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Play Attention: Improvisation and Mindfulness

This event is part of series:

February 14, 2018 - 9:00am to 12:00pm
Speaker(s): 
Lisa Rowland & Ted DesMaisons 

Mindfulness—paying attention to the present moment with curiosity and kindness—enhances many aspects of our physical health and emotional wellbeing. Want to increase immune function, positive emotion, social connection, emotional intelligence, focus and creativity? Want to decrease pain, anxiety, stress, depression, or emotional volatility? Mindfulness can show you how.

In this workshop, we'll move toward all those benefits by putting mindfulness on its feet! Combining formal practices with highly engaging improvisation-based activities, is an approach that will help participants experience the benefits of mindfulness in a new and enlightened way. 

After the session you will have concrete tools to:

  • Change your relationship to “failure”
  • Train the “puppy mind” with patient, kind, and firm repetition
  • Develop an attitude of kindness and curiosity toward self and others


This course incorporates insights and practices from the 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. We will refer to improv principles and techniques and use some improv exercises, but all are welcome regardless of improv experience. 

Instructors:
Lisa Rowland is a lecturer at Stanford in the Theatre Department, and a member of the faculty of the BATS School of Improv. Lisa performs and coaches improvisation and speech skills around the world.

Ted DesMaisons, MBA, MTh. Ted is a trained Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) instructor who serves as the US Partner for the UK-based Mindfulness in Schools Project. He has studied, performed, and taught improvisation internationally.

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