I completed a Mindful Self-Compassion 8 week course facilitated by Sarah Jarvis and Myfanwy Bakker. "Mindful Self-Compassion is an 8-week course developed by Drs. Kristin Neff & Christopher Germer, and combines the latest research on self-compassion and mindfulness with ancient heart-based wisdom. Research shows it’s effective in decreasing anxiety, stress, & suffering, and increasing overall wellbeing, satisfaction in personal & work life, and happiness."
"When we suffer, caring for ourselves as we would care for someone we truly love. Self-compassion includes self-kindness, a sense of common humanity, and mindfulness." Kristen Neff cited in Germer & Neff (2016)
Over the 8 weeks I learned and practiced a variety of mindfulness meditation practices. I have been building a daily practice.
I first read about this practice in a chapter on Contemplative Senses in Barbezat & Bush's Contemplative Practices in Higher Education (2014). Joanna Ziegler, one of the founding members of the center for Contemplative Mind in Society and professor of visual arts and and art history at Holy Cross used beholding art with her students. She asked students to visit the same piece of art of their choosing at Worcester Art Museum over several weeks. She asked them to go on the same day of the week at the same time using the same mode of transport to get there. Ziegler directed the students not to research the piece of art throughout this process. She asked them to simply answer the question What do you see? She also asked them to notice what they saw and thought about the art and how this changed over time. For example in the different light of different days. She also asked them to notice their subjective experience of physical and emotional states and what was going on in their lives at the time. Only after they completed this process did they study the theoretical art history of the piece of art. By this time they were already familiar with the piece of art and how they felt about it had not been influenced by the theory. According to Barbezat & Bush (2014), using repetition was an important aspect of Ziegler's pedagogy. By asking the students to do the practice at the same time, looking and refocusing their attention again and again, they came to notice the changes in the art and themselves.
Here is an outline of the Beholding practice outlined by Joel Upton (cited in Barbezat & Bush 2014, p.g. 152)
"1)Identify one painting to "behold with" that is, to "engage the work's human realization according to a unique and shared embodiment, rather than merely or exclusively to observe, analyze or situate it culturally and historically."
2) Gather basic information about the work; when, where and by whom it was painted, it's size and basic composition.
3) Analyze form, line, shape and colour, giving the subject full attention.
4) Investigate the content, or iconography, of what is represented. Students often find many possibilities here.
5) Identify the contradictions that comprise the work- for example, the tensions between horizontal and vertical aspects- as well as the deeper conflicting elements, or "paradoxes of human being" that give rise to its composition.
6) Behold the work and seek out by way of contemplation "intimations of the reconciliation of contradictory reality," alternating focused attention and open awareness ."
This contemplative practice has lingered with me over the course of the program. When I went to Paris last year, I did the beholding practice with Monet's Waterlillies in the Musee L'Orangerie. It was exquisite. This is becoming one of my favourite practices.
Reading Embers: One Ojibway's Meditations by Richard Wagamese
Richard Wagamese is an Ojibway author and storyteller from the Wabaseemoong First Nation in Northwestern Ontario. Most recently he lived in Kamloops, BC. He was 60 years old when he died on March 10th 2017. I read an excerpt from Embers and liked Richard's thoughtful way of writing. I found a copy in the Vancouver Art Gallery store on the same day as doing the beholding exercise of the painting by Sonny Assu. I began to read it on the bus on the way home. Each night I have found it comforting to read a couple of pages before I go to sleep. I wrote the passages that resonated for me in my notebook and in the journal of my portfolio. Richard described how his meditations on stillness, harmony, trust, reverence, gratitude and joy came to him following his daily contemplative practice. Each morning at dawn, he made himself a cup of tea and silently contemplated "the sacred articles" of his ceremonial life "my smudging bowl, my eagle wing fan, my rattle and the four sacred medicines of my people- sage, sweet grass, tobacco and cedar. I put small pinches of each together in the smudging bowl, which I set upon the table. I close my eyes and breathe for a few moments. Then I light the medicines, using a wooden match, and waft the smoke around and over my head and heart and body with the eagle wing fan. When I am finished, I set the fan on the table, too".