~ Meet Elizabeth Welles ~
Elizabeth Welles loves the art of storytelling in any form and playing with the Word, be it on the stage or the page. She is an artist with the tools of healing, dedicated to nurturing the seeds of creativity, joy, and peace that reside in the human heart. She is a consultant, a speaker, and teacher, author of books and CD’s, and she tells stories in a variety of venues, from NY to LA, on stage, in television, film, and on the radio.
As an actress, Elizabeth regularly performs her one-woman shows, Speak the Lands of My Heart, about a journey to India, and Water from the Welles, an entertaining collection of monologues, stories, poems and songs that connect the listener to their own resources of wisdom and compassion.
She is an authority in the field of journaling and author of the book, Journaling for Well-Being & Peace. She is the editor of the book, Women Celebrate: The Gift in Every Moment, and is the creator of the CD, Meditation for Relaxation. A creativity and relaxation expert, she founded of The Four Wisdoms of Creativity ™ and The Goddess Method for Stress Reduction, Meditation-by-Design.com and How2Rest.com
A naturally gifted speaker, Elizabeth puts her audiences at ease with her compassion, her spontaneity and eloquence. Her speaking events and performance programs have inspired people to move away from unhappy job situations, journey cross-country, finish old projects and start new ones, or polish presentation styles.
Read More...
She has taught for corporations, at the high-end spas of California, The Ojai Valley Inn & Resort, The Pebble Beach Lodge, and the former The Oaks at Ojai. She has spoken at the Washington DC Center for Integrative Medicine, taught for Elder Hostel, and was invited to teach at the Center for Yoga and Health, Kripalu, in Massachusetts. (For a full list, please request Elizabeth’s resume.)
Her background in meditation, compassionate communication, and appreciative inquiry enlightens her way. Elizabeth’s mother began teaching yoga, and meditating for an hour a day in the home when Elizabeth was a just little girl. Elizabeth followed suit when she became a teenager. She has studied all varieties of meditation from Vipassana, to Metta, to mindfulness, to mantra and Eastern meditations, contemplative mystic meditations, and all forms of spirituality. Her meditation practice and interest in the esoteric arts have taken her to India, Japan, and Nepal. She includes relaxation practices in her work helping people experience peace in their own way, in a grounded and practical way, and through their own tradition when it is preferred. She brings a wonder, an open curiosity, and a light-heartedness to the clients she works with, able to hear, both, the suffering in life while honoring the longing for that ‘something more.’
Whether standing in front of a crowd of theatre patrons, or an audience of business executives, magic happens. Watching her, you experience laughter that heals, tears that bring relief, and are touched by her gentle quirky and compassionate humor leaves you smiling in that feel-good kind of way. Her mastery of language reframes, uplifts, inspires and renews while her and warmth endears her to audiences around the world.
A creativity jump-starter, Elizabeth brings an eclectic background to her work. She is dedicated to enhancing the Creative Spirit, encouraging people the world over to explore their own unique creative genius. To follow the current of their own intuitive voices that adds joy, light and spice to their lives.
Words from Elizabeth
Writing is the hub of my wheel. It’s where I began at age seven. With a small black book on the family’s way to Europe, my mother said, “This is your diary to write and draw in.” Without the restrictions of grammar and syntax, not knowing how to spell or keep words on the line, I was free. The blank page is like a God for me, that compassionate open space where everything can be heard, witnessed, revealed. I can’t stop writing, it’s like the words want me, write me. It’s the one thing I do consistently. It’s like eating, breathing, drinking, peeing. When I’m on a roll, the muse talks at all times of day and night. If anything it would be nice to tame her and give her hours, but she won’t have any of that.
While writing is the hub, my wheel has many spokes. Because at seven I also began to act, sing and study modern dance, draw and paint, finding deep fulfillment and peace through all the arts.
Writing combined with becoming a young dream-tracker. Sometimes I wouldn’t be able to sleep until I wrote. Often I would be wakened at night just to write and record my dreams. This gift to recognize dreams as a potent place for revelation, later turned into significant wisdoms and prophetic downloads that would come to pass days and weeks, months, and even years later.
Always interested in anything alternative: diet, health, education and community living, I graduated early from high school to work at the experimental city, Arcosanti, in Arizona. Initiated by visionary architect, Paolo Soleri, the city embodies the fusion of ecology and architecture. I then earned a degree in Sociology from Hamilton College specializing in mental health and death and dying: the five stages of dying, terminally ill, the hospice movement and the private lives of dying children.
Read More...
After college I was a Permissions Assistant for Reader’s Digest in NYC – for three months. I left to attend a Shakespeare & Company workshop in Lenox, Massachusetts. From there, I moved to Boston to study macrobiotic cooking. After a short time, I returned to NYC to begin serious study in acting, singing and movement, simultaneously pursuing the healing and spiritual arts. I trained with Rosalyn Bruyere, an internationally known healer, and studied Craniosacral Therapy with the Upledger Institute. I was certified in healing and ministry, and taught healthy vegan cooking. I was also a book publicist for four years in NYC for Planned Television Arts, which later became Finn Partners MEDIA CONNECT.
Although a native New Yorker, California called to me. I moved there and worked in the storytelling industry, gaining entrance into the three actor’s unions: Equity, SAG and AFTRA. (Today SAG-AFTRA), while honing my one-woman shows. What I didn’t know was that I was really an artist with the tools of healing, able to help others track the dreams of their own hearts and souls, through the literary and performing arts.
And after California, I landed in Arizona, and then grief struck my life over and over again. For my entire life, I was familiar with grief. I could easily and compassionately listen to the suffering of people, and I had lost people since an early age. But then, in a short period of time, I lost all of my closest of family and friends. Grief and its inherent loneliness, when you have no community to support you, took me to my knees. My unique understanding of grief, devoid of easy platitude, has become another cornerstone in my life. While people speak of grief as coming in waves, for me, it was one long tsunami. I knew I couldn’t outrun or control grief, sadness or sorrow. It has its own time-table, visiting regularly, dropping in without notice. And while I wouldn’t say it gets “easier” or “better” or that I’m “all over” anything, the nature of its visits have shifted and changed, as does my ability to listen to its ways. It was during this period of time that I entered into a deeper study of trauma and the brain with neuroscientist researchers like Sarah Peyton, and also with compassionate communication.
I’m grateful to the hands of my parents, and the unseen hands, for the roles they play and have played in my life. One of my earliest memories is marching in Washington DC at the age of five. I am the offspring of peace activists. My mother was a community organizer for Women Strike for Peace, an actress later turned yoga teacher – who taught for 50 years. Dad was an avid tennis player, and a deeply compassionate man with a heart of gold – never an unkind word from his mouth. These early influences, coupled with the inherent creativity I find in people and in all life, braided in a mystical way to have for a profound effect on my life’s direction.
I made a choice in life not to be the one who tears down the old forms and structures, but to be a builder of the new, to be a bridge for enhancing creativity and peace between people and cultures. I love traveling. At any opportunity my soul clamors for a plane ticket out of the country, and fly I do. My travels and study have spanned to India—six times, to Canada and Mexico, to Japan, Europe, and Nepal. I love meeting people from all over the world to explore our common threads while appreciating our differences and diversity.
Peace Communications is my company name. When I first envisioned it, I saw a loosely knit network of people, groups, and organizations dedicated to peace, in a world where the creative gifts, talents and heart’s desires of all people from all walks of life are unconditionally nurtured and supported.
One of my dreams was to create peace camps for children of war torn countries. Sanctuaries for healing and celebration where children, their families, and soldiers who have fought in wars, would gather in a new kind of camaraderie, to relax and engage in the art of play, creativity, laughter and peace.
Please join me in envisioning Universal Peace.
It is my deepest joy.
With love and appreciation,
Elizabeth Welles
Follow Elizabeth on Social Media
Interviews
KDNK Radio
Creativity, War and Peace
with host, Luke Nestler
23min 15sec
KDNK Radio
Elizabeth on The Muse, The Creative Voice, with host, Luke Nestler
7min 10sec
KDNK Radio
Journaling for Well-Being & Peace: A contemplative treatise on writing. Elizabeth speaks on her upbringing and early days of writing. Connecting to your Soul, journaling and social activism while living from peace, with host, Amy Hadden Marsh
16min 56sec
KFRC Radio
Elizabeth on Everything Journaling, with host, Lindsay Wood, for the Tuesday Talk Show
19min 14 sec
WRPI Radio
Elizabeth on Stress Reduction, Storytelling & Creativity, including readings from her book, Women Celebrate: The Gift in Every Moment, with host, Gary Goldberg.
47min 15 sec
Out of Your Write Mind Podcast
Elizabeth on Healing, Compassion & Journal Writing for Authors and how it can help them with their craft. With Podcast Host, Cassandra Penticoff of Out of Your Write Mind.
33min
What People Are Saying
“Elizabeth conducts tailored individual and group sessions and people who work with her rave about her. I am one. In just one session, she was able to improve my interview performance significantly. I know the agency world, and I believe any agency could benefit from having someone like Elizabeth available. However, there is only one Elizabeth. Her perceptiveness, creativity, articulateness and especially her intuitive sensibility set her apart.”
– Stuart A. Cowan, Executive Consultant
“I wasn’t able to ever meditate until I found your CD. Now I have learned to find peace with every breath, deep quiet and rest. Superb and I thank you!”
– Elio Zarmati, Publisher
“Thanks so much for your CD. I have used it every night and it really has made a difference. I had trouble falling asleep because my mind wouldn’t let go of the day’s events. After using your Meditation for Relaxation CD I was able to fall asleep and stay asleep through the night. It has changed my life!”
– Lora Lang
“Elizabeth helped me regain my confidence and focus. A session with Elizabeth is like taking a two week vacation.”
– Beth Salamon, Advertising Adm. Assistant
“During my cancer treatments I listened to Meditation for Relaxation. What we noticed was that it was the ONLY thing our grandson, age 2, would fall asleep to. Nothing else worked. Your voice has a soothing quality to be heard. Thank you from the baby and us!”
– Tamara Engel, Psychotherapist
“Elizabeth combines a compassion for people with a true gift for healing that is rare to find.”
– Richard Lipton, Television Producer
“In my life of deadlines, shoulds, and have to’s, Elizabeth is the fresh air which fills my being with peace.”
– Cidny Klein, Painter
“A unique and special experience packed with powerful tools to ease the tensions of day to day living . . . completely different from any other type of relaxation therapy.”
– Keith Prince, Actor, Writer