Exploring Creative Process, Meditation, and Dharma practice. 6 monthly sessions in the first half of 2024.
These are drop in sessions meaning you don’t need to commit to attending all the sessions, but to receive monthly zoom link + topics + schedule you must sign up!
https://forms.gle/J2g1JBFeCryQwSbr9
The core of each session will last 1.5 hours, with the option to attend a 45 min. guided meditation before & a one-hour creative process session after (so you can make these into a monthly half-day of creative practice for yourself if you wish. Dates & meeting details can be found below.
These sessions are offered on a Dāna basis (meaning all are welcome to attend and pay the amount that they are able).
Subjects will include images & inspiration, participation of the body/energy body, and art making as mystical practice.
You do not need to be any particular kind of artist/writer/crafter/maker/performer to come – the only requirement is that you are interested in including your creative capacities within your idea of what it means to practice (meditation, dharma, spirituality). These explorations are focused on what comes to us from creative endeavor that can be liberating, nourishing, and expanding. We aren’t sharing our work within these sessions – it’s much more about the process itself.
These sessions will also continue to support those who took the “Opening What is Closed” course offered in spring & fall of 2023. So, more time to explore this beautiful, mysterious intersection between creative practice & dharma practice. It’s not necessary that you have attended the course to come – if you are a meditator who also is drawn to creative exploration in some way, you’ll feel at home. I will be sending some materials (short readings/talks) for those who sign up which will help set the context of these sessions if you are new.
Creative Process Sessions;
These meetings will also include an optional “creative process” hour which can be very supportive of beginning one’s creative practice. If you decide to sign up to receive notices about these sessions, you’ll be sent more information about what this part of the meeting involves (it’s optional, but most people find them enriching and fun). In these sessions we work on our own things while being together in the same zoom room – the group presence supports creative exploration in a way that is not unlike group mediation practice.
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Times & Meeting Details
Meetings will begin 8am PST (California) time which is 4pm UK time
Schedule for the sessions:
8am PST / 4pm UK – 45 min. Guided Meditation & Instructions
9am PST / 5pm UK – 90 min. teaching & check-ins/questions
10:45 PST / 6:45 UK – 60 min. Creative Process Session
Dates for the sessions: Saturday, Jan. 13 • Saturday, Feb. 10 • Saturday, Mar. 16 •
Sunday, Apr. 7 • Sunday, May 5 • Sunday, Jun 9
I’m offering this in a kind of “a la carte” way. Meaning you can come to one, some or all sessions – and for some or all of the meeting itself (guided meditation, teaching portion, creative process session). Recordings of the talk will be made available to those who have signed up. That being said, there is no replacing the group experience for these kinds of offerings – and I don’t include participant sharing in recordings. So I encourage you to come for as much as you can – topics and teachings will be different each month.
About Me: Susy has practiced Buddhist meditation since 2001, and began practicing insight meditation five years later. In 2015 she began studying and training with Rob Burbea, and completed her teacher-training with him in 2020. She teaches meditation in Los Angeles, California, and is an artist and a parent.
Some particular biographical details related to this offering: I consider my first spiritual root to be art-making, and painted throughout my teens and early twenties. I studied painting at the Rhode Island School of Design, and Film Directing at UCLA. The one thing I did not learn at school (or maybe more accurate to say, I learned to forget) was how to keep my creative process alive and vibrant and fascinating. In time, through years of meditation practice and spiritually-oriented art making practice, I found my way to keeping those doors open – at times working as an artist and at times making art for no good reason at all…
