We recently connected with Amelia Zontini and have shared our conversation below.
Amelia, so excited to have you with us today. So much we can chat about, but one of the questions we are most interested in is how you have managed to keep your creativity alive.
Through the art of creative choice, I set a daily intention to love who I am and to live in my highest and best self expression. I feel grateful I know now that the brain is a data collector through which all life experience flows. It’s designed to protect and serve us and predict what we may need, and our attitude toward the content we collect creates our emotional state. What we think, decide, and do can determine the outcome of what’s happening in our lives. As Albert Einstein said, “We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.” I like to use a strategy that stems from agape love, and I visualize myself as healthy, present and whole.
From the moment I wake up and my eyes flutter open, I practice gratitude. I say ‘thank you’ for each new day that I am still alive because it’s completely out of my control. I don’t wake up and unplug my charging cord from a wall outlet. My life is powered by a Higher Source, and my main purpose in this life is to serve the energy of unconditional love. Now, this may sound other-worldly and a bit deep, and yet I invite the readers to ponder on this for a moment.
What if your life is a co-creation with the God of the Universe? What if your body is divine and is fueled and healed through your mind’s capacity to connect with all that’s possible? What if we really are always in flux in creation, and at any moment something can be created and uncreated through our conscious choice? What if we really can create a better world when we each take on individualized responsibility of Self through compassionate care and love? I wonder what we each can create in our own realities when we learn to pause, acknowledge our breath and body as sacred, listen to understand, and believe that we are built for resolution.
I feel free now in my life, and that wasn’t always the case. I didn’t understand that what I think, what I say and what I do creates my life experience. I didn’t understand that everything is energy. I didn’t know about Universal Laws by which we can master our lives in prosperity. This has nothing to do with controlling those around me, so I can feel comfortable. This has everything to do with surrendering myself to universal truth and co-creating through the fruits of the Spirit; love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. I now know that I am loved past my understanding, I am forgiveness, and I am always connected to light and love. I believe all life has purpose and is not a mistake.
If you’re alive, you’re creating. Get curious whenever fear, doubt and ego creep in and simply use it as a signal that you are out of alignment with the love that created you. I use this awareness to pause and reset. I release self-judgment, honor my human side, and use grounding techniques to recenter my attention to what energy will serve my highest and best like peace, love, and gratitude.
What if your life can shift from a limited right or wrong perspective and evolve into an ‘as within, so without’ practice? Who we are on the inside becomes reflected to us in the world around us. When we fill each moment with a compassionate, patient and loving view of ourselves, we can set ourselves free from judgment. In choice, we get to create a life with more authentic moments of joy, freedom, and flow. We can learn strategies that build better self-awareness and allow us to stay in our lane, reroute, love ourselves and appreciate others. We can learn to let go and let be because we have activated the special sauce of the God within us, and we get to pivot and create multiple avenues of success. In choice, we can create more of what we want in life.
Let’s take a small detour – maybe you can share a bit about yourself before we dive back into some of the other questions we had for you?
As a 20-year veteran in the motion pictures industry, I have had the privilege of working with Academy and Emmy Award-winning designers, directors and artists. As a theatre kid from Virginia Beach, VA, I spent most of my childhood playing and pretending in nature. I feel grateful that my current costuming career challenges me to create something wearable from a seed of the imagination. It all begins with an idea, a character, a story and through a complex process of collaboration, I help to create a look (or multiple looks) that can be lived in, worked in and worn on the human body. Sometimes a director will come to me with only adjectives to describe the character, sometimes I get a storyboard, sometimes I’m handed a sketched image, and sometimes I’m given a script with descriptive words that help create the context in which the character lives.
As a designer, I consider various elements that can influence a character’s costume like where do they live, what time of year is it, what time period does the story take place, what does the character do in the story and where, with whom, what, why, when is it occuring? I must also consider what other elements are playing around the character like the set, environment, lighting design, and the technical aspects for the camera. I use the tool of questioning everything to get to the root of the creation. It’s a true team effort, and yet I like to say that my biggest influencer in making movie magic is blind faith. I must have faith that whatever happens (even in the event a storm shuts down production), it’s happening for a reason, I have the skills to pivot, and it’s okay- things are already working out.
During 2020, my industry shut down. All work was at a standstill, and the only way I felt comfortable in this change was to get back to my theatre roots and learn to breathe again. I relearned calming strategies to deal with the overwhelm of the unknown. It seems everything I needed to know about neutral and centered awareness, I learned in Theater 101. As a mom with a four year old at the time, I practiced with my child through the art of imagination, movement and song. I dove down the rabbit hole of compassionate teaching and gentle parenting, and I quickly discovered that I had a lot more to learn. Have you ever not been able to react to someone when they’re feeling frustrated? I discovered that when my child was feeling frustrated, I felt it, too. Since I had developed a habit of avoiding emotions I didn’t like, my initial reaction was to try to avoid the situation altogether. Not ideal. As I learned through compassionate care, avoidance only allows the feeling to build and then we most likely implode on someone or something we care about. So, 2020 was awakening for me, and I grew through trial and error alongside my beautiful miracle of a child. My desire to feel more connected to God and nature grew as well, and I followed my intuition to get to know myself in a way I’d never taken the time to before. I mean, what better time than during a global shutdown, being unemployed and isolated in my own home, right?
I became a disruptor for change – positive growth mindset, paradigm shifting change. I began to evolve into the person that I was always meant to be and identify with myself in kindness, patience and forgiveness. I was slowly being morphed into someone who could love others in the same ways I was learning I could love myself. During this change, much in my life fell apart with close, intimate relationships, career structures and with old patterns that kept me stuck in fear, doubt and worry. I was being reassembled by the hand of the Holy Spirit- drawing in more of what God wanted for me in my life experience and showing me ways to let go of what no longer served me. I invited in the hard work, and the work is never done. To quote Billy Graham, “Life is hard, but God is good…”
At some point in this process, the Teacher and Mental Health advocate was ignited in me. I became a certified trainer through the I.A.T.S.E. Training Trust Fund and created a virtual training course called Set Costumes 101: Basic Training for Motion Pictures. Also through my union, I became certified in Mental Health First Aid with the National Council for Mental Wellbeing, and co-created (with my higher self) a program called Body, Breathe, Awareness.
I currently work with a non-profit called Arts for Learning in Virginia, collaborating with self-learners of all ages through arts and education. With the support of A4LVA and Young Audiences, I was accepted in 2022 into R.A.I.S.E. (Responsive Arts in School Education); “a five-year, multi-state project designed to address the current, urgent needs of young learners through forging a new model of development and partnership for teaching artists and school support teams, who work together on in-depth, customized, trauma-informed and culturally responsive-sustaining arts in education residencies. The project is funded by the U.S. Department of Education” (https://www.youngaudiences.org/raise).
I proudly advocate for mental health awareness, creative arts in education, and raising the vibration of humanity through compassionate care and self-love. For more details about Body, Breathe, Awareness, readers can go to my official website at www.ameliazontini.com or to find out more about the programs I can facilitate, please email me directly at support@ameliazontini.com. I believe in your wellbeing.
If you had to pick three qualities that are most important to develop, which three would you say matter most?
Looking back I see that throughout it all, exercising unconditional, agape love has become the root source of my success. I understand that people can’t always show or give their love freely because we constantly fall into fear, doubt and ego. It’s our human design to protect ourselves from harm. However, when we can look past the human and see the soul, we just might be able to connect through our hearts and feel appreciation for our unique self expression. According to studies at HeartMath Institute, “The heart’s magnetic field, which is the strongest rhythmic field produced by the human body, not only envelops every cell of the body, but also extends out in all directions into the space around us. [The heart] is an important carrier of information.” I believe that when we can return to a feeling of love through the heart space, we become active participants in our best life.
There is power in the pause. During that moment of contrast when our mind thinks one thing, our body wants to feel a different way and our gut is driving our instinct, we cannot act as a house united within ourselves. Pain can become a physical tell that we are simply out of alignment with love, and it’s in our divine design to heal and feel whole. Remember when you were a kid and you scraped your knee? Over time it healed itself. If you picked the scab, it took longer, and yet it still healed. We have the capacity to forgive ourselves, too, even when we continue to pick the scab on a negative thought. When limiting beliefs come to the surface, we can learn to honor them as signs we are ready to heal, give them love and attention, forgive them and set them free. Our cells are programmed for health and vitality. When we work with healing energy, we can clear the mental, physical and emotional clutter and experience more strength and wellbeing.
A garden doesn’t grow overnight. When we plant a seed on what we want to grow in our lifetime, we must nurture it, believe it will burst through the soil when it’s ready, and continue to feed it with what it needs to flourish. In the Bible, Matthew 17:20-21 reads, “For truly I tell you, if you have faith the size of a mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move; and nothing will be impossible for you.” Even in the wintertime when plants wilt and disappear into the soil, they’re not necessarily dead. They may just be reestablishing their roots to come back even stronger and brighter in the Spring! This can serve as a great metaphor for you and me, so that we can remember the seasons of life. Be a magnet for your own positive growth. Abundance is yours to have, live and experience.
Okay, so before we go we always love to ask if you are looking for folks to partner or collaborate with?
Calling all heroes! I am my own authentic driver of change. I exercise my free will to choose whatever story I choose to play out. I am allowed to feel true, unlimited admiration for my courage, my own noble qualities, and my outstanding achievements! My hero arises from a conscious shift in deliberate action. As I remain breathing, with each new breath~ I receive a fresh, new start! I am a hero who mirrors life as a miraculous cosmic source of wonder and awe. I love play and pretend, and I have built a career by using my pure imagination. My life story is nothing short of thousands of script and cast changes, rejections, failed attempts, crazy character choices, dress rehearsals, special effects, props, locations, background players, investors, producers, directors, creators, coaches and a complete blind faith in a higher calling. “When are you going to get a real job?” – they used to ask me.
I ask you – Do you feel you accredit your current success in life to exceeding others expectations, caring too much, flying under the radar to create illusions of grandeur, pleasing your company with outstanding work and life achievements, embodying a ‘can do’ attitude even when you feel you need a break from it all? None of this is a bad thing! It’s perfectly reasonable and logical. And yet, may I ask, “What does this have to do with your soul’s agenda?” What does your heart desire? You are always connected, Curious Creator and Passionate Daydreamer. You, my dear one, are a HERO. You are a one-of-a-kind, real deal, genuine article of creative expression and life miracle. You may wear your heroism like a cloak of honor~ showing up in life just as you are~ in grace and gifts.
Allow me to spark your imagination and breathe I’m possible joy, freedom and abundance into your life. Go to https://www.ameliazontini.com/take-action for a free gift and to sign up to receive my favorite techniques to release icky, sticky, and stuck patterns and reconnect to your body wisdom for success.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.ameliazontini.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/body.breathe.awareness/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/bodybreatheawareness/
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/amelia-zontini-0b24721
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCHyJUzmjIIAmjHAxM_NYoeg
- Other: https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0957837/
Image Credits
Kent Eanes Photography, Wish You Well, LLC
