✹ Student led seminar
12th Mar 2021
               
In this term, we have been assigned to held student seminars by ourselves. It can be any topic that relate to our practice and we can do as an individual or in group. My subject in this seminar was ‘The artist’s mind’ My seminar is inspired from The book called ‘ The artist’s way by Julia Cameron’ which is basically about how to discover and recover one’s creative self. It’s divided into 12-week exercises that can help you to regain confident and have better energy in artistic working precess.




I hope this seminar will be an introduction of self-recovery journey for my classmates, if they need one. They can adapt these methods in their own ways - I use positive reinforcement in these exercises which means I’m trying to pull out good feelings and good memories from the past and encourage them to think about the hopeful future in order to build up a good feeling in the present. I hope It can help them to take some rest, escape from reality and have a peaceful mind for a moment.

The seminar started with a 10 minutes meditation, to clear the mind from negative thoughts and feelings. I was guiding the meditation for the first time. From meditating for 4 months and always listening to guided meditation on Youtube - I adapted some script from others and made it my own words.

My favourite guided meditation on Youtube - from Declutter The Mind

Meditation daily allows me to take a break from my thoughts because sometimes I found myself thinking too much especially during the lockdown when I can’t go outside, spending most time in the room does increase the tension and stress. Meditation is another way to relax and take a break from those thoughts.

Benefits of meditation
  • reduce stress , coping with anxiety and fear
  • Increase concentration , helping with productivity
  • Increase the qualities of sleeping ( sleep deeper, quicker and longer )
  • Increase self-awareness, self- esteem ,self-confidence and self-compassion
  • Helping us focus on present moment ( tend to be happier than wandering through past or future)
  • Help us think and remember clearly
  • Provide calmness , inner peace and letting go


How meditation can change your life and mind | Sam Harris, Jon Kabat-Zinn & more | Big Think

After that, I had encouraged my peer to ‘The morning pages’ exercise. The morning pages is basically the daily longhand writing that you have to write 3 pages first thing in the morning after wake up EVERYDAY. It doesn’t have to be a good writing nor something meaningful. It doesn’t have to be correlate from one sentence to the others. The main point is to get your thoughts out as much as possible. And you shouldn’t read them yourself or let any one read them. So that you will be free from the fear of writing something non-sense out.

Occasionally the morning pages are often negative, self-pity, angry or worrying - it’s normal because this thoughts basically inside our mind all days. To jot them down on paper is one way to let it out and forget about it. Because we, as a human, have almost 6000 thoughts come in and out through in our brain every day. Writing is crucial for us to map out and reorganise them for others or even for ourself to understand. Without writing, the thoughts may remain unclear - the worry, the anger and all of negative thoughts might be still inside.

This method is similar to writing a diary - the difference is that it needs to be fixed number of pages which is 3 ( or more if you wish) by fixing the number it will force you to write more than you want to and get deeper into your feeling each day. At first you may start with something vague like ‘I had a dream about this and that’ and may end up with the realisation of how you really feel about that dream. Also, this method needs to be done first thing in the morning right after you get out from bed. As to get the excess feelings from previous night out before you start the day. By this, it will allow you to clear your negative thoughts and start the day with clearer mind.

I have been writing the morning pages since April 2020, of cause I had stopped writing it once or twice because I though it might not be necessary anymore as my creativity started to come back. I had stopped writing it for a month or two - what I found during those time is somehow I get more anxious than when I was writing - the anxiety may be caused by something outside but without the morning pages I couldn’t handle with my inner self as good as when I write. So the morning pages is nonnegotiable, if you wish to use this tool in its full potential you have to write it everyday, 3 pages and first thing in the morning. I do this everyday and my mental health get much better from before.

The bubble of thoughts exercise

And after that I move to Miro board, starting with ‘The bubble of thoughts’ asking my classmate to finish the sentences - the aim is to warm up their imagination and try to get them to think quickly in order to do the next exercise. Some of the sentences in this exercise are from ‘The artist’s way’ and I came up for some in my own theme - childhood memories.




The next exercise is to encourage people to write and think about childhood memories in deeper level. I have lay out 7 question as below - trying to help my peer to recall a good old memories about the child within and at the end I asked them to take some time after this seminar to write their own letter to their future self.

Lastly - the visualisation exercise, I had introduced my peer to use this method when they get anxious. Visualising the place, room or activities does help to release stress.

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From this assignment - I have learned to plan out a seminar, even it’s an online one. Script, slides and tool such Miro board need to be plan in order to have a smooth session. I am so pleased to hear that my classmate feel so relax and love the meditation. Also, writing the letter to young self did a great impact for some of them too. I hope, in the future, I can give a talk/seminar like this to other people again. As I found it really helpful for my creativity and it’s such a privilege for me to know and master this skill by my own. I think the most important think for every artist is to learn how to exercise with their mental health and we tend to have more sensitive emotion than others. After knowing these method - I have changed a lot, in a good way. I hope it can help others to practice the way of working happily like I do, too.