NAYELI GARCI-CRESPO, PhD
I am an Internal Family Systems-trained mind-body coach, a Havening Techniques practitioner, and a certified Realization Process meditation and embodiment teacher specializing in creative processes, neurodivergence, and high sensitivity. My interests include flow and liminal states, the subconscious, laughter, lucid dreaming, interpersonal neurobiology, and art and play as processes for self discovery and healing. In addition to being a coach, I am also a writer, multidisciplinary artist, and creative consultant with a Ph.D. in cultural studies, film, and media from Duke University’s Graduate Program in Literature, an M.A. in Latin American literature from Columbia University, and a B.A. in creative writing and philosophy from the University of Southern California, where I took courses in neuroscience, psychology, and philosophy of mind, and volunteered as an art therapist at a Los Angeles County Community Counseling Services halfway house. After a long detour working in the film & TV industry, among other odd jobs in creative content creation and support, I spiraled back to my interest in the interface between art and wellness, founding the artist/therapist/practitioner collective Feral Flow Lab in 2019 with the intention of co-creating collaborative spaces for healing and transformation through expressive arts and the body.
Spiral Seed
(Monotype, Oil-Based Ink on Canson Super Alpha Vellum, 7 3/4” x 9 1/2”)
Right in the middle of working on a series of monotypes of human figures etched out in negative from a field of monotone (one of which I submitted as my very first Mirrors of the Mind submission), a part of me decided to veer completely off course (as is often the case in my creative practice)—in this case to more colorful and bombastic pastures. This piece was the seed of the series that emerged: a new direction exploding with color, lighter in mood, and fully abstract, a direction everything in me craved after a period of darkness. Also a monotype, this particular piece started as one of the human figures from the previous series. When I didn’t like the result, instead of repeating it, I impulsively decided to recycle the print into something completely different. I ended up laying down three more layers of color and shapes before declaring it finished. What came after were bold experimentations in swirls of color inspired by this seed, interrupted by the pandemic and then taken up anew and still in process, with each iteration becoming looser and more colorful. Yet there is still something about this piece, the seed piece, that remains my favorite. There is something in it of the accidental and the unthought of any new endeavor, of hope and the promise of the buried breaking ground to new life.