Mindfulness

Welcome to the Ezkenazi Museum and thank you for engaging with this guided, art-inspired mindfulness meditation. When we are mindful, we bring our full attention to the present moment and allow any sensation, thought, or feeling to arise naturally and without any sense of judgment or expectation.

Before beginning the meditation, take a few, deep breaths deep into your belly, making the exhalations slightly longer than the inhalations. Now, imagine dropping slowly into your body from above your head, allowing gravity to relax your arms and torso, along with your hips, legs, and feet if you are sitting down. Let’s begin...

Being in nature engages our senses and can extend our sense of space. For this painting, we will mindfully engage our imagination through three senses, smell, touch, and sound, allowing the painting to provoke associations based on what we might experience if we were inside rather than outside the painting, as participant rather than observer.

First, bring your attention to the lower right corner of the painting, transporting yourself to this spot, close enough that you can smell and feel the stream. Pause for the moment and allow your mind to conjure up what it might smell like to be above the water and near the shrubs and trees. What do you smell? How do these smells affect your mood or feelings? Do they remind you of other experiences in nature? What does your skin feel like, touched by the wet breeze and cool temperatures of forest stream? 

Now extend an imaginary hand through the grass and into the water. Notice the sensation of the soft grass transitioning into the water. What is the temperature of the water? How fast is the water moving and how deep is your hand? Imagine that you can feel the bottom of the stream, adorned with mud and smooth, small rocks. Now, see if you can find this similar feeling of movement inside your own body, perhaps in the feeling of blood circulating through your limbs, or breath entering and leaving your body.

Finally, lean a little deeper into the experience of things rushing by, such as the stream in the picture, while other things stand relatively still, like the trees. What does this idea evoke for you? Perhaps there are aspects of your life that are rushing by quickly, while others move slowly. Can you be present with these experiences, noticing the juxtaposition of movement and stillness in your body and surroundings...in your life?

Welcome to the Ezkenazi Museum and thank you for engaging with this guided, art-inspired mindfulness meditation. When we are mindful, we bring our full attention to the present moment and allow any sensation, thought, or feeling to arise naturally and without any sense of judgment or expectation. 

Before beginning the meditation, take a few, deep breaths deep into your belly, making the exhalations slightly longer than the inhalations. Now, imagine dropping slowly into your body from above your head, allowing gravity to relax your arms and torso, along with your hips, legs, and feet if you are sitting down. Let’s begin...

What might it be like to be stand within the buzzing and vibrant waterfront depicted in this painting?

In your mind’s eye, place yourself in the center of the landscape. Look slowly to your left and then your right, absorbing the visual impressions of people, buildings, and movement arising within your imagination. What does the light look like? Is it bright and piercing, or soft and distant, as you might expect during a crisp and quiet early fall evening? What do you see? Pause and allow any impressions to arise, noticing them with curiosity.

Maybe the people in your visual imagination appear like the realist and abstract forms in the painting, or as something in between a real-life image and a work of art. Pause and allow yourself to notice these impressions.

Now, notice how this visual energy resonates with feelings inside your body. Bring awareness to the beating of your heart. Is it faster or slower than normal? How about your breathing? Are you taking in less air, more air, and where is the air landing – in your chest, back, belly… just notice.

If possible, bring awareness to any sounds or music that might emerge in your imagination as you attend to this painting. What do you hear? Is the music fast, slow, nostalgic, romantic … perhaps they are just the sounds you might expect around a busy water front… voices, footsteps, boats...

Any impression you get is fine, the point is not to get the right sound, image, or feeling, but to notice the many ways in which your mind might engage with a piece of art. There is nothing that needs to be understood or evaluated at this moment, simply allow yourself to engage with the work in its natural richness, and in its ability to evoke impressions beyond what appears on the canvas. 

Now, as you begin to move away from here and to another work in the museum, see if you can bring this sense of curiosity and awareness with you, engaging fully with your sense and imagination…

Welcome to the Ezkenazi Museum and thank you for engaging with this guided, art-inspired mindfulness meditation. When we are mindful, we bring our full attention to the present moment and allow any sensation, thought, or feeling to arise naturally and without any sense of judgment or expectation.

Before beginning the meditation, take a few, deep breaths deep into your belly, making the exhalations slightly longer than the inhalations. Now, imagine dropping slowly into your body from above your head, allowing gravity to relax your arms and torso, along with your hips, legs, and feet if you are sitting down. Let’s begin...

Ceremonial vessels like the one before you date to the Shang Dynasty of Northern China, around 1200 BCE. These vessels were used for ceremonial feasts intended to pay homage ancestral spirits.

Place yourself in the middle of an ancient ritual space, surrounded by those making offerings to the gods and ancestors. Were the participants wearing robes made of colorful silk?  If so, as you sit near the vessel, imagine feeling the weight of robes and smoothness of silk on your skin. In whatever way feels comfortable to you, imagine the state of reverence these rituals may have evoked. Imagine the murmur of voices or the smell of the food offerings.

Now, imagine what this incense might have smelled like. Many materials were used to make incense during this time but feel free to bring to mind your favorite type of incense. What thoughts, feelings, and sensations arise for you when imagining the smell of incense?

Returning to the vessel, imagine running your fingers over the symbols cast into the outer body of the vessel. Imagine the many days, hours, or perhaps years it took to extract the material needed to create these vessels and the amount of work it took to cast them. What might it feel like to cast these symbols into existence? Imagine the reverence and attention of the artisans who created them.

Now, imagine the anticipation of wondering how the gods and ancestors might respond to these offerings. Would they appreciate the work, effort, and reverence put into creating these vessels, and reward you with a good harvest, or, might their wrath be unappeased? What might it feel like, to experience this kind of anticipation?

Welcome to the Eskenazi Museum and thank you for engaging with this guided, art-inspired mindfulness meditation. When we are mindful, we bring our full attention to the present moment and allow any sensation, thought, or feeling to arise naturally and without any sense of judgment or expectation.

Before beginning the meditation, take a few, deep breaths deep into your belly, making the exhalations slightly longer than the inhalations. Now, imagine dropping slowly into your body from above your head, allowing gravity to relax your arms and torso, along with your hips, legs, and feet if you are sitting down. Let’s begin...

Despite our many differences as human beings, all of us will at some time or another experience the loss of someone we love. Before you are Greek funerary markers. While the markers memorialize specific people, the carvings on these markers are not portraits. Rather, they symbolize the roles these people had throughout their lives.  

As you behold these objects, take some time to sense into the feeling of loss. Loss can be difficult to process and experience, so please give yourself permission to stop at any time during this meditation if your emotions become overwhelming.  

First, let’s consider loss as a collective human experience. The carvings here depict the loss of people from a different time and place, but we have all experienced loss. If you are comfortable doing so, imagine a large gathering of people from across time, gathering together to remember those that they have left behind. While holding this image in your mind, notice your breathing. Is it deep or shallow … rapid or slow? Notice the feelings in your jaw, belly, or chest … what are these like? There is no need to label the feelings with words, just experience them as is.

Now, turn your attention to the funerary markers. Without fixating on any specific marker, imagine being there with the family of the person memorialized. Do you feel a sense of kinship, or perhaps the desire to comfort them? Whatever arises for you is fine, just allow yourself to connect with your body as you experience this, knowing that loss can often be much more about a feeling than a word.

Now, allow your attention to drift naturally to any one of the four markers. If possible, do this without too much effort. Sometimes, objects choose us rather than the other way around. As you fixate on a marker, notice what sensations arise for you. Do you feel cold, heavy, tight, numb? Just notice. Now, attend to your emotions. Are you aware of a specific feeling?  Perhaps it is a sense of sadness, or fondness, or calm …. Rather than worrying about the appropriate way to feel, allow yourself just to feel.

Finally, as we conclude this meditation, bring awareness to the images that appear in your mind. Perhaps they are of a family member or pet, of someone ill or old, or whatever else may arise. To the degree that you are comfortable, allow yourself to sit with this great mystery of death as part of our collective human experience, noticing your breath as it enters, fills, and exits your body...

Welcome to the Eskenazi Museum and thank you for engaging with this guided, art-inspired mindfulness meditation. When we are mindful, we bring our full attention to the present moment and allow any sensation, thought, or feeling to arise naturally and without any sense of judgment or expectation.

Before beginning the meditation, take a few, deep breaths deep into your belly, making the exhalations slightly longer than the inhalations. Now, imagine dropping slowly into your body from above your head, allowing gravity to relax your arms and torso, along with your hips, legs, and feet if you are sitting down. Let’s begin...

For this object, we would like to bring the experience of weight into your attention. For a few moments, connect to the sensation of your body being grounded by gravity. Whether standing or sitting, we can sense gravity as it pulls us toward the ground and into the earth.

In your mind’s eye, imagine the person or people who created this mask.  What do the materials feel like on your hands and fingers? Are thematerials cold, hot, wet, dry... Allow your mind to explore these feelings and textures, sensing them within your body rather than as pictures in your mind. It might even help to move your fingers and hands as though you were putting these materials together, getting closer to the embodied experience.Where are you? What are the sounds, smells,and sights that surround you, setting up the backdrop of your work... Continue connecting to the feeling of weight and movement in your arms and fingers, slowly molding the mask into existence...

Now, imagine putting on this mask. All the weight transferred to your head, shoulders, and neck. What might this feel like? Who or what might this mask be hiding or protecting you from? Perhaps we are hoping to project a sense of strengthandpower, or of a deep and hidden part of our personality.

Still, the heaviness of both physical and psychological masks can begin to weigh us down unnecessarily. What then, might it feel like to remove the mask? What kind of feelings does this lightness evoke when compared to the heaviness of wearing a mask, physically, psychologically, or otherwise...

As you walk to the next exhibit, see if you can maintain awareness on the pull of gravity, and on the weight and texture of objects as they might feel if you were touching, carrying, or in this case, wearing them.