HOME     Calendar/Class Descriptions     Events     Our Story & What is WEN     About the Stewards     Directions/Contact

YOGA AS MUSE: HOW IT WORKS & HOW WE PRACTICE

-from Jeff Davis

We wish to create a supportive, non-judgmental environment where people can explore their creative process, faculties, and voice with freedom & soul.

A Little Background

"For at least one or two hours a day, writers need to swim, walk, do yoga--anything to get into their bodies. Writers spend much too much time in their heads." --Tom Robbins, 1987 interview

This YOGA AS MUSE (tm) work begins with a simple, yet profound principle: Yoga can help you access your creative faculties, strengthen your creative discipline, and navigate the tricky mental patterns that come with being an artist of any kind.  Whether you're a professional photographer, a worn-out journalist, a veteran potter or painter, a dedicated journaler, or someone simply wondering what your authentic muse can offer when you pay attention to it, then the YOGA AS MUSE experiences and classes can give your creative life a healthy twist.

The latest research in creativity suggests that most successful artists, writers, and musicians create more richly when certain conditions are present:

    - the subtle body and nerves are restful

    - the mind and body can concentrate for a long while on one process

    - the brain's "neuronal tribes" or parts communicate fluently with one another

    - emotions, memories, and imagination are readily accessible and channeled into the creative task

Frankly, fifteen minutes of artfully sequenced yoga a day can facilitate all four of these conditions.  Repeated yoga movements, intentional breathing, and tools of awareness can

    - calm the body's nervous system

    - facilitate sustained concentration by slowing down the analytical frontal cortices' brain waves

    - arouse the inner ear, the inner eye, and other inner senses of the imagination by stimulating more communication between the analytical frontal cortex and the emotional limbic system - a communication essential for metaphor-making, innovating thinking, and deep imagining

     - enrich a creative production's artistic texture by facilitating artists' access to complex emotions, heightening their perception of the physical world, and increasing their access to the imagination

    - create within a writer, artist, or musician new patterns of imagining, thinking, listening, and feeling

HOW WE PRACTICE at the WEN Barn

During most YOGA AS MUSE Classes, we might focus around a particular theme such as desire or trust, we might focus upon an ordinary object such as a leaf or an egg beater, or we might play with a creative principle such line, paradox, or juxtaposition.  We might read together a poem or fiction excerpt, view photographs or artworks, or listen to a musical piece that relates in some way to our focus.  We then typically will engage in a YOGA AS MUSE experience. 

A YOGA AS MUSE experience typically includes

-setting a creative intention

-moving through a simple, artful sequence of movement, breathing, internal focus, and external focus that will open us to wonder, surprise, and insight

-creating with openness and authenticity (i.e., acting upon your own authority)

We have space for you to roam.  You will be encouraged to take your creative practice outside of the barn and into the woods, along the pond, up to the screened porch, or into the small meadows. 

As we build a supportive YOGA AS MUSE community of creative persons this summer, we will support one another in developing our own YOGA AS MUSE sequences and processes. 

WHAT TO BRING

Please bring creative material of your choice - notebook, art pad, camera, instrument.  We will have on hand writing pads, sketch pads, an instrument or two, and a digital camera.  

Join us.  See what happens.

For more about YOGA AS MUSE & the ways yoga screwed up Jeff's life in beautiful ways, visit www.centertopage.com.

WEN Home    WEN Calendar & Class Descriptions    Our Story & What is WEN?   About the Stewards   How To Find & Contact Us