From Stressed Out to Blissed Out – An Interview with Cari Skier

Imagine transforming your life from one of stress and trauma to bliss and creativity.

That’s exactly what Cari Skier did, and she’s here to share her powerful journey with us. In this episode, we begin with a simple yet effective breathing technique that can help you ground yourself in any stressful situation. Cari opens up about her own experiences as a single mother to two children with special needs, sharing how she found transformation in mindfulness, Buddhist philosophy, and shamanism. Cari explains how creativity became her lifeline during life’s most challenging moments, and how her mission is to cultivate healing and transformation through her retreats and online courses. Join us for an inspiring conversation that promises to leave you feeling blissful!

You place a big emphasis on helping people from from stressed out to blissed out. If someone is feeling stressed right now, how can you help them?

Cari Skier: I think the most important thing and the first thing that I would always encourage somebody to do is breathe. When we’re stressed we’re like [inhale], and we don’t breathe. We’re holding it all in, and the most important part of a relaxing or stress-relieving breath is the exhalation, that it’s longer than the inhalation. I always say breathe in through your nose like you’re smelling the roses for a count of four, hold it for a count of seven, and then exhale like you’re blowing out a candle for a count of eight, and doing a couple rounds of this really helps to bring you back to the present moment. It helps to ground you. That would be my first step into relieving some stress immediately.

Will you do it with us right now, guide us through one or two breaths?

Cari Skier: Absolutely. You’re just going to get into your body, close your eyes, and take a deep breath in through your nose to the count of four, and then hold it for a count of seven, if you can. Then release it like you’re blowing out a candle for a count of eight. You just really want to empty out that breath, and one more time, just inhale through your nose, count of four, holding it for count of seven, and then releasing for a count of eight, and let it go. Just let it go.

“Deer Spirit” and “Wise Woman” by Cari Skier

We’ll dive back into that a little bit later, but I want to start by hearing a little bit about your story of awakening to consciousness, mindfulness, and spirituality. How did that come about in your life?

Cari Skier: It didn’t just happen in one day, like a big aha moment. I think I’ve just been on a journey for a really long time trying to find my way. When my kids were young, I had some trauma that I dealt with. I was a single mom raising two kids on the spectrum, and there was just a tremendous amount of emotional stress which created physical problems in my body. I had to figure out a way to thrive, not just survive, and to heal myself. I’m a very creative person, but I’m also very analytical. I need proof for things, and so on my journey, it was just constantly reading and researching and learning different things, taking one path. If I wasn’t feeling it, I would backtrack and go another way until I found different paths that worked for me. It’s never been just one straight, easy road or path for me. It’s always been a lot of different things that interest me, that call to me, and that have helped me along the way.

I spent some time studying the Buddhist philosophy. I spent time studying shamanism and just trying to find myself. I think I finally found myself by accepting that I appreciate all sorts of different things, and I could take what works for me from what’s out there and just follow the beat of my own drum, in a way. That’s what worked for me. Then again, about five years ago, right after my dad passed and everything came crashing down. I had to rebuild again. I think the rebuilding over the last few years has brought me to the place that I am now feeling just so much stronger emotionally, very resilient, just like – I feel like I’ve got this. It took a long time to get to this place, but I feel like, yeah, I finally got there.

“Welcoming Buddha” by Cari Skier

What is it about those painful experiences that causes us to be more open?

Cari Skier: I think it’s your wake-up call. I think, what happens and I see this so much, we are so stressed out, and we get into a routine. You’re just in survival mode. Get up. Drink 10 cups of coffee. You go through work, do this, do this. Pick up the kids, take them here, take them there. Go to bed. Start over again. We’re stuck in that.

So many people, they’re in that survival mode, but they’re not surviving. I think what happens is it’s almost like that hamster wheel. You can’t get off until you crash, and sometimes it’s that crash that forces you to stop and re-examine how you – what you need to change and look into ways that you can do that.

I honestly think that it’s when you hit bottom and you crash out. I really feel like, for me, that’s what woke me up. It woke me up initially in the early stages of my journey to start finding a new path. It happened again when my dad passed. We just need those things. It’s so strange. You just get caught up in that repetitive loop. We can’t get out of it. It’s hard to get out of. It’s hard to break out.

So much of what you do in helping others is through visual art and sound. Were you an artistic and musical kid as you were growing up?

Cari Skier: I was the art kid. Yeah, I played a little piano, and I was terrible, but I was the art kid. Both my parents, my dad was an artist. My mom is an artist. They always supported the arts. I feel like I was born with crayons in my hands, always doodling, always drawing, always making things, whatever it is, so I was definitely that artistic kid.

Did that continue as you went into high school and beyond? Did you keep art and creativity as part of your life?

Cari Skier: I always did. I always did because my parents were artists, and it was really who I – and it’s really who I am, what I really connect with. As far as when I’m working with people, the saddest thing is when somebody says to me I’m not creative, and when I do workshops and I do retreats and we come to the art making process, I have people that are like, “I’m just going to take some time and go out and…” I’m like no, no, no, pulling them back in. Really, it bothers me so much because I feel like everybody has this innate ability to be creative, and I think the confusion lies in that there’s a difference between being creative and being an artist. As an artist, technical skills are needed and practice. Some people are definitely born with the talent, just like people are born with other talents. Creativity, we are all born creative. When we’re children, we play. We have an imagination. We make things out of nothing, and we play games. It’s just we have that open mind.

Then something happens at around third grade, fourth grade, fifth grade, and that creativity gets squashed. It gets squashed by bad experiences. It gets squashed by other kids looking and saying that looks funny or the teacher not liking what you’re doing, and then, from then on, you misinterpret your own creativity. Then it gets lost. I feel like that is so sad because I feel like creativity in general, whether it be doing something with art, or singing, or cooking, or gardening, you could still be creative using the right side of the brain for different activities, and it’s so important to our mental health. Actually, when you’re in the creative flow, you’re actually changing your brainwave state. You’re calming down your whole body, and you’re releasing emotions in ways that maybe you can’t do it with words. You’re doing it through chopping vegetables and creating a beautiful plate for dinner, or planning an event, or putting a bouquet together, so I feel like creativity has gotten a bad rap. One of the things that I’d like to do is really help people regain their trust with their own creativity. I think it’s super important.

When did you start wanting to utilize your gifts and passion to help other people? How did that unfold for you?

Cari Skier: When I went through that dark time, a lot of that trauma, let’s say, I came out of that period of life with a lot of depression and anxiety, and for me, I worked through a lot of that being with my creativity. It wasn’t just painting. I’ll be honest with you. When I paint, it’s not technically gorgeous stuff. It just isn’t, and it’s fine with me. I like to play. I like to use mixed media. It takes a lot of the pressure off being perfect.

When I started doing that, I started to feel better, and I was able to express things because I’m more of a quiet, introverted person. I was able to express myself on my canvas or on the pages of my art journals. When I came out to the other side of that time, I was like, that was really a cathartic experience for me, and I think people need to do this. Those little things that I made, looking back, they still make me feel good. There’s still a message in every – all the artwork that I did back then, and I love it. From that time, which was many years ago, I said I have to find my way to bring this to people. People need this.

If you meet someone in an airport or at the grocery store, and they ask what you do…what do you say?

Cari Skier: I’m always trying to figure out what to say. How do I describe myself and what I do, because I do a lot of little things? I think my focus or my mission is to integrate art making with different holistic modalities like sound healing. I collaborate with people that teach yoga or somatic movement, breathwork, mindfulness, meditation, so I integrate all of that in a package to help – really help people go from stressed out to blissed out. That sort of thing. That’s why I came up with that tag line, because it actually works. I’ve seen it over and over how it changes people quite quickly.

Tell us about your “From Stressed Out to Blissed Out” retreat. Where do you host it? What’s it like? How many days? What do people experience? How would their lives be transformed?

Cari Skier: I host it at the Himalayan Institute in the Poconos in Pennsylvania. It’s a beautiful campus, 400 acres of mountains and rolling hills. It’s just absolutely beautiful there, and it’s a wonderful center. It’s a weekend. It’s Friday through Sunday, so it’s short. People can have a transformative weekend, and then take those practices and go on with their life.

Basically, people come in Friday night. I should take pictures, really, because they come in, and they’re so stressed out. They’re coming from work. They’ve been stuck in traffic. They’re tired. They’ve been on that hamster wheel.

My job is and my focus is to help them release the stress and tension from their body, change their brainwave states from high beta, like stressed out, going, going, going, to an alpha, relaxed, calm, meditative state, and then teach them tools how they could integrate that into their lives once they leave. Also, in the mix of that, I use the art process to show them that they don’t have to be scared of art anymore. Making art can be a lot of different things, and it’s more about the process of the art, not really about the product. Through the process of art, they’re also working through emotions, getting a lot of aha moments, able to express themselves visually. It’s just been, for me, a really wonderful experience to be able to facilitate that for people. When I started, I had this grand idea. This is what I want to do. I think it would be so great. I think it could work, blah, blah, blah, but you never know.

People started really loving the retreats. I have people that come back to every retreat. They keep coming back and keep coming back. I’m like, okay, it’s working, so it’s very exciting. It’s just really wonderful to see that, by Sunday – well, even before Sunday, people are so much – you could see it in their face. They’re so much more relaxed. They’re grounded. They’re back in their bodies. They’re thinking about how can I use this when I go home? How can I continue this?

They’re able to make – through the whole process, many people have been able to make decisions that have been hanging over their heads for a really long time. It’s given them the opportunity to clear space from all that noise and overstimulation in the real world and come into this little bucket of time. It just allows them to breathe, to let go, and to answer the questions that have been rolling around in their mind, I believe.

Often, people that are not “artists” go to a retreat or experience experience like that, but never integrate an artistic expression into their daily lives. Do you think there’s something valuable about expressing yourself creatively outside of your normal routine?

Cari Skier: Absolutely, for a few reasons. One is it’s really important to push yourself out of your comfort zone. If you don’t push yourself out of your comfort zone, it’s really hard to move forward. Going and saying I’m going to do some art today, even though I can’t draw a straight line or all I do is stick figures, can be really powerful. It’s a challenge and it’s a great risk. But it shouldn’t be a scary risk. It’s not a big risk. It’s just a little risk.

By integrating the making of the art, what’s allowed to happen is you get into that creative flow state, which is so important, because it changes your brainwave and helps you relax. It’s really excellent for stress reduction, anxiety, depression. There’s so many studies on how important art is like medicine for the soul, for your mind, and for your body, because it just helps in so many ways. I truly believe that doing something simple like collaging, which is really going through images, ripping them out, and pasting them on paper in ways that call to you, using images that you enjoy, that’s an art process. Collage is an art process. It’s so easy, so simple, but it could be really powerful because you can use the images that you see, and the words that you see, and put them together as a way to express yourself that you might not be able to do verbally.

A number of years ago, I had a friend who had suggested…what if we got together every morning on Zoom with some friends and did some watercolor painting? There was something inside of me that felt like a kid playing again.

Cari Skier: I think the key word that you used there was play, and you haven’t done it since you were a child. We are so missing that, and I think that’s why I love art because you can play. I rip the paper for my collages. I don’t even cut the papers. I like ripping. It’s so freeing. Or when you’re moving watercolors around in a big puddle and you’re just dropping the colors in and they’re swirling together. It’s beautiful. It’s so much fun.

You’re in the present moment. You’re just focused on that. Nothing else matters. You’re like, wow, yeah, getting that wonder back as a child. It’s super important. Yeah, love that you did that. Now I want to do it every morning with a group, too!

I see that you collaborate with other people on your retreats and events. Why is that so important to you?

Cari Skier: I like to network with other holistic practitioners, because there’s a lot of really good stuff out there that I really feel people need to learn about, and so I like to work with people that are doing really great stuff, really interesting, very knowledgeable people. I network with yoga therapists, somatic movement, mindfulness facilitators, Reiki masters, other dance and movement practitioners. I think integrating different modalities – sometimes I might do a program where we integrate movement and I’m doing a sound healing around people as they’re moving or if they’re in a restorative position, or maybe doing art. I just think it’s really powerful to integrate different practices. I think when you network with people, you gain so much more knowledge and information, and the sharing that goes back and forth with ideas is just tremendous.

Some of us are anxious when it comes to networking. Some people might start comparing ourselves to others…thinking that we’re not good enough at whatever our modality is…or even seeing other people as competition. How do you handle thoughts and feelings like that?

Cari Skier: For me, the people that I collaborate with, they’re doing something different. I mean, I have my 200-hour yoga teacher training, but that’s not me. I don’t want to teach yoga, so I’m okay with other people doing it. I think when you collaborate you want balance. You want somebody that’s going to add to what you have. You don’t want all of the same. What’s the fun in that?

The partners that I work with, they add so much to the picture, and the fact that we team up just makes, especially our retreats, so much fun. We all relate to people differently. We all see things differently. Maybe I didn’t realize this one thing, and somebody else notices it, or says, “Oh, we should try this.” I think, when you’re collaborating, you want to collaborate with someone that does something a little bit different than you. The other thing is a lot of people are like, “I don’t know enough,” and have imposter syndrome. Nobody’s an expert in everything. Also, you won’t get any better at what you do know unless you continue to try and work at it. If you have something that you think is unique and special or that can help other people, why not put it out there?

I’m a little bit of a risk taker, and I tend to push people. Let’s do this. Let’s try it. Let’s try it. That’s just my nature. I think I got that from my father. He was an entrepreneur his entire life, so I’m a little bit more comfortable with it. I’m a little bit more comfortable saying let’s just try this and see what happens. What’s the worst that can happen? It’s not going to fail 100%.

Maybe some people won’t love it, but you have to at least try. You have to give it a try. You have to feel it out if you want to get out there and do retreats. A lot of people ask me because they want to host retreats. How do I do it? What do I do? That’s why it’s really great to have partners. To help lighten the load, first of all, and just to brainstorm ideas back and forth, and I think, when you have a good partner, that dynamic shows throughout your whole retreat. It really does. It makes the retreat that much stronger because you’re vibing off each other, and people are getting that extra energy. It just starts to build, build, build, so by the end of the retreat, the room – the air in the room is tingling because there’s just so much good energy and good vibration

I really just feel, if you feel it in your heart, “Gosh, I wish I could try it,” then just try it. Make it simple. Don’t do a weekend retreat. Try a one-day retreat with somebody. If it doesn’t work, try it with somebody else but try it. There are so many people out there that need people like us to give them direction. Like I said in the beginning, so many people…everybody’s so stressed out. They’re overwhelmed. They are absolutely depleted of energy, so they need us.

There are a billion people out there. Somebody is going to love my personality and want to come to my retreats because they like my vibe, and other people are going to be like, “She’s not for me.” And, that’s okay. I think that if you just push yourself, just take a little risk, it’s okay. Just push yourself a little bit, and you will find your way.

It’s just been an amazing time. I haven’t been doing retreats that long, and it’s just been an amazing journey for me. It’s transformed me. It lights me up. It just really lights me up. When you do the work for yourself and then you show people how to do the work and they start doing it and you see transformation in short amounts of time, it’s just mind-blowing.

You said…”you’ve done the work yourself and then you showed them how to do the work.” What do you mean by that?

Cari Skier: Everything that I put out there personally I’ve done. Obviously, I spent a lot of time working through my emotions, my depression and anxiety using the art process, so it worked for me. I did that work, and I am so confident that it worked for me. That’s why I want to share it. Sound healing, the same thing, even when I do a sound bath for other people, when I leave, I’m on another planet. I am so relaxed.

I do everything that I talk about. If it’s breathwork, I do it and I use it. If it’s meditation, I do that for myself. I’ll never teach something that I’m not doing because I’m not familiar. Then I would feel like an imposter. Then I would feel really uncomfortable, but if you’re doing that type of work for yourself, share it if it’s working.

Not only do you offer in-person retreats, but you also offer online courses and programs. Tell us about those. 

Cari Skier: Right now, I just finished – I spent the summer creating a course called Creative Reflections: Visual Journaling for Anxiety and Stress Relief, and that’s the biggest thing that is online. I have another course that is in the works right now that I’m going to launch in 2025. The course that’s out now is to take people through the journey of using the art process to actually work through things that trigger their anxiety and stress, also understanding their triggers, and then managing them and their symptoms. All through the art process. It’s all very, very easy art that anybody could do. It’s not like there is any technical skill necessary. It’s not like that at all. It’s a very freeing process, too. When you start working in the books and ripping apart things and adding things, or making windows and making doors in your journal, you start to go down this creative rabbit hole. The creativity is coming up with ideas of how you can play around with your pages, not how you can make them look perfect. The course is really focusing on using the process to release your stress and anxiety, and it’s also teaching you to be able to pinpoint, understand triggers, and then work through them.

It’s a self-paced course. It’s nine modules, plus an intro module. I do talk a lot about anxiety and stress in layman’s terms, helping people to understand what’s going on so they can learn to work through it. Then there’s the art component, and there’s also tons of guided meditations because I really believe that, again, let’s get out of that beta, high beta brainwave state, and relax so we can work. If you’re coming in anxious and stressed and tight, you won’t be able to take that next step into allowing yourself to experiment and explore. It’s just about the process. It’s a mix. It’s all integrated with different wellness modalities to pull it all together in one package that’s fun to work through.

What are you dreaming about in terms of your own next steps in your work? 

Cari Skier: Wow! There’s so many things. I would love to continue making courses and understanding how to make courses really, really well. I think that’s an incredible way to reach so many people. Not everybody can make it away for a weekend to Pennsylvania for a retreat, because that’s where I am facilitating them right now, so I do want to continue with my online courses. I would love to do some more – I hate to use the word intensives because I don’t want it to feel like intense but longer retreats where we’re spending more time together. I really want the time to educate people on fully understanding the tools to make lasting change.

Most of what I focus on in my retreats and all my work is relieving stress, anxiety, and helping manage symptoms of depression through holistic modalities. I think that’s what I’m most comfortable teaching, because that’s the work that I did and that’s also what I see so much of. I would really love to be able to take it to the next level and have more time to spend with people, where I’m taking them out of their everyday. I think it’s so important to do that, and that’s why I love the retreats. They force you out of your everyday routine. I love the idea of being someplace where maybe the cell service isn’t so great, and you have to depend on breathing in fresh air and being in nature and really being fully present in the space that you’re at. That’s really been my dream. My next step is to do something like that.

If someone is struggling right now, what encouragement would you give them? 

Cari Skier: I would say get off social media. Stop scrolling and looking for answers there, because that is just taking you into a dark place. You just start to loop. It doesn’t help you. Start with the 4-7-8 breathing. Try to move, take a yoga class, if you can, and not everybody can, but you can certainly take a walk. Take your shoes and socks off and put your feet in the grass just for a few minutes and really sink into that feeling of, “Oh, my gosh, I’m barefoot in the grass, how does this feel to me?” or try it on the beach. If you can get out into nature, that is super, super important.

I think, getting out of the everyday loop, which is social media and work, work, work and run here, run there, if you can break out of that for a few moments every day, that is super helpful. It’s been super helpful for me. It allows me to just reset and then get back to it. It doesn’t mean you have to spend 12 hours outside in nature. We’re busy. It’s hard to do, but at least get out there a little bit. Try and move a little bit. Definitely, do the breath, or you can do the breathwork at any time. You could be sitting in a meeting and doing it. I work at a therapeutic school teaching art, and sometimes my days can get very, very stressful. I have to do a lot of breathing in order to keep my nervous system in check so I’m not all frazzled. I have to be regulated to keep the students regulated, so it’s super important.

What’s the best way for people to follow and connect with you?

Cari Skier: Just go straight to my website. I’m not on social media a lot. I don’t do a lot of Instagram, so I send people to my website. The information is there, www.creativetoolsforwellness.com. There’s the retreats. There’s the courses. There is going to be more blog articles coming up. You could reach me through there.

I also have, when people sign on for the – to give me their email, there’s a whole guide on how to go from stressed out to blissed out that they can get for free. That might be a good start for some people to read through that and get some ideas. It’s right there for you.