's. That's some of my favorite types
of creative experiences. So there's love
for performing, this passion, you know, for the arts and. And
just expressing yourself in different ways through, you know, physical.
Physical, you know, flying through the air physically and. And
singing and dancing and acting and that. But that's not where you stopped
with your education, with learning. Well, what else caught your eye
during that time that you like? I got to learn a little bit. I need
to learn more stuff. Right. I got it. I'm taking a different step
yeah. So when I was living in New York City, I
hear this a lot. People tell me you're just so easy to talk to.
You have a very welcoming face and you
listen to me. And so wherever I went
in New York, it was if I went to a bar, if I was in
a cab, if I got my nails done, someone was telling me
their life story. I have been at diners at
2am and had people walk up to my table and say, hey, can I
join you? I, I just really need to talk to someone.
And after a couple of years
of this happening, I thought I, I should get
paid for this or this. There's, there's something
here that I should pay attention to. And it was
at this time where I was starting to think
about what creativity was to me. I
think up to this point creativity had been performing
and had been being on stage in this kind of big
C creativity. And I started
kind of toying with this idea that
life could be creative, that you could get
dressed with creativity or walk your
dog in a creative fashion, or
explore life through this creative
lens. And after a conversation with my dad,
he encouraged me to look into creative arts
therapies. And that was where I found
specifically dance movement therapy. Because dance and movement has,
had always been such a huge transformational
experience for me that I was really
intrigued by, well, how do, how does this turn into therapy and how do
you get to participate in
transformation and supporting other people to experience transformation in their
own life? And so I got into
a program. There's, at the time there were only five dance
movement therapy programs in the United States. And the one I ended up
at was at a tiny Buddhist inspired university in
Boulder, Colorado called Naropa University. And
that was where I learned,
you know, the world of psychology and
somatic psychology, or body based psychology and dance movement
therapy. And through that process,
my acting degree started to make a little more sense to me
and I started putting pieces together and
was then able to combine the world of performance and the world of
psychology. And that then
around 2013 turned into my
sustaining creativity work that I started
doing with universities across the
country and supporting performers at the time,
specifically performers to have
more agency and experience of safety and
trust within themselves to take creative risk from and
then come back to their sense of self post
performance. And that's why I think your backstory is
so important. You went on this journey of performing, being a
performer and, and helping people and just listening to people and then you start
studying psychology and dance and creative movement and all
those things happen. Because of all the things that happen. That's kind of like,
I love like drawing a line through history and seeing
every time those dots connect along that line. And you have a great
story that does all of that. And we start, you
start talking about creative therapy, movement therapy, and for actors
specifically or performers specifically. And what would
be a reason that they start to look into this type of therapy
or, or who specifically would benefit from that type of
therapy? I, I mean, I hate to be cliche and say
everyone, but it's true, everyone would benefit.
I, I think not everyone has
a connection with their body for any number of reasons.
And the, the world of somatic
psychology, we, we have learned and have studies
where we know our body holds information for
us and being able to access that, have
awareness of the cues and signals
our body is giving us when we're experiencing
panic, or when we're experiencing depression or anxiety
or worry or fear or grief or loss.
When we pay attention to our body, it's
giving us signals to alert us
things are happening or things are about to happen, which then
helps us navigate those
parts of our life more effectively. And
for some people, talk therapy is the world that,
that fits into and that's great. And for other people, they need to
access it more non verbally and
that's where movement therapy and dance therapy come in to
play. And like I asked earlier about, you know,
did you have a signature move or a way that you presented tricks, you've
taken your skill sets and applied it to sustain and create
creativity. And you said that you've now taken this and, and taken it
to colleges and, and you've taught at different universities, this
type of therapy. Tell us a little bit about, you know, how did you put
a curriculum together to take on the road or to take to different
colleges? Yeah, so
I combined my degrees very directly, this
degree in acting and this degree in psychology. And
really the foundation of my sustaining creativity work is
all about safety and trust. When we feel safe enough,
you know, we're never going to have 100% safety in anything we do. So,
so it's about finding how do we know? How do
I know I feel safe with myself? How do I know I feel safe with
other people? How do I know I feel safe in the environment I'm
in? What does that feel like in my body? And then how do
I trust myself? How do I trust others? How do I trust
the environment? And what does that look like? How do I feel that in my
body? And so it's this foundation of safety and
trust where we can take creative risk from
whether it's in a class or a performance or
you know, trying something new. And then we have this
foundation to come back to once the creative risk has
resolved or we, we've finished the class or the
monologue or the performance. This idea
of,
this idea that I have more
control and more agency of myself. I really have
to know myself to take risk. And
creativity comes alive at the edge of your comfort
zone. And so finding the edge of your comfort
zone is really important. And so creating a curriculum
that really supports students and faculty
to explore these things for themselves, find
what works, what doesn't work, how they relate to each other, how they
relate to themselves was really important to me because I
felt that on some level I got this amazing training
on how to be an actor in acting school, but I
didn't always get how to support my
creativity as an actor or how to
navigate between the worlds of performing and life.
And so that's this skill set and this curriculum that I've
created to support people with. Is this something that
works better one on one or in groups or how about even
virtually can. Yeah. Tell us a little bit more about the
ways that people can participate in this. All of the above.
I've done in person workshops for various
groups of people and universities. I've done virtual
workshops for universities. I've done one on one coaching
sessions. And it just depends on what people
are looking for and how much time they have and
what, what they're hoping they will,
you know, be able to
flourish or transform for themselves and
for everyone. That's different. Some people really enjoy a group setting and
that feels the safest. Other people feel like I can't do anything
to risky in front of other people. I have to do it
first for myself and then I can do it in a group.
So yeah, you talked about the, the pressures of acting
and maybe even the, the auditioning and the stress and
the rejection and those things tend to compound over years.
Have you applied this outside of the acting world for, you know,
maybe people with high stress jobs, moms and dads, or you know,
what are other applications for this type of therapy for other people?
Yeah, absolutely. So I mean, these
worlds are a little separate. The per, the creative, the sustaining
creativity world, and then my true private practice as a
therapist world, the creativity
world. I use a lot of the creative pieces
with my therapy clients and with my coaching clients that
are specifically more of the creative lend
themselves more to creativity. But I, you know, I work with a lot of people
who consider Themselves to be former creatives. So maybe they have a
degree in music or dance or acting, but then set
that aside and joined the corporate world or set that aside and had
kids. And so a lot of the work we do is about
rediscovering their creative spark
or creating time for them
to flex their creative muscles more
than they had been, or rediscovering why
they set creativity aside. And how, how
does creativity get to blend more into
their everyday life and not just be only about
performing, but it's about opening the refrigerator, seeing
what you have, and making a meal or
cutting toast in a certain way for kids who don't like crust
or you know, putting
a collection of things together on a wall because
it brings you joy. Or ordering food from
a restaurant and putting it on a plate in a way that is
appealing to you. Those are all creative expressions.
But I just don't think we think of
creativity in those ways. Or if you can't
come back to performing creativity, how are you using
creative opportunities in your corporate job?
Do you color code your spreadsheets? That's a form of
creativity. Do you doodle while someone
is talking? That's a form of creativity and creative expression.
So really supporting people to find these pockets
and these moments of creative spark
that they can bring into more
of their life experience. For someone who
maybe never considered this type of therapy or expressing themselves or
you know, getting back in touch with some of their creative features
or creative
aspects that they had as when they were younger because, you know, life sometimes catches
up with you. Are there any common threads that, that you
see that when people come to your practice or people seek you out
that, that, you know, this is, I, I may not be thinking about this,
but typically people who come to see you
tend to have or, or collect in this little pool where
they seem to have the same thing where they're not getting that spark in life.
Or is there something common between people who come to see you?
The only reason I'm asking is if somebody listening. Yeah,
wasn't thinking about this, but oh, like wait a second, you know, I kind of
feel burned out or you know, what, you know, what's, what's my trigger?
Sure. I mean, I think, I don't know that there's one
thing. There are many things that cross over for
people. Burnout is a huge one. Regret
is also something people, oh, I wish I'd
continued with piano lessons or I wish I'd taken
that dance class. But also I think
this, there's a self sabotage of not feeling
good enough that I wasn't good
enough to do whatever creative
expression professionally. And I think
we discount the amateur. And
it's okay to not do something professionally and still enjoy it
and love it. And so I think
reminding ourselves that it's okay to do something for
fun and because it brings us joy and it isn't for
anyone else. But oftentimes fear gets in our way
because we think, oh, I have to be perfect at it or I have to
do it in this certain way because that's how other people are doing it.
And, and I like to encourage people that, no, you
get to do it in your way. Mari's way is different than Jeff's way of
doing something. And what works for me isn't going to work for other people.
But I like to give people lots of options
and lots of tools and skills so they can start pulling things out
of their own toolkit to really
enhance and support their own life. But also to understand
we have emotions for a reason. So let's understand why,
why we have fear. What is fear doing for us? And how do
we navigate the moments where we feel
afraid and we still try something
comes back to feeling safe enough to take a risk. If we don't feel
safe enough, we're not going to try anything.
And your creativity keeps evolving. You have a podcast,
Sustaining Creativity. Tell us a little bit about, you know, what was the
genesis of that show and what are some of the stories or interviews
you're telling on that show? Yeah, so my
podcast started like so many people during
the pandemic, when I couldn't
travel to universities and do in person workshops. But I
really felt it was a time where we needed to keep talking
about creativity and needed to share
our creative self and creative experience with
the world. And so I pivoted to start the
Sustaining Creativity podcast. And I interview people from around the world
on what creativity means to them, how it shows up in their life. And I
have interviewed some amazing individuals, people who
come from very creative worlds and people who
do not come from your traditional creative world.
I have interviewed, excuse me, I've interviewed lawyers
and, you know, athletes and
accountants and computer programmers
in alongside the actors,
dancers, filmmakers, all of these
the storytellers and writers and photographers. So
I. This is now, I'm in my sixth year and we're
almost at 300 episodes. And it's been
such an incredible journey to share these stories with
my listeners and to keep the conversation of
creativity alive. Did any profession
ever surprise you? Like you interviewed an accountant who he also
happens to Juggle chainsaws. Like you didn't see that coming.
You ever have any good surprises on the show? Always.
Always good surprises. I think my. One of the ones
that sticks out in my head was
I asked my guest what their earliest
memory of being creative was, and they shared
that when they were little, they were a really good liar,
and that was their creative ability of weaving
lies and stories. And so I wasn't
expecting to hear that from someone. But, yes, I've
interviewed accountants who feel their ability
to visualize numbers and see a
spreadsheet and color code it and make it
come alive off the page is. I
wasn't expecting someone to dig that deep, but
that was their experience. I've interviewed professional
doodlers, which is an amazing job I didn't know
existed, where people, they've doodled. You
know, for Steve Jobs, who's giving a speech and
they're behind doodling what he's talking about. And
that was the things and the careers
that are out there that I've never heard of.
I love, I love talking to people and learning.
I always learn something from my guests, and that's part of the
joy of getting to interview people
from all walks of life and all corners of the globe.
And if people wanted to check out those almost 300 episodes, what's
the best way to find the podcast? You can find it wherever
you listen to podcasts. We're on Spotify, Apple Podcast,
and so many more. All the
platforms you can find Sustaining Creativity Podcast.
And you could go all the way back to 2020 and start
from the beginning and see how I've grown
as a host and listen to all of the
guests and their amazing stories. And yeah,
we're releasing our 300th episode, I want to say,
sometime in July. And if people,
colleges, corporations want to hire, get in contact
with Mari Reisberg. How do they get in contact with you? Well, I
am very active on social media, so you can find me at Sustaining
Creativity on Instagram, Facebook
under Mari Reisberg on LinkedIn or TikTok is
sustaining creativity. You can send me an email. My email is
under my full name, which is Marika M A R I K
A Reesburg R E I S B E r
g@gmail.com. that is the easiest way to get
in touch with me. Mari, this has been so much fun. I'm going to get
off of this call and go be creative now just for my
own sanity. I've been stuck in a recliner for eight weeks with a torn
Achilles, but now I feel inspired again. And I'm g.
I'm gonna start being creative again. I love to hear it. Thank you,
Jeff, so much for inviting me to join you tonight. It has been such
a treat. Well, let's hear that theme song.
From the trapeze to the therapist chair, she's danced through life with
creative flair? Lifting spirits of movement in mind? Marie
Reesburg loves joy unwind.
Tune in now. Take a creative flight. It's my guest tonight with Jeffrey
Villa Watersite Stories that soar and laughter that heals. This is the
pocket cats, where life gets real.
I feel like you're going to start carrying, like, a little portable boombox, so
when you walk in the room, hit play.
Yes. Are you in my head? Is exactly what I will be doing.