Melancholy - An Art Exploration Exercise

This is a mindful interaction with art - find a piece either in your home or a nearby gallery that evokes a feeling of melancholy and then we'll practice exploring emotions from the inside and the out. This is an exercise that helps develop your ability to notice more and to see your emotions from different perspectives.

Transcript

Welcome to Wonder Bowl.

For this experience,

You'll need to wander the gallery until you find an artwork that brings up for you a sense of melancholy.

This shouldn't be too hard.

Artists are famously melancholic.

Once you've found a piece,

Find a comfortable spot to observe it,

And then push play again.

I'll see you soon.

Okay,

You found something?

You got a good spot?

Let's spend a minute observing the details.

What's going on here?

If you were an art detective,

And you had to file a report on this painting,

What things could you list?

In your mind,

Observe the scene.

You might have to go wider than what's in front of you.

What's the context?

What's the bigger picture?

Hmm.

.

.

Good work,

Agent.

Okay.

Now I want you to think about why this piece feels melancholic to you.

Is there an experience from your life that this links to?

Is there a specific memory?

Or is it harder to pin down?

More of an overall moodiness?

Just hang out with that feeling for a minute.

Explore it on the inside.

Gently.

Okay,

Nice work.

Here's the thing.

In life,

Stuff happens.

And often,

We react with emotions.

That's how humans work.

But we do have some control.

Our awareness is like a muscle that we can learn to flex.

When we're aware of our emotion,

We're like the cool detective.

Observing.

We're curious.

Maybe in a Sherlock Holmes kind of way,

Or maybe in a hot chick from CSI kind of way.

But we're on the outside looking in.

The opposite to this is when we're right inside our emotion.

Trapped in the glass jar of that feeling with no way out.

It's easy to lose perspective in there.

Trapped animals don't usually behave nicely.

So you can thank yourself for coming here today.

Because by flexing your awareness muscle with the help of this artwork,

You've done a mental press up.

But just a few of those a week,

You might notice a big difference in your well-being.

And that might rub off on all the people you come in contact with every day.

It might feel small,

But this is big.

This is a butterfly flapping its wings in the Amazon.

You can keep going.

Think of another feeling.

And then hunt down an artwork that conjures it for you.

Thanks for being here.

Reviews

This was so amazing- superb! Very unique meditation and I loved the connection between what we observe in the artwork and prior life experiences. A keeper!

Thank you for being here as well
Please create more meditations
🙏🏽

This is beautiful and profound. Thank you for creating this. I am going to use this in the classroom. I think my students would respond deeply.