Mindfulness

An article in the NYT describes mindfulness mediation as an increasingly compelling anti-stress therapy. Here is an hour lecture on mindfulness as therapeutic strategy by Jon Kabat-Zinn from U Mass Medical. It's somewhat vague on practice, but successful at opening a line of thinking.

Interesting also because I use some of the same language of consciousness and awareness in teaching art - which is not something I've read at all really, but evolved out of the need to explain what makes some artworks interesting, and why people have such difficulty learning to draw. What they are really learning to do, is see, and to become conscious of what they are actually seeing.

The real trick is that this too applies to the artwork in the act of being created. "Good" artworks tend to be packed with the artist's awareness of everything of which they are composed.