In Your Body Is a Good Place to Be: A Conversation about Love and Creativity with Beatrix Ost

Bree: I've been thinking a lot about mentors lately. Part of that is because when I'm working with people who are embarking on major changes in their lives, whether that's training for a marathon or starting a family or a career shift or grappling with illness, I know how powerful it is to have a mentor, a teacher, an example of someone who has tackled something familiar and thrived.

We are often inspired when someone we identify with personally accomplishes something that feels sort of out of reach.  I think of that Olympic story. You may have heard it. Until 1954, there was no one in Olympic history who had run a mile in fewer than four minutes. They thought it was physically impossible. But at the 1954 Olympics, Roger Bannister broke the mile marker in three minutes and 59.4 seconds. And the crowd went wild. No one had ever seen anything like it, but here's the interesting thing:

His title didn't last long. Once Bannister broke that barrier. People started running sub four-minute miles all the time. And while some of that can be attributed to conditions more conducive to a faster race (better tracks, maybe training differences, different diets) many people posit that there was a psychological breakthrough. Once it seemed possible it was possible. They actually call it the Bannister effect. 

Now I'm not going to say that one person's success will suddenly change the physiology of another person.  My sister is an incredible artist, but I can watch her all day and that doesn't give me instant talent, but I can say this at every crucial juncture of my adult life, I've been lucky enough to have a mentor guide me through. And today you are going to meet my dear friend and midlife mentor. Beatrix Ost. 

Beatrix is an artist, a writer, a fashion designer, and an ambassador of peace. She's also written screenplays, produced movies and theater and acted in films and on the stage. I have read her two memoirs, a piece of me, and more than everything about growing up in Germany, in the wake of world war two. And I really fell in love with her stories of childhood and adolescent. 

 And her book. The philosopher style is a mutable art book. That includes gorgeous photographs as well as stories. And interviews. Beatrix is currently collaborating with painter, Michelle Gagliano and the tourist Seattle museum to create an immersive art experience. Inspired by the differing narratives and one another's work Beatrix and Michelle aim to listen and respond to each other. Similar to the call and response arrangement found in jazz music. It's really exciting to see Michelle and Beatrix combine their two narratives to forge a path where abstract meat, surrealism, and where the artists find a real connection on and beyond the canvas. 

I really love talking with Beatrix and I hope that you will enjoy this conversation with Beatrix Ost. this is a special Valentine's week episode.  

 Because your way of being in the world is so grounded in love and in friendship that it's a real joy to speak with you.  

So let's get to it. Yes. You know how much I love you and admire you, and I know what an inspiration you can be to other people. Let's talk a little bit now about the incredible work that you are doing, because it's a work that is born out of partnership out of friendship. Can you tell us a little bit about this series that you're working on right now? 

Beatrix: this th the work, the odd work I'm doing with another artist, Michelle got yanno. Yeah. we, yeah, we met and we cannot recall how we got to the point that we said, we want to work on one big theme about the environment together as two women, two mothers, as concerned lovers of the world and lovers of nature. 

And, we started and we did it. We learned to paint into each other's paintings. We learned to do a sculpture together and, it came from a mutual. mutual respect for each other's work and each other's personality. We don't know each other for a long time, not at all. And, and we are now, we are really in love with doing that work together. 

We feel there is so much, feeding each other.  

and so we are, I don't want to say obsessed, but we are marching forward to get it finished and to get it made that the other decision which has been done with the Tourosiette museum. And, was a fellow friend, an architect, Karen Von Lingen. 

Beatrix: She said, why don't you make it into a. exciting, presentation where you don't need five rooms. You can tell the story, in that way you can get anyone in it. He immersed in an immersive, spectacular. And that's what we working on to, to create.  

\ 

Bree: So how do you work with each other on a piece?  

Beatrix: Yeah, we have, enormous paintings now together, on a very large scale. And, that is like, there's a painting. She brings to me and I go in after she presents it to me and there are paintings I give to her and she goes into them after I am finished. 

So that is enormously, enormously interesting. We also have worked on the recycled paintings on paintings, which we used to make 20 years ago, which have had their story. They have had their meaning. They have had their days. And now we come back to a thought we had once and we recreated  

 it's like having a conversation again and again, , it is very exciting. I must say our theme, our, theme is nature and, the title is I could have been a tree instead.  

 It is very exciting. And, and on a daily basis, still very exciting. Now I have given her sculptures and wall hangings where she will go in, where I have finished the work. 

And there are also 20 years old and they have been painted on linen with earth. Color was colored from the farm, from the earth it's good work. It's feels good. On every level.  

Bree: It makes me think you and I have been friends for a while, so I know. 

How much you enjoy the game, the exquisite corpse game.  

Beatrix: Yes. Was words, right? The word game. Yeah.  

Bree: And it's, it's a game where I'll explain it to listeners. It's a game where somebody writes a line of a poem, or just a line, a line in your head on a piece of paper, and then you fold it down and then someone writes another line and then they fold it down and at the end you had this beautiful or funny or whatever it is, whatever the moment is. Yeah. Peace.  

Beatrix: The interesting thing is  

that because you're in a  

room with a certain energy that often, it makes sense as if it was a poem from one person and it went 20 people involved. That's so interesting. 

And that's what we are doing with the  

Bree: paintings. Yeah. Just  

Beatrix: if we fold practically and give it, give it away on two, we see it again.  

Bree: Yeah. It's such a courageous act.  

Beatrix: It is. It took long. It took us, I would say at least three weeks  

until we could do the, going into the other person's work. And I mean, you must also see that we didn't know each other much. 

We had that idea and we somehow we fell in love with it. And somehow the moment was right. There was something right about it. And, Yeah, we just started doing it. And we went first, I went to her studio, then she went to mind study, and now we have a studio together.  

And the ideas just started blooming. 

 It's very fresh. Every day. It really is. Now we work together in the studio and she comes in and looks, oh, wow. Ah, that's what you're doing. And I turned around and look, no, this is, oh my God. 

This is interesting. This comes from a very mutual admiration of how we work, how we think.  

Bree: And you think in very different ways.  

Beatrix: Yes, hers is abstract and mine is figurative and surreal. And we've learned from each other, we see new it's like doors have opened and we see a new cause we are in it. We are not just looking at a finished painting. 

We're looking at work, which we are supposed to put something in the other person hadn't yet had given us as a platform. It's like a theater play.  

Bree: I would love to just take a step back because you are such a dear friend of mine and such a wonderful mentor. You've been right with me as I've been working on the first season of the podcast and You have inspired me so much as well as an everything as an everything, but, but I'm thinking 

in particular of, of how you told me that you really had a true creative awakening when you were 50.  

Can you tell us about that? Can you share that with us?  

Beatrix: Yeah. I remember my 50th birthday was an incredible party and I am a member that, that feeling of being celebrated to the mean to the nine. 

It was the most, the biggest party ever around a birthday I attended. And it was my own 50th and it was staged. Firstly, I also felt the fifties. I always said finally, a respectable age, I like that so much to be like, you know, you look back at some years if you are lucky, I had some respectability, I liked the whole fifties a lot and I was enormously creative in my fifties. You know, I like the body and I like that. Like not having the ups and downs of your may know, policy circles and the freedom. And yeah, I really enjoyed it very, very much. 

And I feel so young. And so I had this grown-up children around me. yeah, it was very, very, very, very good.  

 I also think there are always new beginnings. That was one of them. There was one new beginning because you know, you have to. 

I always feel, you have to say I'm not fat, but say, you know, put it in an act and say, so this was this. And now  

here I am, something new can begin. I am free. I'm open to it. That's that was the 10 years I made the movie was my son. I did huge works as an artist. They were all created in my fifties. 

Yeah. Very good. It's a good, it's a new beginning. I keep telling women go for it. Go for it. It is not the beginning of old age. It's a new beginning. , just go for it. It's good. Yeah.  

Bree: You have been curious and creative since you were a young child. You wrote about it in your books. 

You're an author and an artist, a style icon, you're a sculptor you've been in films and actress, you've done -- you just do it all.  

Beatrix: But that is, that is my curiosity. This is out of curiosity. And then I love the I'd love to dive in and then, to learn and master it. I liked that so very much. and I'm enormously creative.  

Once I have an idea. I have to create it from the beginning to the end. You can't stop me. 

So that, that is part of my character.  

So just go for it.  

Bree: What do you think is at the heart of your creativity? What's at the core? 

Beatrix: I think love of life, it's at the core. It all has to do with being alive and telling a story and being, being fascinated by something. Yeah. Yeah. That is it. 

Love, love for life.  

Bree: I think of you as a true creative change maker. You're working on this piece right now that. Really about the environment.  

Beatrix: I have to say that I have worked on the environment and included the environment since, since I can think, because the straw goddesses make sculptures made from straw. 

And I did them in the early nineties. I worked with the earth. I worked with earth paintings and with materials, which would, you know, just there because I had a farm. and I was always very, very alert and concerned about the environment and in love with surroundings, with nature. And I grew up with parents who yes, instilled that in them. 

Definitely  

Bree: you grew up on a farm.  

Beatrix: From the very beginning. Yes. I grew up on a very wonderful large state farm where we fed everyone after the war where the most important thing was food. 

Bree: And you were curious and getting into yeah. I'm getting into things.  

Beatrix: I was always really curious and I was allowed to be, there was no, there was no  

limit  

and I didn't let anyone set me a limit.  

Bree: You're talking about your parents now. They didn't set limits for, you know,  

Beatrix: and I wouldn't let anyone 

Bree: I remember you telling me, and also you wrote about it in your first book, the moment when your father says everyone Beatrix is speaking Beatrix is speaking,  

Beatrix: Yeah, at those unforgettable tables where relatives and people who came every day, there were like 20, 20 people at the table because we fed them and we had food and there was this celebration of food. 

And I would say poppy happy. I saw something. He would say everybody quiet. Beatrix has something to say, and then I would, yeah, poppy. I heardthe cuckhoo and I think it's spring is coming.  

And my father would say, there you go, how clever you are, how you observe everything. That is absolutely true. 

 So I love that. It was wonderful. I keep telling people with little children to always listen to them very early on. It's the most important  

 And elevate their observations and  

tell them what an important  

part they are in your life and how smart they are. 

Bree: You also say to do that with teenagers. I know that you really love spending time with teenagers too,  

Beatrix: i, we understand each other so well, because we're the teenagers, I'm at the edge of old age and they're the edge  

of grown up. Fantastic. We're in the same practically in the same, in the same box. 

Yeah. Yeah. I  

have a good time with teenagers.  

Bree: And you respect them 

Beatrix: yeah, I do very much. So I'm at all this them, cause now it's a, it's a new kind of teenager then enormously. Educated and knowledgeable teenager because they can, you know, that look, they call into the little phone and they have a whole encyclopedia of the world in there. 

 and there is a lot of different kind of education, very political of course, very, just, it's very interesting to me.  

Bree: I love that. 

Beatrix: I did hang out with them.  

Bree: So as you know, I have this, project that I'm working on, which is seven paths. 

And so what I would love to do with you is to go through each of the seven ways. And you can share with me what your experience of that way has been in your life.  

Beatrix: Yeah. So let's  

Bree: start first with spiritual. The spiritual way.  

 the spiritual way is a very, very vivid part in my life. very very vivid part two times a day. 

Beatrix: I cut out time for meditation. One of them is upside down where I have the legs way, way up. And my head is way down. That's in the middle of the day.  

Bree: And I have also  

Beatrix: learned visualization while I'm meditating. I often go into visualization. So if something is not so. To my liking, I can visualize it, how it would be if it would be okay, or even, you know, also when you feel a little bit illness or something somewhere, or a headache or something, I can visualize it the way how it would be even it's  

gone  

Spiritual ity it's a gift to yourself.  

Without it. I think you are not in good shape. You need to work on yourself  

That your own expectations, everything is something you have power over. Everything you expect from outside. There is no power over it. 

 All you can do is cultivate and adore yourself and in your body is a good place to be. That's my motto. Yeah.  

Bree: You study Buddhism.  

Beatrix: Yeah. Yeah, yeah. And that comes to my son Fabian and then I had the good fortune to meet Robert Thurman and the Tibet house, and then the Dalai Lama. 

And then we traveled as a family. and these places, and it had given me incredible, an incredible gift to see myself in the world and to say,  

Hmm.  

Yeah. Yeah. And it's something you cannot, you always have with you because nothing you need, it doesn't cost anything it's with you. 

Bree: I want to repeat that it doesn't cost anything because I think we can be very quick to want to buy our way to happiness 

 And spirituality is readily available to us. , 

all we have to do is connect.  

Beatrix: Yeah. Let it in, wanted it it's inside of you. You just need to say hello, talk  

to me.  

Bree: Allow it. Okay. Next one. Intellectual analytical the intellectual side.  

Beatrix: Well, yes, I am very analytical to a point. You know when it's not there and it's a conversation just about stuff or things. 

Then I can point at my little broach, which says practicing silence, and then I become silent because I'm not interested in it. I'm interested in, in knowing how you feel, how the trip was, how it felt to be up in the mountains. I don't want to know how you walk there. I want what you saw, what you experienced, what you said, what it gave to you. 

 I want to know how did you get to that thought? That is exciting to me. Yeah. The symphony of thinking 

Bree: emotional.  

Beatrix: Emotional. Yeah. That's why I also dove into that the philosopher style book, because I interviewed 60 people and I only asked them one question, the question was telling me, what is the marrow in your bone?  

And then I got the story out of them and you know, that curiosity and 

 Yeah, you get so much because people would, people would love to tell you so much, but they are listened to, but once you are so curious and want to know more, you listened to. Then you get those openings, you know, people open up to you and open up much deeper. 

And then that is intellect for me. That's intelligence for me.  

Bree: And that is truly the confluence. The, we, we talked before with these seven ways they intertwined and that's the sort of intertwining of the emotional and the intellectual  

Beatrix: there. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. And it feeds it. People come up with things they never said before. 

, to me, that is intelligence and philosophy. And. And I  

love that. I love that.  

Bree: The philosophers style is a beautiful, beautiful book. You need to have it on your coffee table 

I'll link it  

In the show notes. 

The next one is one that we've touched on already, which is creative.  

Beatrix: Yeah. Creativity. Yeah. I mean, this also comes from nothing from having nothing big, you know, like the, the Christmas doll just got a new dress, there were no new dolls because you couldn't buy anything until the later mid, mid fifties, then. The world had recovered from that horrible war. 

So it came from being with what was there and you had to be creative in your childhood. It began very early. Yeah, I'm very, very happy about that. I didn't know, the sound of a telephone until I was 11. It, there was a, there was an office where my father would die something and then this thing, and he would talk to someone and she would connect him. 

 He would call the, the train station and it would say, hello? Hello? Yes. For it's off. could you please let the train, maybe 10 minutes. My wife was a little late to. Okay, thank you very much. Just 10 minutes. Okay. So 

that was the rule reliving. When my mother was a little slow and she wanted to go to town and then he stopped the training for her, but I never, I never went to the phone. There was never a phone call. So there was enormous tranquility and excitements all around was what happened there. And around me. 

Bree: Do you feel like your sense of style grew from that place  

Beatrix: yeah. Yeah. It definitely came from nothing. And then some seamstress came and my mother against a chicken or a Bato or something. She got a piece of silk that was for me and I got a dress  

and then I became very, very creative in my teenage years. Yeah. I could make things. I could make my own clothes and like my first, very elegant shoes in the city of Munich where ballet slippers, I would wear them on a daily basis. So yeah.  

You know, it, wasn't easy to find shoes. 

I mean, I think people should read my books. It really describes.  

Bree: It really does.  

And it also, it explains why, well, you know, I have an issue with this title that you've been named one of the top five style icons for older women. And of course, what I say is, what do you mean older women? 

You're just one of the top, but  

Beatrix: the whole thing is so funny. 

Yeah, but my art for my style and I, and it is, it just is me. So it doesn't make any difference, but I, I would go to on Madison avenue to Gaultier and because I adored his clothes and so in day, oh, please, come in, we have something for you. We, we have to show you. And then I ended up with a fantastic golden outfit in plastic. 

I still wear it. It's fabulous. It's just plastic and gilded plastic. It's a jacket with a white skirt.  

So fabulous. If my birthday weren't in August, I would ask you to wear that to my 50th birthday. Absolutely.  

Absolutely. It perfect. Might be a little warm, but we should,  

wonderful. Okay. The next one. It's intuitive, your intuition. 

Bree: How does that come into play?  

Beatrix: intuition has to do with being in the moment. You're in the moment, you know, a mother who, you know, the kid away from the driving by car  

that is  

in the moment, this is something we have to cultivate because this is the only thing we have the moment we only have this moment  

and yeah,  

Bree: One of the, tips that I have for cultivating intuition. And I think you and I have talked about this before is intuition comes in before cognition, before you start thinking about the thing it comes in before creativity, and it comes in before emotion. When you have the emotional feeling first, that's not intuition, that's emotion, but when you have the gut response to something, then everything else can follow. 

But you have to find that stillness first, so you can hear it so you can seal it.  

Beatrix: This student, his thing is, is really, I told you, I went to, I had to have that broach on today. I don't know if you see it, but I, I used to go to parties because I didn't want to answer and get into nonsense, but I was constantly asked and talked to when, so and so had that broach made, it says practicing silence, and I would go to a party and I would point at my broach and wouldn't speak. And I learned to listen and I became, infatuated with listening. people became so incredibly interesting to me, the way they move when they said something, how they said it, how they looked around, it was like all, they were all books. And,  

I felt  

in that stillness where I did not prepare a clever answer to something. I was just talk to or ask to. there was this, I was in a chamber of stillness as where I could just absorb everything like a sponge and I just loved it. I can highly recommend  

Bree: that we all need the broach.  

Beatrix: They all need the approach because I wanted to be outside and I wanted to be at the party and I wanted to be dressed up and I wanted to see everybody and, you know, see the beautiful people and what they were wearing. 

And I wanted to hear what they were saying, but I didn't want to be in a blah, blah, blah conversation. So I can highly recommend listening. It's fantastic.  

Bree: And people can purchase that brooch.\ 

Beatrix: Article 22.. Article 22 was the peace agreement between Vietnam and it was up to the war and,at least a bit Suda, 10 years ago, she founded that company. She went to Laos and saw people were eating with spoons and they were made from the scraps, which from explosions of minds and Laois was the most contaminated country w was mines and bombs. 

To this day, And so she said, when they can make a spoon, they can make jewelry. And she taught, she has a group of people who make jewelry. And I designed, sometimes I have several very successful. One is the snake earrings pieces. The snake was the skin shedding, your skin, the symbol of it. 

and half of the proceedings goes back to Laos so they can continue determinating all these, doing the work with princess Diana. Had put on her agenda. Remember she walks through this mine fields  

Beatrix: so this brooch can be purchased at Article 22 now I'm selling  

Bree: that's. Okay. We'll we'll put it in the show notes and they're also,  

Beatrix: they're beautiful bangles and from other designers, beautiful earrings. Yeah. It's lovely. And you're too good deed.  

Bree: I always love it. When you can find a beautiful piece of jewelry, that's also doing some good in the world. 

It's a really wonderful thing.  

Beatrix: Yeah. And it's not commercialized. It's fair trade. It just goes from here to there nobody in between.  

Bree: Yeah. And I'm not an affiliate of article 22. They're not paying me to say this, but I, I really love that company. I'm so glad that you design for them and with them because it's, it's a beautiful collaboration. 

And, and also I believe that you're in your body is a good place to be is also on some of their,  

Beatrix: yeah, it says a little necklace  

Bree: so for those of us who need a reminder, that's a lovely, 

we can all use a reminder from time to time.  

Beatrix: There's think shed your skin. Renew yourself.  

Bree: The next one is physical. Speaking of in your body. Yeah, yeah,  

Beatrix: yeah, yeah. We need physicology we need the touch. We need to hug each other. We cannot be without, that's why people who often have difficulty say I have another dog with the dog. 

They can do it, but we need, yeah. I need to be, I need to be physical.  

I love it.  

I also love dancing. I love to move around with another person with another body. Yeah. You love to tango. I love to tango. Yeah.  

Bree: And, for any of you who want to see Beatrix dancing the tango, you often share it on your Instagram feed. 

Beatrix: It's an intelligent dance. It's like a conversation you can, there are not so many rules. You can break the rule and do something, right. And it's  

Bree: so bad. You like to break some rules. 

 the last one is social relationships. 

Beatrix: Well, we we are a social animal, we humans. So we need social interactions. We need also critique. We need to hear from another, 

you know, you should not say it this way or you should do this and then you can say, yeah, maybe you're right. 

Beatrix: . I love being social as much as I love solitude. So when you have enough solitude, you can be. Very, very social again.  

 Pick and choose what you let in. Don't let too much take too much negativity into your life. It is like rain. It's not in your power. You can help, but you can have much better when something is right here next to your neighbor. 

But too many negative things are not good for us  

because they sit in there like, like some gray, something. 

You always have to think it's like, it's like the weather, you can't change it. You cannot, it's raining. It's raining. Make the best of it. It's wonderful. It's good for the garden. We live in the moment. 

This is your moment. This is your time.  

Bree: What is one thing that you would wish for anyone who's really trying to make a big change in their life, whether that's developing healthier relationships, whether it's starting a new creative project or a new career, or just trying to start a new. 

A new day in their life, what would you wish for anyone who's going through that?  

Beatrix: I think what we all, most desire and most crave is this quantum love is this love. And why don't you begin the day with loving yourself, if you self that self love and thankful for who you are and that you have a human body and all the good things you have and you, you are. 

And then when you open the door, you can give that out is can dis can be given to something because you just had it revitalized it's with you. It is for you and it comes from you and you can give it out. The most important thing is love because this is what we really crave  

the most. 

 To begin where we, where we are at home. Yeah. In our body.  

Bree: We do. We do well. Thank you for sharing that. Particularly on this week of Valentine's day,  

Beatrix: we need, we need little reminders. 

Bree: Don't forget love, but it's not just romantic love that's that's it is.  

Beatrix: It is that it is that thankfulness thankful, thankful to be where you are, who you are thankful for. All of the gifts around you is every moment is so much good in it. And you can learn to master and not empathize on the negative.  

Bree: I  

Beatrix: think love is the most loving,  

Bree: I often feel like at the root of love is gratitude  

Beatrix: to  
 

Bree: just unfiltered gratitude, completely undeniable gratitude and appreciation. 

Beatrix: Just really just appreciating the exquisiteness of life. And it is enormously gratifying to be like that. It comes back. Like an echo, it comes back to like a  

Bree: ball and sometimes it gets bigger yeah. 

Beatrix: No deflating. 

Bree: Well, I appreciate you thank you for sharing time with me.  

Beatrix: Of course, 

and your body is a good place to be.  

Bree: Indeed. Indeed. Thank  

Beatrix: you.  

Bree: Choose. Choose.  

Here are my key takeaways from this conversation with Beatrix number one. First of all, if you are feeling stuck, find someone who can inspire you like a mentor. As Oprah Winfrey said, a mentor is someone who allows you to see the hope inside yourself. Number two true collaboration is an active, deep vulnerability that requires courage and clear communication. 

But this effort can result in something extraordinary. That is truly greater than the sum of its parts. Number three, whether you are five 50 or 95 years old, there are always opportunities for new beginnings and it is up to you to go for. Number four in your body is a good place to be. Make the time to find stillness in your body and mind to be fully present from that place you can access all you need to cultivate wellbeing. number five, I love this idea that at the core of Beatrix is creativity is her love of life. Take a moment to consider what is at the core of your creative impulses. how does that shape, how you respond to the world around you? 

Sit with that for a minute.