Meditation Incubator: Creative Mind, Business Mind

“Mindfulness begins with ourselves. Learning how to generate a feeling of joy, learning how to generate a feeling of happiness, learning how to handle a painful feeling or emotion, listening to the suffering to allow understanding and compassion to be born, and suffer less. This is the first step”. (Happy teachers Change the World. 2017. Thich Nhat Hanh, pg. 195)

Love that!

Contemplative practices come in many varieties and can be found in many traditions. They are the way that human beings across cultures and across time have found to concentrate, broaden, and deepen conscious awareness as the gateway to cultivating their full potential.

I invite you to start a personal practice, help yourself to this 10-week program and begin to develop or deepen your attentional meditations. It’s all good, just the way it is. Process, journey, product, attitude everything shifts with an intention.  Questions? email me happy to be of service.

Rhonda

rhonda.schaller@gmail.com

As the Spring 18 session of the meditation incubator comes to a close, we have an opportunity for reflection and presence. I open my heart to myself, I allow my ideas to rise and thoughts to float like clouds in a blue sky, and ponder the joy of silence.  In silence there is a frequency of resonance always vibrating, I can hear it all around me. Though my mind is quiet, my brain is not at rest. I am marinating. Seeds planted to bloom at a later date, though I enjoy the beauty and happiness of the moment. Awareness becoming aware of itself, as the breath breathes me.

Mindfulness is a state of mind, of heart, and presence. Enjoy the audio files, the site will be open all summer.

Warmly, Rhonda

Hoping everyone had a beautiful holiday. I am so looking forward to returning to the incubator. This is to recommend a podcast  I just listened to.  As an episode of his “Under The Skin” series, Russell Brand does a long form interview with Andy Puddicombe, the founder of Headspace. This is the youtube video link:   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A_ASK5JO7AQ  but it is also available on itunes as an audio podcast.

As we get ready to take a break from school and work for the Thanksgiving Holiday, it is a wonderful opportunity for gratitude as meditation. Breathe, thank yourself for making the time to meditate. Mindfulness of breathing, mindful walking, mantra practice, image of light filling your body and your heart, fill your awareness with gratitude. For the breath as it enters your body, give thanks. For the awareness of the breath as it leaves the body, give thanks. No judgement. Allow yourself to be thankful for the spacious awareness that comes from momentary experience of being.  Moment to moment in gratitude. Its beautiful. I thank you too, for being part of this community for sharing your practice with me.

Set your intention for your practice, open your heart to quiet your mind, and let your breath be your guide to your compassionate source of knowing. Remember to let thoughts rise, and let thoughts go, and simply come back to concentration on the breath, until that too simply rises and falls in a rich choiceless awareness…

Check in with yourself as you read this. Smile and breathe. Do smiling breath – smile and breathe in 3 times and let go. And then note what you see, what you feel, what you hear, and observe the mind as you open your heart, to yourself first and foremost in gratitude.

I am so excited for the new semester. Changes made to a few sessions, new meditations and visualizations added, additional readings added as well which are really wonderful. Plus new insights to explore… Look forward to reconnecting to all of you! And, to welcoming our new participants to the Meditation Incubator. Last info session will be held on Tuesday, August 29th at 5:30 pm.

Best,

Rhonda

Announcing the first of our upcoming:

Meditation Incubator Info Sessions: 

Tuesday, August 15, 12–1pm, Online

The Meditation Incubator offers an opportunity to learn meditation, deepen creativity through

visualization and develop tools for personal and professional development. Join us for an online discussion and introduction to the Meditation Incubator, and learn how to apply for the Fall  workshop: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/meditation-incubator-info-session-webinar-815-tickets-36862115580

For more information on the Meditation Incubator check out: https://commons.pratt.edu/meditationincubator/

If you can’t make this date, do not worry, we’ll have plenty more info sessions at the beginning of the semester!

“Meditation completely centers me physically and mentally. Often I start with very shallow breath, and graduate to deep breaths, it always amazes me how calming this is which makes my intentions more pure, and my actions more effective.” – Participant

The Meditation Incubator project at Pratt Institute is an online space and live workshop to learn to meditate and use visualization to deepen presence in creativity, enhance emotional intelligence, and articulate a success action plan that they define.

Survey data of participants in the incubator over 4 semesters showed that 100% of participants feel less stressed, gained a greater clarity of mind, and feel more creative and able to set goals and take action steps due to the practices they learned. 94% reported the practices helped with their studio practice.
The course is designed to help participants establish a meditation practice, provide practical “hands on” experience in the design and management of a personal development plan through the use of creative visualization and mind mapping, as well as an understanding of how to connect their well-being with professional development. The class is invited to meditate and visualize together via the Insight Timer app.

Course participants will:

• Demonstrate an understanding of the theory and practice of contemplative practices and professional development through daily meditations, visualizations and weekly worksheets and assignments.
• Apply a meditative lens to source their creative ideas, life and career plans through simple awareness, journaling and mind mapping.
• Synthesize these concepts and practices to develop a personal practice and professional development plan

Contemplative Practices: Meditation, mindfulness, and visualization takes practice. Setting aside a time for a daily meditation, once or twice a day using the Insight Timer app will be helpful. Allow yourself to start slowly and build towards a longer practice time. Basic mindfulness and meditations from various traditions will be introduced. Creative visualizations will be taught as tools for insight and understanding. Audio files of all the meditations and visualizations are available from this website

This online course is self paced and self directed. Do it at your leisure, track your progress, and share the light.

Welcome!

Rhonda Schaller, Artist, Writer, Instructor, and founder of Create Meditate