Playful Mindfulness 2 (Online version)
The Joy of Expanding Awareness
How can you deepen and expand your mindfulness and improv practices?
How can you further your connected presence (with yourself and the world)?
How do you continue to feed your zest for living?
How does all this fit in with others in your life?
Thursdays, 12:00 pm – 2:15 pm Pacific
Online through Zoom
6 Classes June 18th – July 23rd
$347 (Payment plans and scholarship available)
Combining mindfulness–paying attention to the present moment with curiosity and kindness–with the practices of improvisational theatre helps us meet each of life’s moments with freedom, ease, spontaneity, and confidence. We contribute more joyfully and respond more artfully. Life gets better.
Why Playful Mindfulness 2?
In Playful Mindfulness 1, you learned to play attention with traditional, evidence-based mindfulness exercises and with games and activities drawn from the world of improvisational theatre. Previous students got so much from the experience–and had so much fun–that they asked for more!
Responding to that request, this course extends and deepens mindfulness practice into arenas of greater complexity and challenge.
In these 6 weeks, you’ll learn:
- how the “meta” process of witnessing thoughts and feelings can tame dragons that otherwise spin you into overwhelm and anxiety
- the freedom and creativity in skillfully sharing control with others–and with life!
- the game-changing and life-changing “universal solvent” of connected presence
- powerful techniques for exploring difficult emotions with calm and self-compassion
- the power of positivity and looking for the good
This course again 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.
Are there prerequisites?
This class builds on lessons from Playful Mindfulness (through Stanford Continuing Studies or independently through ANIMA Learning) and makes natural sense for those students. That said, other folks have joined us anew for this course and stepped right into the flow of things. It will help to have had experience with developing and maintaining a mindfulness practice. Contact the instructor with if you have any questions.
Who will guide us?
Ted DesMaisons has been synthesizing innovative approaches to teaching and learning for over 30 years. A graduate of Stanford Business and Harvard Divinity Schools, he is a UMASS-trained Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) instructor and serves as the US Partner for the UK-based Mindfulness in Schools Project. He has worked extensively with renowned acting and voice coach Patsy Rodenburg through the Michael Howard Studios in New York City and has studied improvisation with Patricia Ryan Madson, BATS Improv of San Francisco, and the Loose Moose Theatre of Calgary, Alberta. Ted also co-hosts the Monster Baby Podcast (“A Curious Romp through the Worlds of Mindfulness and Improvisation”) and lives in Daly City, CA with his two crazy and delightful Ocicats, Luna and Marley. His first book, Playful Mindfulness: a joyful journey to everyday confidence, calm, and connection came out in March of 2019.
To register, click on the above blue button or click this link.
