111: Ten Thousand Buddhas and Unlocking Creativity with Artist Amanda Giacomini

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What's next? This is a question we're all having to ask and answer more frequently. I'm Jenny Blake, your host of the Pivot Podcast and author of Pivot. The only move that matters is your next.

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Hello everybody. Welcome back. I am thrilled to be here this morning with Amanda Giacomini. Amanda has been teaching Yoga for over 25 years and has been an artist for almost the same amount of time. We're here today talking about one of her most incredible projects called 10,000 Buddhas, a worldwide, highly sought after art project including large scale murals and fine art paintings. Amanda set out to paint 10,000 Buddhas and completed last year after being inspired by a visit to the Anjanta Caves in India and her work has been featured on National Geographic Channel, New York Magazine, Yoga Journal and many more publications. She's also developing a program for Yoga Glo and leading classes and retreats on how to use yoga and meditation as a tool to unlock your unique creativity. I already love Amanda because she was introduced to me through our mutual friends Isabelle and Tim. And when Isabel reached out, she said, I'm deeply affected by Amanda as a teacher. I was in Point Reyes with her recently to plan the Yoga Glow program and it brought me to tears. So I can't wait to dive in with you. Amanda, welcome to the show.

Oh, thank you so much for having me, Jenny. I'm honored to be here.

I know you're just getting back from Sri Lanka. What were you doing there?

So my husband Mcogi and I were leading a retreat. We did a 12 day yoga retreat in Sri Lanka, an ayurvedic spa.

It was amazing. Yeah, we did pilgrimages to Buddhist temples and saw wild elephants in the jungle and did yoga every day.

What a dream.

Pretty magical. Yeah.

I love your mission to use yoga and meditation to help people tap into creativity. A secret that probably my listeners don't even know is back when I was teaching yoga, I created a class called Vision and Vinyasa.

Yeah. The goal was to get people into their bodies and then have them reflect on their goals and their vision for the coming year. And even sometimes I would do a restorative pose for six minutes and then have them journal afterward. And I would give prompts. Yes, I would love to hear from you. You've been teaching now for 25 years. How have you connected the two in your work? And what. What are you passionate. Most passionate about?

Well, I would say I started as an artist. Even when I was little, I painted and I studied art in school and was an art major. And then at about 19, I discovered yoga. And yoga really just absolutely changed my life. It came to me at a time I had a big life crisis. When I was 19, I got really sick and a very close friend of mine committed suicide. And that's what brought me to the practice. Yoga just gave me this way of quieting down and finding peace in a very tumultuous time in my life. Once I found that, I just kept going back. I just wanted to find that little island of peace. Everything I was feeling and all my emotions and all my thoughts where I could just drop into a place inside myself that was untouched by everything that was going on. And as soon as I discovered that, that tool through yoga, it just became a deep passion. And I found over the years, the more I practice going into that internal world, not only did it help heal me on a lot of levels, physically and emotionally and spiritually, but it gave me access to a deep well of inspiration where I could make art from. The project that you mentioned at the beginning, 10,000 Buddha Project, has really been a culmination of bringing my two passions together, of making art and practicing yoga.

Do you remember the moment that you got the idea to start the project?

Yeah. You know, it happened really slowly. I visited these caves. We were. My husband and I were studying yoga with in South India, in Mysore with Patapi Joyce, who was the Ashtanga yoga.

That's incredible that you studied directly with him.

Yeah, I know. I don't think we realized at the time. We were so young. You know, you just think everyone's going to live forever, but of course they don't. And we were really lucky. We traveled several times to India to study with them over there, and it was amazing. And every time we went to India. We would add on a little extra part of our trip to go to some of these incredible sites. There's all these pilgrimage places and temples and just magnificent works of art and architecture all over India. And one year, about 2007, we went to these caves. And they were 2,000 year old Buddhist caves. They were way out in the middle of nowhere. They are not a very high traffic, touristy spot. So getting there was like a big adventure. But when we got there, it was one of the most phenomenal experiences of my life. They were 33 caves that were carved out by hand in the side of a cliff. And then each cave had, you know, giant sculptures of Buddha and carvings and reliefs and stories of the Buddha and then paintings floor to ceiling. And the whole project.

Took over 800 years to complete those caves. Art and all the sculpture in them. So it just kind of blew my mind open as a human. Like, who. Who takes on a project that's going to take 800 years to complete? You know, in our modern American culture, everything is like, we want instant satisfaction. And so it just really, I think it woke me up to this idea of what would it be like to take on a project really big, you know, one that I wasn't even sure I could finish in this lifetime. And then that I think it just planted a little seed because I went home and it wasn't until years later that I actually started painting. It just was one of those things that affected me and it stayed with me. But maybe it was five years later that I actually started painting the Buddhas. I'd seen in one of the caves a mural of a thousand little Buddhas sitting together, meditating. And it was that, and I think it was partly going back to Pattabhi Joyce when he would come to the United States. It was sort of the first time I'd ever been to a giant yoga class with four or 500 people. And that feeling of practicing with four or 500 people, like breathing together, moving together, it's an amazing feeling. And I think when I saw that mural, the little Buddha sitting together, it reminded me of what it felt like to be in community, to practice and community. You feel. You almost feel like you're not doing it. You know, there's so much energy around you. You can just kind of ride on the group energy. It feels so effortless. And the caves were a place where the monks would gather in the rainy season and it was their time to reinvigorate their practice. So it was, I think, harnessed that feeling inside of me so, but it was a really. It took a long time for it to come to the surface. Like a deep seed was planted on that visit. And then years later it kind of bubbled up and that's when I started to paint.

And then even when I started that first painting, I didn't quite realize what I was getting into.

And then it just sort of one day I had such a beautiful experience when I started painting the Buddhas. It just, it brought me back almost to that same feeling I had when I first started practicing. Every time I went to my studio, I just felt that place of peace. You know, I had never before when I was making art before yoga, I felt like my art was more. Making art was like a tumultuous process. I was like wrestling with my ego the whole time and wrestling with my self judgment and my self criticism. But the moment I started painting Buddhas, all of that dissolved and it wasn't about me and it was really blissful. So I think that's the feeling that got me going.

I have such a big smile just hearing you describe this and what a beautiful thing to see these thousand Buddhas in a cave in faraway India and then bring them to the world in the way that you have since. And I love the idea. I can imagine that it was very meditative for you, that if you're painting, by the way, if any of you listening get a chance to Visit Amanda's website, 10,000buddhas.com. The pictures and the videos are stunning and I love seeing you sitting in front of the murals. And I can imagine that painting. I don't know about how many go on a wall. 20 or 30 Buddhas has a spiritual quality to it as you focus on that.

Yeah, well, there's something a lot of, a lot of spiritual practices, a lot of yoga, meditation practices are all about meditation repetition, you know, doing the same thing over and over again, repeating a mantra, doing sun salutations. You have this like ritual that you do over and over again. And the more you do it kind of the deeper it gets in you and it calms your mind and it has this, it creates this pattern which is very soothing and settling to the nervous system. So I found that the more I painted, just the deeper I would get with that feeling. And it was very powerful. And yeah, each wall is different. Sometimes a couple dozen, I've done big walls that have like 200 on them.

But every time it's just that same feeling, that repetition, that ritual that has been very, very powerful for me personally.

So from start to Finish when you had the idea how long in duration of time and how many walls did it end up taking to do 10,000 or I guess that was on paintings, too.

Yeah, it was paintings, too. So the first painting I did in 2007. Oh, no, sorry, 2007 is when I went to the case 2012. I did my first big painting with about 99 Buddhas on it. And I did it in oil paint, which is what I was trained in in school. And so oil paint's a slow process. You do everything by hand, and it's building up layers and sanding them down. I wanted to give it that feeling like it was part of the cave. So I wanted it to look aged and ancient. So I would build it up and. And then take it down and build it up again to give it that old, weathered look. And that first painting took me almost a year. And so it was after that when I had this idea that I wanted to keep going and that I wanted to paint 10,000. And.

Once I had that, I kept going. And I probably have painted 10 or 15 murals and, I don't know, hundreds and hundreds of paintings and prints.

That's amazing. And when did you finish the project?

So it was last year. So it's been about six years since I started it. And last year in August, I had been doing every year the project would pick up momentum, and I never really knew. I never really knew what was going to happen. It was probably the first few years I did just doing paintings, and then three years in, when I got the inspiration that I wanted to scale up and do murals. And I'd never done murals before or street art. So that was a whole learning curve where I learned how to stencil, and I learned how to spray paint, and I learned how to drive, you know, scissor lifts and boom lifts and cherry pickers. And it was.

Really fun. Very empowering. A big learning curve in the beginning for me. And then it was, I think sometime last summer when I was home, I was working on several panels, and I knew I was getting close. I knew I was in the nine thousands. And I had a document that I kept where every. After every painting or mural, I would just, you know, make a little note where it was and how many Buddhas were on it. And I was like, oh, I haven't tallied up in a while. And I went back to my studio, and I, you know, I had counted them. And the last painting I had, the last Buddha I painted that day was my 10,000. And it was just. Just like, it was just this. I was just by myself. It wasn't like a big, you know, public thing. It was just this moment where I just felt like tears rolling down my face and just this feeling of like, oh, my gosh. I didn't even. I didn't know that that was going to be possible. And here I was sitting, like I had done it. It just had happened in.

Such an interesting and adventurous and unexpected way.

I love it. It's so cool. Just to exactly push the boundaries. And I love what you even said earlier about this project in India, where they took 800 years, and here we kind of beat ourselves up if something's taking longer than one year. Even writing a book, both my books have taken me about three years. And then I even took a five year break in between. Like, it takes time. And one of my mentors, Michael Bungay Stanier, he said when his book came out, he's gonna kind of help it be successful for at least five years that he just took that long of a view on it. And five years isn't even that long when you compare it to 800. So it's just so beautiful that you not only stuck with your project to 10,000 and through six years, but I love how it shape shifted as you went, and you learned new skills and you learned how to do murals. And at least here in New York, when someone's working on a mural, it's very public, everybody's watching. So I can imagine that was a new element, too.

It was, and I actually loved it because before that, I would just be alone painting. And this is a very solitary act, and you can get very feeling isolated. And before I made public art, you know, I would paint, and then every two years I would have an exhibition. And the exhibition would be up for a month, and, you know, only so many people would see it. And then it would be back to me in my studio. And so when I painted my first mural, I was in Miami, and it was during Art Basel weekend, which is the biggest art fair in the world. And it was in the Wynwood district, which is like this huge art district.

We just went to Basel this year, and that was my favorite part of the whole thing. It was so cool, right?

It's so vibrant. There's so much energy around the arts there, and all the walls are painted. And so I did my first mural there. It's like I went to Mount Everest. Like, the first time I climbed the mountain, it was crazy to be painting in that neighborhood during baseline. And I painted A huge wall, like 100 foot wall. And when I went home.

Not only during the process, I mean, so many artists were out that weekend. So it's so fun, the camaraderie and people would come by and give you props. And that's something that doesn't happen when you're painting in your studio. People don't knock on your door and be like, hey, this is looking good.

Right? Right.

And so that was alone was really fun. And just the diversity, the people in Miami. So, like, little girls would come and want to kiss the Buddhas or.

You know, all different ages, all different races. You know, the younger graffiti guys would come over and like, tell me it was looking good. And I was like, this is awesome. Very encouraging. And then when I went home, I put my newly formed Instagram handle on the bottom. I knew I didn't want to sign with my name.

When I went to the caves, no one had signed any of the paintings or the sculptures. It was a collective project of anonymous artists, you know, and so I didn't. I knew I didn't want to put my name on it. So I put at 10,000 Buddhas. And then every day, like by the hour, I was getting posts of people stopping and interacting with the walls and then sharing it. And that was like a whole new level of connection between my art and the public that I had never experienced before. And it was really fun. Really, really fun.

It's so cool too, because then people are interacting, as you said, with your art in the murals, and you're getting to see it on Instagram probably far after you've left.

Yeah. And so I feel like you'll get to leave a little piece of myself in every city. In every city. And it feels like the impact of the work is so much greater when it's public. It's out there kind of doing its thing as opposed to being, you know, locked up somewhere. It's out there sharing this, its energy. I feel like when it comes out of me, it's. Then it's its own thing, you know, it's its own entity in the world. And yeah, making public art is beautiful for that. It's free, it's available to anyone, it's very democratic, and I love it.

How did you get that hundred foot wall in Wynwood? Because I would imagine it's competitive, especially during Basel, with all the other artists.

Yeah, it was just one of those weird things. I have a friend in Miami, she was putting on an event in the walls called Yoga Art, which was a yoga music and Art experience. And it wasn't actually me. It was my husband, because I'm kind of shy, and I never like to ask for anything, especially, like, can you find me a wall? I just. I feel like, oh, that'll happen. But he called her up and he said, hey, Don, we'd love to come back to your event next year. Can you find a wall for Amanda? And she's just, you know, I move really slow. Took me six years to do my first Buddhas, but she moves fast. And within 20 minutes, she called me. She's like, I've got two walls. Which one do you want? You want to do both of them? I mean, it was just one of those things. She had a childhood friend who owned a building across the street from the Wynwood Walls Museum, and her friend, everybody had been hitting up her friend to paint this wall, but she didn't really like regular graffiti art. And she liked my work because it just was different. It was different from most street art that she had seen. So she was really into it.

Yeah, I love how those things happen. Just those introductions and then when it's meant to be and in your path that she responded in 20 minutes with two walls, like, it just unfolded so seamlessly from there. You mentioned your husband, MC Yogi. It seems like you two have an amazing partnership. I would love to hear. And it sounds like maybe you met a while ago, so I'd love to know how you met and what it's like collaborating with each other in your different. Different but related spheres.

Well, we met 18 years ago in our yoga teacher training. Really?

That's awesome.

And we met and fell in love during our training, and then we ran off to India together.

After a year of being together and studying in India, we came back to where my husband's from, here in Point Reyes, California. And his family had a barn that his grandfather started as a feed store. And then his dad took it over and added an art gallery and a gift store and an organic farmer's market. And then there was this couple storerooms in the back that his dad is a yogi and had converted into, like, a personal practice space for him and some friends. And while we were in India studying without any communication with his dad, when we came home, he built doors so that that practice space could be a public space, and he basically opened it up for us to be able to start our own yoga studio in the barn.

So we started our studio together back in 2001, 17 years ago, and. And we've been going strong ever since. I Think our foundation was like a shared love of yoga. But of course, I'm a painter and he's a musician. So we both found a way to.

Create art that was rooted in our yoga practice. And he came up, he sort of did this crazy thing, and he blended hip hop music with yogic philosophy and mythology from the yoga Buddhist tradition. And that was really revolutionary. I think at the time when he did his first album in 2008, no one had heard. I mean, no one had even thought to do that. It was just such a weird and wonderful.

Mixture of two very different types of things. And it just worked. And so it was so fun. Once he did that, we started getting invited to travel and teach, and he was performing and I wanted to go with him, but I'm like, I have no musical ability, Jenny.

I can't even clap on time. I'm like, really, really bad. But, you know, we wanted to be together. And so we. At first, when he started touring, since I was a visual artist, he was like, well, you can be my vj. And we created all this content and animation and video that I would play during his live shows. So I got to be on stage with him, which was just a thrill because I never saw myself doing that. So we just. We always found ways to collaborate and.

Inspire each other. And then, you know, when that happened, then I think he really inspired me to then keep up with my art. I think when we started our studio, we were traveling a lot. My art did fall into the background for several years. I just wasn't painting that much. And so he always encouraged me to get, you know, stay with it and keep going. And that was.

Really important because I think there was a time in my life where I could have just let it go. But he really both encouraged and inspired me to keep making art.

And then when I started the 10,000 Buddhas, he had a background painting graffiti, so he was the one who really helped me and not be scared of street art stuff. Like, he taught me how to use spray paint and all these things that they don't really teach you in school.

Right. Although they should. Wouldn't it be so cool if there was a street art class?

Oh, my God, it would be so cool.

There should be. You guys should teach it. I think it's amazing that he happened to have graffiti experience.

I know.

We should give a shout out to his book, which came out last year, called Spiritual Graffiti, so if any listeners want to check it out.

Yeah. And actually his book has his whole journey finding yoga, but also our love Story about how we met and our travels to India and starting our school. So it's a beautiful book. And.

Yeah, he talks about his whole life as being spiritual graffiti, but of course.

He'S like wrapping me into that whole concept too, because I'm out there painting spiritual graffiti.

It's so fun just to hear how you guys collaborate and find ways to support each other. And I love the idea of you on stage with him as his vj.

That's just so cool.

And painting and doing what you love and then getting to thrive on that energy of the music and the audience. Like, man, I don't know if there's. You must go into a total bliss state when that's happening. I know I would.

Yeah. I mean, when you're up there on stage, even if, you know, just doing the. I was triggering the visuals, but just the energy being on stage is electrifying, you know, it's so fun. And then, you know, he would get the whole audience, like jumping together and clapping together and singing together. And it's. It's incredible experience to be up there being part of it. I know. So many performances afterwards, it would take us hours to kind of wind down, I can imagine from all the energy. But it was. Yeah, it was so fun to be able to share that.

And what you said about his blending as well, that's always the best. That's what innovation is. It's like taking two totally separate seeming things and combining them. So it's really cool to see how he has taken, as you said, yoga plus spirituality plus hip hop. Like, who would have thought? Who would have thought?

I love it. So, okay, here's a logistical question, because I know you're going to teach a class at your studio after this interview. So how do you manage a physical location business while you're both on the road? I would imagine, well, maybe you can say about how much of the year you're on the road and how much you're home and just how you juggle those two things.

It's a great question. I think part of it is we built a really solid foundation. So when we opened our studio, we were really young.

And we didn't travel then we were together for about seven or eight years before he recorded his first album and put it out. So during that time, we taught all the yoga classes at our studio, just the two of us. So we put in a lot of hours creating a.

How it goes in the beginning too.

Yeah. And that's that other thing, you know, for your listeners out there when you're starting a new project. It does take time. And I think we're too fast to. To say this is a failure or this isn't working. You know, we give up on things too quickly because we don't give them enough time to succeed. And, you know, our studio was five years before we had, like, a decent turnout in art classes. And then, you know, we just. Now it's just a thriving. It does. Now we can leave, you know, now we can work on about half the year. But it was a very slow, gradual process where we put in a ton of time at the beginning, and then it was very organic. Like, we started to get invites, and so then we started to travel a little bit, and then we took on one or two teachers, and then we started to travel a little bit more, and we took on a couple more teachers. We gave up more of our classes. And so it just became a slow process to.

To build.

While we were growing, you know, so it was. It's funny because while we grew our studio, we had each three other jobs so that our studio didn't have to support us. And then now the studio became, like, the thing that supported us as our art careers grew and became more solid. So it was. It's just a dance, you know, it's a real creative dance. But now it's 17 years in, the studio just has its own.

Rhythm, and we are able to step away and keep it going.

But it took a while to get there.

What were your three jobs when you were first starting?

My three jobs. One, my sister had started a luxury dog hotel, which I helped her with.

She was early on the scene with that. Now there's sites like Rover. That's cool.

Yeah. She was definitely, I think, the first one in the Bay Area to come up with it. And her business was called Citizen K9. It was out by the Oakland Airport. And so I did that three days a week. And then I. I also did freelance graphic design. When I graduated with an art degree, I had no employable skills. So most of my friends who had studied painting with me were all like, oh. And we went to the community college and learned how to do Photoshop and Illustrator, and we all got jobs doing web design and graphic design to help pay the bills. So I did that. And gosh, now and then I taught yoga.

So I can't remember if I did something else as well. Probably there was a lot of things. And my husband worked at the pizza place, and he loaded hay for his dad's hay Barn in addition to teaching yoga. So he Had a lot of jobs.

Yeah, you're like the perfect example of a portfolio career, especially starting out. And again, such a great reminder of not to judge our projects, especially creative projects, too soon and to call them a failure.

I know you've said your mission in all of your work, all that you do, is to inspire people to tap into their creativity. What is so important to you about that?

I really. I feel like creativity is.

It's not something that we should hold as a luxury that we do after all, the administration of our lives happens. I really feel like our creativity is the root of our vitality and our intelligence and our joy. And I know from my own life, when I put it aside and I didn't make it a priority, I was not as happy a person. I felt resentful almost of people who were doing their art. I was like, you know, angry because I wasn't doing mine. And I think it. I realized when I started doing it again how vital it was that if I didn't do it, I would be living half a life. And so I really feel like even. And when I say creativity that can take so many different forms, painting is just one way of doing it. But, I mean, I think there's very creative people who are business people, who are entrepreneurs, who are mathematicians, who are scientists, who are. And that's the type of creativity I'm talking about. Not just the fine arts that we think of, but just that way of being that it's tapping into this vital energy. In yoga, we call it shakti, and it's the divine feminine energy of creation. And it's powerful and it's exciting. And if we cut ourselves off from it, life can be very dull and not as. Not as fulfilling. So I think it's. I think it's a really important thing.

And the human experience.

Yeah, I love how you said it's the root of our vitality, not something we do on the side when our administrative duties are done, which is so often where it gets placed.

Yep, it's true. And even to this day, Jenny, I still have to remind myself of that. You know, come home from a trip and I've got a big pile of stuff to do and bills and, you know, managing our studio and booking more travel and so much administrative stuff. And I have to be. There's a discipline to being creative, and I have to force myself sometimes to, you know, get back to the groove, getting into my studio and painting. And then it's that pattern. It kind of like a practice, like a yoga practice, if you do it sporadically. It's, you have to really like talk yourself into it. But when you're doing it regularly, you just go, you just do it, you know, and same thing with making art. If I, if I get out of the habit, I have to really kind of work to get back in. And then when I'm in a good pattern and I'm going and painting, you know, every day for a few hours, it's easy. So there's a, there's definitely a discipline side to it that's important.

Yeah, I feel like for me, as it relates to yoga, sometimes I have to encourage myself. It's okay if just do 20 minutes. Like even something, some small increment is going to feel so much better than nothing. But there are many days where I fall into this bad habit of doing nothing. And then I realized if I could just take the pressure off of what it has to look like, then it helps me. At least it helps me keep that discipline and regularity of it.

Yeah, it's absolutely important to not say, oh, well, if I don't have a two hour window in a perfectly warm room with my yoga mat and my this and my that, then I'm not going to do it. No, you have to just, you have to just do it anyway. Do it. If you have 10 minutes.

And I think the same is true of whatever our creative pursuits are. If I, if I, you know, just do a sketch, do five minutes. If you, you know, meditation can be done in five minutes, you can anchor yourself for the whole day just closing your eyes and breathing for five minutes.

I love it. That's a good. I always like to leave listeners with an assignment. So let's say close your eyes and breathe for five minutes. And what's one other piece of advice or something you would invite them to do?

I think just going back to our conversation about like connecting spiritual practice or yoga practice with creativity. When you do close your eyes and breathe for five minutes, just listen, you know, listen to what you are feeling. Listen and observe what comes up in your mind, what feelings come up in your body, because those are the places where great creative projects and inspiration is born from. And so when we close our eyes and we're settling down, just watch and see what happens. Sometimes you might surprise yourself with what comes up.

I love that. And okay, I'm going to sneak in one more question and you can answer quickly, but I'm dying to know. How do you keep your creativity going and your sanity and your health being on the road half of the year what are some of your, like, three favorite rituals or routines?

Well, we just came from this Ayurvedic spa, basically, in Sri Lanka. And I love Ayurveda. It's the, you know, the sister practice to yoga. And I use a lot of Ayurvedic things in my life to keep me going when life is busy and the traveling and everything. And a simple one is you take oil and you oil your body. It's like you use sesame oil. There's different kinds of oil. Nice. Ayurvedic oil is cooked with a lot of herbs that have medicinal qualities. And I find when I do that, like, you cover. You basically cover yourself with oil, and then you take a bath or shower, and it coats your skin, makes your skin really nice, but it coats your nervous system and it has this grounding effect. And when we're traveling a lot or things are getting busy or life is getting stressful and you're juggling a lot of things, I find it just. It settles me down in a really nice way. I do it sometimes in the morning and sometimes before bed, and it helps quiet me down so I sleep, sleep deeper. I also use a lot of Ayurvedic herbs when I travel to help push through if I'm tired. Ashwagandha is one of them that I really like. Tulsi is another nice calming herb. So I would encourage people to investigate those things. They're simple daily practices.

From that tradition that can really help keep you balanced.

I love it. That's going to be my assignment. I'm going to do that oil, especially.

If you're in New York in the winter. It's like heaven. Go to, like, a natural food store or something. You can even just do sesame oil if you can't find Ayurvedic oil. Sesame oil is what they use as a base. And you rub it all over, especially on your joints. You do circular rubbing on your elbows and your knees and your ankles. And it's really good for your joints if you feel stiff. And it's wonderful.

I love it. Falls into my. We have a mantra in our household of body kindness. So that sounds like the perfect body kindness ritual. Amanda, thank you so much for being here and sharing your beautiful story and your work. And you gotta see it to really experience it. So everybody listening? Head over to 10,000buddhas.com. And, Amanda, is there anywhere else you'd want to point people if they want to get in touch?

Well, if you want to follow the progress, the project is still going. Even though I painted 10,000. There's so much momentum. I think I'm at 13,000 now and I have new walls coming all the time. I'm hoping to spread this more internationally and do some walls in Europe later this year. So you can follow the journey on Instagram at 10,000 Buddhas. And it's one four zeros Buddha, so it's numeric 10,000. And yeah, that's a great place to follow the journey. And if you have a wall somewhere, send me a message. Maybe I'll be passing through with my stencil.

That'd be so fun to have Pivot Podcast listeners have. Oh, there's a wall near me. Come.

Yeah.

Amanda, thank you again and I hope you have a wonderful class that you're about to go teach. Thank you for being here with us.

Thanks so much for having me. I'm delighted to speak with you today.

Thanks so much for listening to this episode of the Pivot Podcast. Make sure you don't miss an episode or my insider tips and templates by signing up for pivotless, a curated twice monthly newsletter where I share the inside scoop on what I'm reading, watching, listening to, and the latest tools I'm geeking out on. Sign up@pivotmethod.com pivotlist get show notes from this episode@pivotmethod.com podcast and connect with me on Twitter ennyblake.

Remember, build first, then your courage will follow. Hasn't it always.