Globally empowering people through Art and Mindfulness
At an age when youngsters can’t look beyond their next adventure, young Edi Matsumoto travelled from her native Japan to volunteer at the Mother Theresa’s Home for Dying Destitute in Kolkata, India. Still in her 20’s, she decided that she wanted to work in health care and moved to the U.S. to become a nurse practitioner/ health and wellness coach.
After 30 years of working in clinics and hospitals across the United States, Edi retired from her hospital to start a new creative life in art as well as coaching. “I started as a health coach in my hospital. After taking a spiritual course in 2015, I became one of its facilitators. At about the same time, I went back to school to study art and earned a Master’s degree in Visual Art. Finding that many fellow healthcare professionals were burned out and stressed, I explored various ways to reduce stress and maximize mental, emotional and spiritual wellbeing. I launched a coaching business to help burned-out professionals reevaluate their lives and shift their paradigm toward a more fulfilled life and career. I often used art to help people get unstuck and express themselves,” she shares.
Edi’s maternal great-grandfather was a traditional Japanese artist who painted birds, flowers and snow-capped mountains using an ink brush technique. Thus her interest in art was cultivated at a young age, something that reaped rewards in adult life. “While I worked for hospitals and clinics, I often felt that I was in a rat race. I worked hard and was productive. As a result, I could retire and devote my time to my art and coaching business,” she adds.
Edi is the creator of the Satori Method based on 30 years of healthcare, coaching and spiritual experience. Satori is a word for awakening or enlightenment in Japanese. Unlike the traditional spiritual methods in which one devotes decades to one discipline, she combines positive psychology, meditation, the law of attraction, theory, practicum, and modern technology, all in one program, to meet individual needs.
In addition to art and coaching, Edi also launched a third business recently – empowering wearable art. Speaking about her endeavors, she tells us, “I enjoy working with spiritual and artistic people who want to improve their professional and personal lives. I use positive psychology, meditation, breathing, art, and other modalities to support them. My paintings and wearable art are created with empowerment in mind by using symbols, representation, and healing colors. I don’t fit in one category because I love doing all of these and this is who I am.”
Many of us learn to say and do the right thing to get others’ approval. We also learn to suppress our feelings and desires and not stand out. But Edi isn’t one of them. She learned how to maintain peace and happiness early in life: “I am learning to express myself in my art, and I want to help others to find a way to express their feelings and desires using their creativity through art, work, career or language.”
Edi is especially passionate about supporting women to find the freedom to express and pursue their dreams. “I want to share what I have learned from my mentors (from my third-grade teacher, local business coaches, and Tony Robbins to Mother Theresa) – each of us can learn to shift our mindset to be the best version of ourselves and create the best life possible. I want to pass on the wisdom I have acquired in a fun and beautiful way by using my coaching and art skills. I want to continue offering empowering art, wearable art, group and private coaching tools. My next goal is to start a Goddess Retreat that combines mindset shift, art making, and goddess photo sessions, as well as retreats for people anywhere who feel stuck and lost in their lives,” she says.
A holistic healer, Edi is also board certified in diabetes patient management and has become a go-to person for diabetes care in her area. She has published many articles in medical journals and given lectures at universities and hospitals in the U.S. and Japan. As an artist, her work has been shown in museums, galleries and online galleries nationally and internationally and in prestigious art magazines such as Fine Art Connoisseur and American Art Collector. Some of her work has been appraised at $10,000 – $35,000, making Edi Matsumoto a very successful art-coach for her times.
