Monster Baby Mindfulness
Module 1: A Playful Path to Connected Presence and Response-Ability
How can you connect easily and naturally?
What’s the best response in any circumstance?
How do you find and feed your zest for living?
Thursdays, 7pm – 9pm
Studio 204, 3435 Cesar Chavez St, San Francisco, CA
6 Classes Oct 20th — Dec 8th 2016 (skips Nov 3rd and 24th)
$195
Why Monster Baby mindfulness?
Mindfulness—paying attention to the present moment with curiosity and kindness—helps you befriend the “monster baby,” that oft-hidden and sometimes scary part of all of us that can lead to discovery, delight, and a life well-lived. This course will help you forge new neural pathways and “play attention” in ways you never thought possible.
In just 6 weeks, you’ll learn how to:
- change your relationship to “failure”
- train the “puppy mind” with patient, kind, and firm repetition
- develop an “ANIMA Attitude” of kindness and curiosity toward every experience
- employ Ninja detective skills for greater body awareness
- turn off autopilot and turn on a fuller range of experience and expression
- transform your thoughts and feelings—from hardened facts to ever-changing events
- unhitch from self-sabotaging “snowball stories”
- choose from a range of nuanced responses rather than relying on hair-trigger reactions
This course incorporates insights and practices from the secular Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) model first developed by Jon Kabat-Zinn at the UMASS Medical School, the .b Foundations course run by the Mindfulness in Schools Project, and decades of improvisational theatre training.
Formal practices strengthen the awareness “muscle,” helping us notice how experience changes in the mind, body, and emotions moment to moment.
Informal practice brings that awareness to daily life: when we’re eating, driving, dating, arguing, working—or improvising.
Shared inquiry uses small and large group discussions to draw experienced-based wisdom from each participant in service to the group.
Playful exercises give us the chance to experience firsthand the skills we’re exploring—and to laugh while doing it.
We will refer to improv principles and techniques and use some improv exercises, but all are welcome regardless of improv experience. Students are expected to commit to daily practice at home for the duration of the course.
Who is Monster Baby?
Ted DesMaisons has been synthesizing innovative approaches to teaching and learning for over 25 years. A graduate of Stanford Business and Harvard Divinity Schools, he serves as US Coordinator and Lead Teacher Trainer for the Mindfulness in Schools Project and is a UMASS-trained Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) instructor. Ted studied improvisation with Patricia Ryan Madson, BATS Improv, and the Loose Moose Theatre, and has performed with the Stanford Improvisors; Walking the Dog Theater company of Hudson, NY; and the undefeated three-time BATS Cave Match champion group, Teddy Likey. He writes regularly about improv, contemplation and positive reinforcement on his blog at AnimaLearning.com/blog
One of the most recognizable and most beloved teachers of improvisation in the world, Lisa Rowland has performed, coached, and conducted corporate trainings with San Francisco’s BATS mainstage company for more than eight years. Students from Palo Alto and the Presidio to Amsterdam and Arabia rave about the way she combines power and generosity in the service of their learning. A graduate of and current faculty member at Stanford University and an uncannily astute observer of what’s needed next, Lisa was named the 2012 San Francisco Actor of the Year.
Together, Ted and Lisa produce the Monster Baby podcast that spawned this course.
To register, click on the above blue link or click the following link http://monsterbabymindfuloct2016.peatix.com.
