MINDFULNESS AND CLAY

A ONE OR TWO-DAY WORKSHOP
For more information on offering this at your ceramics studio,
reach out at: poesiapottery@gmail.com

Certified through the Mindfulness Center at Brown University to teach the eight-week Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction, I developed this class based on my own experiences in using wheelthrowing to address my own challenges with ADHD and PTSD. I don’t know exactly what it is about being on the wheel, but it’s always had a way of bringing me into a calmer, more centered physical and mental space, and I hope to be able to share that sort of experience with those who take this workshop.

Participants will engage with the basic tenets of Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction while learning the art of centering and working with clay on the pottery wheel. Through this medium of clay, we will explore the possibilities of mindfulness as stated by MBSR founder Jon Kabat-Zinn: “Mindfulness is awareness that arises through paying attention, on purpose, in the present moment, non-judgementally.”

In this space, we will utilize the pottery wheel to try and develop our awareness…and hopefully feel a bit better and make some interesting pottery while doing so!

As human beings functioning as potters, we center ourselves and our clay.

A capacity to yield is strengthened in the potter who does not merely use his material to certain ends, but who yields up his soul as well as his hands and his intelligence to his love of the clay.

We are transformed, not by adopting attitudes toward ourselves but by bringing into center all the elements of our sensations and our thinking and our emotions and our will: all the realities of our bodies and souls.

- from MC Richards’ Centering