All things related to Karen Kohler’s musings in life artistry and her life arts (lifecraft, lifekraft) training.
Dear Creatives and Artists of Life! Announcing new coaching for a new decade! To usher out this decade and welcome a new one, I'm offering a complementary 30-minute consultation and new pricing to private students of my methodology in Stagecraft and Lifecraft. Join me in my Brooklyn studio or via Skype, and together we'll tailor a curriculum that meets [...]
"Don't put anything off," is the advice of a dear friend who recently lost his wife to cancer after a long battle. Together they had been grand patrons of art in my community. I pause to assess my life. It's rich with all that I hold dear - my marriage, family, singing, directing, coaching, traveling, gardening, reading, learning. Still, I [...]
One of the first really conscious tastes I had of being fully aligned and integrated as a woman occurred during a wilderness training exercise when I was 39. I had opted into the challenge of scaling a 40-foot high rock face with many purchase points, both real and deceptive. Safely harnessed and belayed from below with lots of eyes on [...]
If you search for your soul you won’t find it. Search for anything — power, talent, time, romance, riches, God — they will elude you. Instead evoke them. Call them forth. In the case of your soul — recall it and then seed it. Uncover who you already are. Bring forth who and what you already possess. Who you are at birth is given. There [...]
I believe in breadcrumbs. Since the night I snuggled up to my Oma’s bosom to hear her read Hansel and Gretel for the first time, breadcrumbs have fueled my imagination. Haunted and yet mesmerized by this tale of witches and evil stepmothers, it was the breadcrumbs I remember most. And I began leaving them too. I didn’t do it consciously, but then neither did Hansel [...]
Dear Fear, It has taken me some time to get around to this, but with Valentine's Day having recently passed and the world evolving the way it is, I've been thinking a lot about love, affection and their opposites. It's high time I wrote you this letter. The world is full of teachings that would have me confront you, tame you, control [...]
Back in November, I was interviewed by Lizzie O'Leary, host of NPR's Marketplace Weekend who was querying different kinds of folks about their relationship to money, including me the artist. Our short chat was inspiring and has prompted more writing on the subject. Lizzie asked me to explain why I believe it isn't noble to be a broke artist. We have to [...]
This New Year's morning, my man and I were talking about the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. And about how I have enough decades behind me now to weigh and measure. I've been here long enough to attend births, to steward some into their own becoming, and be with others at the doorway to their deaths. [...]
I really didn't know much about Philip Seymour Hoffman until he died. I hadn't seen most of his films and none of his plays. Yet I've been moved to read about him. His unexpected death struck a chord and prompted people to weigh in on not only how he died but how lived. I found it fascinating that people [...]
"Nature is a glorious school for the heart! I shall be a scholar in this school and bring an eager heart to her instruction. Here I shall learn wisdom, the only wisdom that is free from disgust; here I shall learn to know God and find a foretaste of heaven in His knowledge. Among these occupations my earthly days [...]
