Explore over 70 conversations on Creative Health in a world designed to distract.
Through intimate dialogues with artists, researchers, and change makers, Modern Creativity invites you to reconnect with your creativity and co-create a more conscious society. Together, we explore themes like neuroaesthetics, human flourishing, and creative health — bridging art, science, and mindfulness.
Hosted by Kathy Känzig, facilitator, consultant and coach. Her work connects Berlin, Zurich, and San Francisco. Episodes available in German and English.
072 | Your Brain on Art: Creative Health & Neuroaesthetics with Susan Magsamen & Ivy Ross (EN)
In this episode, I sit down with Susan Magsamen (https://www.linkedin.com/in/susan-magsamen-6345918/) and Ivy Ross (https://www.linkedin.com/in/rossivy/), co-authors of the New York Times bestseller Your Brain on Art (https://www.yourbrainonart.com/).
This conversation has been a long time coming, and honestly, it feels like a reward for a journey that started back in 2022 when I first began having these conversations out loud. What You'll Learn in This Episode:
Why Neuroaesthetics is best understood as "Creative Health" — a pillar of wellbeing just like exercise, nutrition, and sleep, not a luxury or a talent reserved for a few.
Why we are feeling beings who learned to think, rather than thinking beings who learned to feel
How Susan and Ivy's collaborative process mirrors weaving — bringing together science and design
Why humans are physiologically wired to be both makers and receivers of art
How our thoughts act like magnetic particles within one shared field — and what that means for the world we're collectively creating.
About the Guests
Susan Magsamen (https://www.linkedin.com/in/susan-magsamen-6345918/) is the founder and executive director of the International Arts + Mind Lab (https://www.artsandmindlab.org/people/susan-magsamen/) at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, where she studies how our brains and bodies transform when we engage with the arts. She is also the creator of the Impact Thinking model and co-director of the NeuroArts Blueprint project with the Aspen Institute.
Ivy Ross (https://www.linkedin.com/in/rossivy/) is the Vice President of Design for Hardware at Google, leading the design language behind Google's hardware products. Before her work in tech, she built a career as an acclaimed jewelry designer, with pieces held in the permanent collections of museums including the Smithsonian and the Victoria and Albert Museum.
Together, Susan and Ivy wrote Your Brain on Art: How the Arts Transform Us (https://www.yourbrainonart.com/), making the case, backed by real science, for why the arts aren't a luxury, but a biological necessity.
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Join us for our next 3-hour Reflection & Direction Workshop on Resistance (https://luma.com/339gzd4v) — August 29th in Berlin. A guided space to pause, reflect, and find your next direction. Spots are limited.
Website (https://www.modern-creativity.com/)
Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/modern__creativity)
LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/in/kathy-kaenzig/)
Substack (https://mocr.substack.com/)
Thank you for being here. Stay open, stay kind, and keep creating from the heart.
17 May 2026
071 | Healing & Arts: Creativity as a Structural Principle of Life with Lukas Feireiss (EN)
In this episode I sit down with Lukas Feireiss (https://www.studiolukasfeireiss.com/), a true "Wundertüte" filled with exciting stories and perspectives. We explore the beautiful intersection of healing and the arts. Growing up with a medical doctor father and a gallerist mother, Lukas experienced these two worlds not as separate, but as seamlessly co-present. Today, he dedicates his work to building bridges between medicine and art, recognizing them as complementary ways to understand and engage with the world.
We dive into his work with the Charité on the "Healing Arts" (https://www.charite.de/service/veranstaltung/veranstaltung/details/congress_the_healing_arts_forging_alliances_of_arts_medicine)dialogue series and measurable health benefits of both active and passive engagement with the arts. We also discuss navigating vulnerability in a society that often disciplines male emotion, and how practices as seemingly opposite as Reiki and martial arts both ultimately teach us the profound power of presence and soft power.
What You’ll Learn in This Episode:
Why creativity can be seen simply as a structural principle of life , rooted in growth and evolution.
How to uncover your own "creative DNA" and recognize your inherent structural forces.
Why you don't need to intellectually "understand" art ; it is primarily about resonance and presence.
The power of giving yourself a "date with art" by sitting with a painting and observing your physical sensations.
How healing is not about returning to a previous status quo , but about evolving and growing after a disruption.
About the Guest Lukas Feireiss (https://www.studiolukasfeireiss.com/) works as a curator, coach, and bridge-builder between transdisciplinary arts and medicine. Through his coaching practice, Cura vision (https://cura.vision/), he acts as a co-navigator to help people reveal their inherent creative strengths and design their external expressions. Find him on Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/lukasfeireiss/).
Follow for more creativity
If this resonated with you, follow Modern Creativity and leave a short review — it truly helps me keep sharing content.
Website (https://www.modern-creativity.com/)
Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/modern__creativity)
Substack (https://mocr.substack.com/)
My personal website (http://kathykaenzig.com)
Thank you for being here. Stay open, stay kind, and keep creating from the heart.
17 Mar 2026
070 | Art & Mindfulness: Embodied Art – Live at Fotografiska Berlin
In this special episode, I share a live session recorded at the Art & Mindfulness Night Academy at Fotografiska Berlin (https://berlin.fotografiska.com/de) from the 26th of February 2026.
In this talk, I guide the audience through an embodied art practice exploring how artworks can become a training ground for meaning-making, presence, and inner dialogue.
Rather than analyzing art intellectually, the practice invites us to slow down and notice what happens within us when we open up to an artwork. Through three layers — feeling, body, and message — we explore how perception, sensation, and reflection interact.
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Follow for more creativity
If this resonated with you, follow Modern Creativity and leave a short review — it truly helps me keep sharing content.
Website (https://www.modern-creativity.com/)
Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/modern__creativity)
Substack (https://mocr.substack.com/)
My personal website (http://kathykaenzig.com)
Thank you for being here. Stay open, stay kind, and keep creating from the heart.
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