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https://www.artofmindfulness.org.uk/guided-mindfulness-meditation-and-podcasts/

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Guided Mindful Drawing Meditation 20 Minutes

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Wendy Ann Greenhalgh - Art of Mindfulness

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Guided Mindful Drawing Meditation 20 Minutes

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Presenter

Doctoral Student, Drexel University

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Mindfulness practice is grounded in neuroscience with current research revealing applications in the fields of medicine, psychology, leadership, and most recently education. As mindfulness weaves its way into the world of education, a key content area connection has been neglected in current research: creativity. Creativity and mindfulness are both activated in the prefrontal cortex, providing the basis for this study and future research.

The problem the pilot study seeks to address is: Mindfulness practice is indisputably beneficial for the wellbeing of students and can be taught seamlessly through visual arts curricula and creative practice, however, accessible programs are not yet widely available to high school students.

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Several codes revealed factors of influences on the quality of the mindful experience.  This also included potential influences on planned experiences as described by undergraduate students, high school students, and an art educator.  Some of the influences described were actually evidence of awareness of the experience as well.

“Because I know like especially high school kids, they're really concerned about each other. (Laughter) And I know when I was in high school I was concerned like, what’s the person actually doing and I would just constantly think about that and not really think about what I'm doing.”

“I feel like she used like just the right words to like, I don't know, make you experience what she wanted to. Cause like, when she like described it as like a tide, your breath, like, I don't know. It was really nice.”

“That was the other thing, I completely, I wasn't able to get comfortable in the chair without a back.”

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Belzer, Florian & Schmidt, Stefan & Lucius-Hoene, Gabriele & Schneider, Johann & Orellana-Rios, Claudia & Sauer, Sebastian. (2013). Challenging the construct validity of mindfulness assessment—a cognitive interview study of the freiburg mindfulness inventory. Mindfulness, 4 (1), 33-44.  doi: 10.1007/s12671-012-0165-7.

Cardaciotto, L., Herbert, J. D., Forman, E. M., Moitra, E., & Farrow, V. (2008). The assessment of present-moment awareness and acceptance: The Philadelphia mindfulness scale. Assessment, 15(2), 204–223. doi:10.1177/1073191107311467.

Creswell, J.W. (2013). Qualitative inquiry and research design: Choosing among five

approaches (3rd ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.

Creswell, J.W. (2015). Educational research: Planning, conducting, and evaluating quantitative

and qualitative research (5th ed.). Boston, MA: Pearson Publications.

Yvonne Feilzer, M. (2010). Doing mixed methods research pragmatically: Implications for the rediscovery of pragmatism as a research paradigm. Journal of Mixed Methods Research, 4(1), 6-16. doi:10.1177/1558689809349691

Miles, M.B., Huberman, A.M., & Saldaña, J. (2014). Qualitative data analysis: A methods

sourcebook (3rd ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.

Russ-Eft, D. & Preskill, H. (2009). Defining Evaluation. In Evaluation in organizations: A

systematic approach to enhancing learning, performance, and change (2nd ed) (pp. 1-33). New York, NY: Basic Books.

Saldaña, J. (2015). The coding manual for qualitative researchers (3rd ed). Los Angeles, CA:

Sage Publications.

Siegel, Daniel J. (2007). The Mindful Brain. New York: W.W. Norton & Company.

Zabelina, D. L., & Robinson, M. D. (2010). Creativity as flexible cognitive control. Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts, 4(3), 136-143. 10.1037/a0017379

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Plan for Implementation: Synthesizing the literature and participant perspectives, a study can be designed that considers the optimal environment to learn the practice, explore, and reflect.

Provide Teachers with the Space to Practice First :From this experience, teachers can step into the shoes of their students and imagine ways to differentiate for classroom implementation.  Further research should be done to determine what type of teacher would be most likely to create a culture of creative mindfulness in the art classroom, or to examine the impact of the practice on the individual teacher.

Multiple Levels: The findings indicated immediate changes in emotional state after 15 minutes of guided drawing meditation. With results so immediate, how can a study be tailored to research multiple learning levels?

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1.     What are the current perceptions of creative mindfulness practice?  Participants indicated an interest in creative mindfulness practice, although none had participated in the formal practice prior to the focus group or interview. Participants identified factors that have influence on mindful experiences: voice, space, sequences. All participants recognized the potential benefit of engaging in the practice for adolescents and adults.
“I’m excited.  I guess, like, I’m ready for it. Open and ready.”
“I don't have too much experience with it directly”
“I think it is.. interesting. I want to learn more about it”

2.     How does it feel to participate in the creative mindfulness practice?  Participants described the experience as generally relaxing.  Some identified moments of physical discomfort or moments of broken focus, which are all celebrations of mindful awareness.  The specific meditation included a body scan, breath work, and connected drawing to the breath.  The experience was unique to the individual, as evidenced in the photographs of the work. Participants were influenced by the furniture, sequence of meditation, voice of the meditation guide, and current emotional states.
“it opens up your mind to being relaxed and realizing that in this moment, you can do whatever you want.”
“Because I was like focusing on like every time she said something we would be having like the tingling in the fingers, I felt it.”
“think in the present and that’s where I’m trying to get my mind to go to. Everything is fine, right here. Right now. So, that’s kind of been like my meditation thing.  Calm down. Just empty your mind of all the junk and focus on what’s right now.”

3.     What are the immediate effects of creative mindfulness practice? Each participant clearly recognized their emotional states, and all experienced an immediate improved state.  All participants exhibited present moment awareness. Participants were able to verbalize their experience immediately after with undertones of mental and physical awareness in their responses.
“And the outcome is really just about sitting and breathing for yourself.”
“And I think taking that time out on a daily or even weekly basis will just, it opens up your mind”

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Recognizing Emotional States
Mindfulness of emotion is recognized as one of the criteria for measuring mindful awareness on the Frieburg Mindfulness Inventory (FMI) (Belzer, Schmidt, Lucius-Hoene, Shneider, Orellana-Rios, & Sauer, 201). The data indicates that participants were demonstrating mindfulness of emotion by recognizing and identifying their emotional states before and after participation in the practice.
Influences on Mindful Experiences
Research implies that mindfulness practice can happen anywhere and everywhere, but formal practice, such as a guided drawing meditation, might be more successful under certain circumstances.  Data from this study paired with data from casual conversation indicates the voice of the guide as a major influence on the novice participant.  The researcher has yet to find significant research on voice, space, and sequence as factors, indicating a gap in the literature.
Present Moment Awareness
Present moment awareness is a key component to mindfulness practice.  Defined as "continuous monitoring of experience with a focus on current experience rather than preoccupation with past or future events” (Cardaciotto, Herbert, Forman, Moitra, & Farrow, 2008, p. 205).  Data indicates that participants were engaged in present moment awareness during and immediately after the creative mindfulness experience.
Influences on Lifespace
Participants at each level described a connection to their entire day, implying that mindfulness practice carries throughout ones “lifespace” (Lewin, 1947). Mindfulness tools, while they can be learned through tangible creative practice, have implications for universality in all aspects of daily life.

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Participants at each level described a connection to their entire day, implying that mindfulness practice carries throughout ones “lifespace” (Lewin, 1947). Mindfulness tools, while they can be learned through tangible creative practice, have implications for universality in all aspects of daily life.

“I feel it would help them get into a routine and hopefully eventually be able to connect that with other things besides art, sort of things in their life, maybe with other classes too.”

“I feel like if I were to like do that more often, then it would like, I don't know, I would be like less nervous all the time.”

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The guided meditation experience was focused on awareness in the present moment, bringing the participants into the present while accepting any wandering minds or flowing thoughts.  Many of the codes illustrate the participants’ awareness of the fact that mindfulness is in fact, being in the present moment.

"it opens up your mind to being relaxed and realizing that in this moment, you can do whatever you want.”

“when I was drawing it, I felt like I was drawing something that made sense, like when I had my eyes closed and I was listening...”

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There were many codes that identified participants perceived emotional states.  Many of these were in-vivo (Saldaña, 2016) codes, derived directly from the participant’s words.  The codes were applied to present emotional states, self-described states in relation to the conversation, and imagined states as a result of hypothetical routine practice.

“Like, honestly, like when we started this, I was anxious. And now I'm feeling more comfortable”

“I feel very calm and open.”

"School is usually a stressful environment.”

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The initial coding of transcripts followed a holistic coding model (Saldaña, 2016).  In this way, the data provided a general understanding of the phenomenon that the participants experienced.  It is worth noting that the focus groups that were conducted were not traditional focus groups.  One group was comprised of undergraduate art education students, the other a group of high school senior art students.  Neither of the groups could be described as experts in the field (Meriam & Tisdell, 2016), as the group experience was a bit more phenomenological in approach.  Transcriptions of two focus groups and a single one-on-one interview were holistically coded and then pattern coding was applied as codes began to repeat. The data were labeled with codes as they emerged and the codes were collapsed into themes which were defined.

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Two semi-structured focus groups

One 1:1 interview

Artifacts: Photographs of participant's work

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Both of the focus groups as well as the one-on-one interview were held in a visual art classroom at the Williamsport Area High School in Williamsport, PA.

Participants represented three groups: secondary visual art students, undergraduate art education students, and practicing art educator.

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Research Design
The researcher operated within a pragmatic paradigm when designing this phenomenological case study.  The design was guided by the researcher’s desire to produce socially useful knowledge (Feilzer, 2009).  A phenomenological approach was utilized in this study due to the shared experience that was created for all participants (Creswell, 2015). Open-ended qualitative questions were asked to participants before and after a guided drawing meditation.
Rationale
The phenomenological case study approach was selected because creative mindfulness is a concept that is not widely accepted (Russ-Eft & Preskill, 2009).  It was assumed that most participants would have no experience with the practice.  Therefore, the researcher created an experience, through the focus group or interview, that allowed the participants to engage in creative mindfulness through a guided drawing meditation within the interview or focus group time.

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1. What are the current perceptions of creative mindfulness practice?
2. How does it feel to participate in the creative mindfulness practice?

3. What are the immediate effects of creative mindfulness practice?

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The purpose of this phenomenological pilot study is to explore the levels of prerequisite knowledge and immediate perceptions among high school art students, undergraduate art education students, and practicing art educators, concerning creative mindfulness practice and its potential implementation. Gaining a better understanding of the knowledge and perceptions of the participants will help to determine if the integration of creative mindfulness practice is worth pursuing at the secondary or post-secondary level.