Why Partner Yoga?

Posted on April 26, 2013 by admin

By Elysabeth Williamson

Shambhala Mountain Center is delighted to offer a special partner yoga training with Elysabeth Williamson on May 29-June 3. Whether you’re a student or teacher of yoga, this five-day intensive is for all levels of practitioners interested in sharing a new form of yoga with others. Couples, friends and individuals are all welcome. Elysabeth is the developer and founder of Principle-Based Partner Yoga™, a powerful style she describes in her own words below.

Let me begin with a simple introduction of Partner Yoga for those of you unfamiliar with this practice. Partner Yoga is two or more people joining together to deepen the impact and experience of a Yoga practice. The primary component that differentiates partner practice from individual practice is touch. We touch and are touched by others. We use traction and leverage, and the kinesthetic awareness that comes from touch, to open to greater depths in our bodies and all the levels of our being.

As with any spiritual practice, there are many benefits we can receive from Partner Yoga. Along with a deepened self-awareness, profound openings in our postures, we also strengthen our ability to enter into and remain in relationships in ways that are authentic and joyful. Relationships are the area where we most directly experience the dualistic nature of existence, as well as our most extreme emotions. When our relationships are flowing, life takes on a glow and we perceive everything through the eyes of love. And when our relationships are strained, we can often experience painful emotions that can feel difficult and overwhelming.

We experience this duality most profoundly in our intimate relationships, but it is true in all our connections – with parents, children, siblings, friends, society, even with Nature and the Divine. The desire to experience loving, vital and healthy relationships is with us our entire lives. From birth to death, we are constantly learning about relating to others, although sadly in our culture, we are given few tools or models to guide us. Yet despite our lack of skill in this area of our lives, there remains a deep yearning in each of us to experience love and acceptance in all of our relationships, including the one with ourselves.

Partner Yoga practices help bring our relational patterns into balance. In our partner, we have a mirror, a physical presence, that brings us into the present moment and paradoxically, more fully into ourselves. This presence supports us to integrate our insights into the very cells of our being, not just as a mental concept, but as a fully embodied awareness. Just as in our relationships off the mat, in Partner Yoga we experience directly what it feels like to build trust, compassion and intimacy with others. Our partners reflect back to us the qualities that we express.

One of the foundational practices I introduce is Back to Back Sitting Meditation. The power and intimacy of this simple posture comes as quite a surprise to almost everyone who experiences it. Here are some general instructions for this practice:

Both partners sit in an easy crossed legged positions with sacrams firmly pressed together. Maintaining a strong sacral connection is the focus of this posture. To strengthen the sacral contact, both partners first lean forward, shift hips back until pelvic bones connect and then then return to an upright position. Draw the lower abdomen up and in to strengthen the sacral connection. Make sure you are not leaning against your partner, instead engage the natural curve of the lumbar spine to lift sternum. Allow shoulder blades to lightly graze your partner.

Direct the breath into the back body and allow the breath to release tension from the inner and outer body. Sense the distinction between awareness of yourself and awareness of your partner. Let go of all preconceived ideas concerning yourself and your partner and instead rest in the experience of your essential sameness. Notice the deepened self awareness through conscious contact with another. Rest and meditate in this position for as long as comfortable, being aware that you are not leaning on your partner.

For many of us, there is a belief that most endeavors (Yoga practice included) are simply easier to do on our own – we can avoid dealing with the needs and feelings of others. Partner Yoga practices unravels this belief and reveals the beauty of our interdependence. We see that when we take the risk to reveal our vulnerability in the presence of another, we are empowered to go much deeper with much less effort. This is also true in life. We can accomplish much more, with much more joy and ease when we willingly and joyfully support each other.

Partner Yoga is not a substitute for individual practice. It is a newly emerging visionary, healing art that teaches the fundamental value of joining and sharing with others. It demonstrates how we become more authentic and empowered through our willingness to open and connect with the world around us. I’d like to emphasize that Partner Yoga is NOT FOR LOVERS ONLY – it can be practiced by any two or more willing participants – friends, acquaintances, siblings, parents and children. Previous Yoga experience is not even required although it can be helpful for some of the more advanced practices.

The need for practices that open our hearts, heal our sense of separation and show us how we are all the same is more urgent than ever – and I am honored and deeply grateful for the opportunities to share this practice with others.

Click here to learn more about the upcoming Partner Yoga program May 29-June 3

Elysabeth Williamson is the founder of Principle-Based Partner Yoga™ and the author of ‘The Pleasures and Principles of Partner Yoga’. She also released a state-of-the-art iPhone app ‘Partner Yoga Touch’ both award winning projects. For more info: www.partneryoga.net

Rabbi Tirzah Firestone: Kabbalah Journey for Women

Posted on April 16, 2013 by admin

Rabbi Tirzah Firestone is an author, psychotherapist, and founding rabbi of Congregation Nevei Kodesh in Boulder, Colorado. She is widely known for her groundbreaking work on Kabbalah and the re-integration of the feminine wisdom tradition within Judaism. She will be joining us at SMC this May 3–5, 2013 to lead: Kabbalah Journey for Women: Communing with the Radical Feminine Presence. We recently asked Rabbi Tirzah some questions about Kabbalah and her upcoming program:

SMC: How does your work with Kabbalah intersect with your work on depth psychology?
RTF: Kabbalah is a wisdom system that is universal. It works with archetypal energies running through the macro (cosmos, world) and the micro (each of our us) and helps us understand how to align our body-mind-spirits with these energies that live within and beyond ourselves.

SMC: What most excites you about this program?
RTF: Women in nature together seeking divine guidance, depth, community, and friendship…What could be better? Together we create a field to receive…and receiving is the translation of the term Kabbalah…the sacred. We need one another to do this, and the medium of nature is the magic.

SMC: How does the text of the Kabbalah apply to our contemporary lives?
RTF: Kabbalah is an entire corpus of work, including many texts from hundreds of years. We will work with some of the juiciest ones, that were originally written by and for men, but which are filled with astonishing teachings and apply amazingly well to women’s journeys.

SMC: Who could benefit from attending this workshop/who is it for?
RTF: Any woman 18 or older who feels a need to expand her bandwidth to new frequencies will benefit from this weekend.

Click here for more information on: Kabbalah Journey for Women: Communing with the Radical Feminine Presence.

Small Deaths, Big Deaths, and a Wider Perspective

Posted on April 15, 2013 by smc

For Dominie Anne Cappadonna Ph.D. CT, death has had an immediacy since birth. Born in the “womb of war” as Pearl Harbor raged, Cappadonna has been repeatedly “informed” by global dying. She grew up in a medical family in a Children’s Hospital, co-created the first holistic medical team in the world in refugee medicine and worked in the Killing Fields of Cambodia, and recently she both suffered and embraced the loss of both her parents, her husband, and many friends within a few years.

“Given multiple deaths in a short period of time, I knew that my work as a Transpersonal Psychotherapist, Chaplain, and mentor needed to more fully engage our important teacher, Death itself,” she explained. So, Cappadonna trained and became internationally certified as a Thanatologist: a death, dying, and bereavement educator.

“The subject matter of death and dying concerns us within the Bardo of life itself and appears inescapably intertwined, coemergent with LifeDeathLife,” said Cappadonna. “So I feel our conception and birth to be our invitation to engage consciously with this natural moment to moment occurrence. With each breath, as they say, we experience a life enhancing inhale, a quiet pause of abiding and a ceasing of the breath of life as we exhale. So intrinsic. At one point we will inhale and exhale for the last time.”

Cappadonna is teaching a May 10-12 Befriending Small Deaths–Big Deaths at Shambhala Mountain Center. We recently asked her a few questions about her fascinating life, about “small” and “big” deaths, approaching death with curiosity, and the workshop she will soon teach.

SMC: Tell us about your early experiences with death.
DC: I grew up in a medical family in a Children’s Hospital, at a time where there was no HIPA and I was free to visit children in the medical units in their wide spectrum of healing. Many of my friends were children I met in their healing time. We continued in friendship after they went back home. Some of my hospital companions died. Death was kitchen-table conversation. I knew I could die as a child, and at any age. Death was treated with respect as a natural process in our family, and I was held securely in this knowledge.

SMC: Tell us a bit more about your work with refugee medicine.
DC: We worked in the Killing Fields with 150,000 Cambodian refugees in a United Nations camp on the Thai border. I also worked inside a camp of Khymer Rouge. As a humanitarian, I practiced being with humans with wounds beyond label of friend or enemy. Our team brought back Cambodian families, and they have taught me a great deal about the resilience of our human Spirit.

SMC: What are small deaths?
DC: ‘small deaths’ are daily and numerous. Death of dreams, hopes, visions, viewpoints, emotional states, events such as losing work, breaking up, aging, loss of anything dear to us. What I ‘thought’ would arise or fall away and more. It can be the smallest thing, like the death of a pen. I’ve shifted from using a pen in my appointment book to using a pencil to honor the impermanence of things!

SMC: What does it mean to approach death with curiosity?
DC: To recognize our cultural tendency to deny or avoid death, to take death out of it’s natural place in the circle of life. To approach death with curiosity suggests to respect the reality of what we see around us and know for ourselves directly. Respect at it’s Latin root means: “to look again and again.” Looking at big deaths~small deaths allows us to be present and alive to this moment and appreciate this generous opportunity of being alive to learn and grow.

SMC: What sort of spiritual skills does one need to be fearless in the face of the unknown?
DC: There are a number of spiritual skills in all wisdom traditions which offer tools of courage, and which engage our body, mind, emotions, and spirit. I will offer some that have a Buddhist basis and are universal in nature.

SMC: Is there anything I’m not asking you that you want to share with me regarding your retreat?
DC: It is a rare privilege to meet within the Great Stupa. The generating field of this world peace center creates a resonant field of profound wisdom, fearlessness, joy, and compassion as our vessel for learning and Being. To be so held within, as well as roam out in the lush fields of spring surrounding the Stupa, cultivates a spaciousness and warmth that expands our conscious awareness of ‘never born, never die’ in an essential way.

Learning to Meditate (with Ping Pong Balls)

Posted on March 29, 2013 by Elizabeth Scully

I don’t remember how I found the Shambhala Center in Boulder or why I started meditating. No one had recommended meditation or suggested I might benefit from mindfulness. I’m pretty certain I just wandered in one day. All I remember is I found myself sitting in the Shamatha Shrine Room at a Monday Night Open Class listening to senior teacher Jim Yensen and wondering what the heck he was talking about.

But somehow whatever he said penetrated the confusion and pain of my mind and resonated with me. I was depressed—deeply, wondering, “Why?” Why exist? Why care? Why me? At the Center I found a sense of peace, not unlike that which I found doing yoga. But learning to meditate was different; it was definitely harder and scarier. I felt crazy sitting there with thoughts bouncing around my mind like a thousand spiked ping pong balls. But it was also compelling, somehow. So I started volunteering for Shambhala on Monday nights, and I started practicing regularly.

I never had illuminating or climactic moments … no bright lights, no great realizations. I just liked sitting. It wasn’t something I had ever really done before, being the Type A, hyper-athletic, workaholic I was. It gave me the opportunity to well … just sit. I don’t remember considering mindfulness or deepening my sense of self-awareness. I didn’t care about learning Buddhist principles like the Four Noble Truths or the Eightfold Path. I just liked focusing on my breath. Breathe in, focus lightly on the outbreath, breathe in, breathe out…

For many years I didn’t even notice whether or not meditation was “helping” me. I often found myself depressed and confused, and I continued to question: “Why, why, why?” But, my friends started to notice I was becoming calmer. And I started to notice I was becoming calmer. And the “why, why, why?” questions started to fade. After eight years I am more involved with Buddhism. I read Buddhist teachings, am a part of a community of practitioners, and I practice regularly. Can I tell you what learning to meditate has given me? I could try to put it in words, but you would have to know me to really see how meditation has positively affected me. Really, the only thing I can honestly tell you is that I smile more often, I love myself 99% of the time, and I feel immensely grateful to be alive.

Shambhala Mountain Center offers several retreats for those new to meditation. Click the links below to check out our most popular weekend meditation retreats:

Learn to Meditate
Shambhala Training Level I
Retreat And Renewal

Read another piece by Lizzy about Meditation in the Mountains.

The Strength to Sit Still

Posted on March 27, 2013 by admin

Fitness buff, Experience Life Magazine writer, and first-time meditator Jen Sinkler joined us for a Simplicity Retreat this past fall. She decided to come to the retreat a after receiving results of a blood test with high levels of Cortisol ( an indicator for elevated stress levels). By coincidence her editor asked for volunteers to attend a beginning meditation workshop and report back on their experience. Below is an excerpt of her article. To read the full article, click here.

“I signed up for a three-day “Simplicity Retreat” at the Shambhala Mountain Center (SMC) in Red Feather Lakes, Colo. — a beginning meditation course open to all levels. Though I intended to arrive early and settle in, once I landed in Denver I was lured by the promise of a kettlebell workout in a park and a tour of the rugby megaplex in nearby Glendale.

I am inclined to shirk stillness, it seems, even when I claim to want it.

The SMC (www.shambhalamountain.org), which has been hosting retreats since 1971, sits on 600 gorgeous acres of Rocky Mountain ridgeline near Fort Collins, Colo. It’s one of 140 Shambhala meditation centers worldwide. Also on the property is the Great Stupa of Dharmakaya, the 108-foot-tall structure that houses the aforementioned Buddha. Stupas are pilgrimage sites built to honor Buddha or certain saintly teachers’ life works, but are often so stunning they attract visitors of all walks. “A stupa is a place to be still and experience the sacredness of the world,” says Joshua Mulder, director of art and design for the Great Stupa of Dharmakaya.

Make Your Mark with Barbara Bash

Posted on March 25, 2013 by admin

One of the community’s most well-known and talented artists, Barbara Bash is bringing her artistic skills and teaching talent to the Shambhala Mountain Center April 19-21. She will be teaching, “Brush Spirit: The Expressive Art of Calligraphy.” Bash studied Dharma Art with Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche and Chinese pictograms with Ed Young. She also recently wrote and illustrated the True Nature: An Illustrated Journal of Four Seasons in Solitude.

Of her chosen art form, Bash says: “Calligraphy is an inherently sacred activity because it synchronizes mind and body. It is a contemplative practice because it reveals who we are and brings the deep principles of meditation into action and manifestation in the world.” Furthermore, she adds, the practice of writing has been intertwined with religion, including her chosen practice, Buddhism.

“The Medieval monks wrote out texts in their scriptoriums, Buddhist monks copied sutras, Arabic calligraphers created elaborate ornamental designs for the name of Allah,” she explains.

At this workshop, students will learn three key things, including the strengthening the sense of embodiment in the making of a mark, says Bash. They will work first with the Chinese straight line discipline, which is actually a Tai chi practice, sitting at tables. Then Bash will guide them in bringing this settled and flexible body experience into the creation of large brush strokes while working on the floor.

“Using the whole body brings stability and relaxation into the practice of brush calligraphy,” she says.
As well, students will be illuminating the experience of mind, Bash adds. “’Calligraphy is a picture of the mind,’ according to the Chinese. Working with large brushes opens us to seeing where we are at each moment.”

Finally, students will be using the ancient principles of heaven, earth, and human as the bones of their abstract strokes. “This gives us a way to be held by the process, showing us how to begin, how to follow through, how to resolve and let go–in mark making and in life,” Bash explains.

Bash is looking forward to the workshop. “Being part of the community of a workshop brings me delight,” she says. “Everyone’s strokes are inherently interesting, imperfect and beautiful. I never get tired of seeing what unfolds in the conversation between humans and brushes!”

The Shamatha Project, Part IV: Background & Far Reaching Implications

Posted on March 22, 2013 by admin

Editors note: Thanks to a recent $2.3 million Templeton Prize Research Grant from the John Templeton Foundation, researchers are revisiting the results gleaned from Shamatha Project and further analyzing those results. In the Post I and Post II of this four-part series we offered people unfamiliar with the project the chance to learn more about the project and its researchers. In Post III we discussed the next stage of this project funded by the Templeton Prize Research Grant. And in this final post we are taking a closer look at the lead researcher, Clifford Saron, and the history behind the project.

By Sarah Sutherland

Clifford Saron

In 1992 Clifford Saron embarked on Fetzer Institute-funded study of Buddhist monks in Dharamsala with three other researchers. Struck by the monks’ calmness and peacefulness, they wondered whether the monks were simply extraordinary people or whether their extraordinary qualities resulted from their meditation training. Eleven years later, one of those researchers, Alan Wallace, contacted Saron about another project. Why not measure the effects of meditation on people in an intensive retreat setting in the West? The Shamatha Project was born.

Saron, interested in meditation since his undergraduate days at Harvard University, first learned of similar research by Joseph Goldstein at The Naropa Institute during its inaugural summer of 1974. “At that time my understanding of the mind from neuroscience, introspection and now Buddhism came together,” explained Saron in a TEDx UC Davis talk last May. “I was hooked.” He went on to do a number of meditation retreats and was an early researcher at the Center for Mind and Brain at UC Davis, a new university center with the ambitious long-term goal of understanding the nature of the human mind from interdisciplinary perspectives.

With sponsorship from Shambhala Mountain Center and the Mind and Life Institute, the Fetzer Institute, and other organizations and individual donors, Saron gathered a stellar team from a variety of disciplines to harness methods and views from cognitive and affective neuroscience, scientific psychology, molecular biology and anthropology. In 2007, they embarked on the Shamatha Project, which we outlined in The Shamatha Project Part I (link). Since then, Saron and his colleagues have presented results of the project to audiences around the world. Saron has also shared the findings on several occasions with the Dalai Lama, who has endorsed the project.

As both a scientist and a practitioner, Saron believes the Shamatha Project has far-reaching implications. “There are multiple domains of society that can benefit from slowing down and ramping up introspection,” he says. “With the Shamatha Project and other studies pointing to the benefits of meditation, there is potential for contemporary society to recognize the need for a refuge that’s accessible to people so they can bear the conditions of their experience in skillful ways, whether their experiences involve caring for the dying, parenting children with autism, or working at Google—all examples of areas where mindfulness practice is taking hold and proving helpful.”

And with more data on the horizon, new findings on the benefits of meditation on our mental, physical and possibly societal health are likely to be unveiled for years to come. Just remember to breathe deeply while you wait. For more information on the project and research publications visit this website.

Ringu Tulku on His Upcoming Retreat: Confusion Arising as Wisdom

Posted on March 19, 2013 by admin

World traveler and renown Tibetan Buddhist Master of the Kagyu Order, Ringu Tulku Rinpoche is bringing his wisdom to the Shambhala Mountain Center April 19-21. He will be teaching from his new book, “Confusion Arises as Wisdom,” a commentary on Gampopa’s, “Great Teachings to the Assembly.” Ringu Tulku recently answered a few questions for us about the retreat.

SMC: How has confusion arisen as wisdom in your own life?
RT: Well, I do not claim that confusion has arisen as wisdom in my life. I was just trying to explain the teachings of the great master Gampopa. These are a collection of his pith instructions that he gave to his disciples on many occasions. Therefore these are called his teachings to the assembly of his students. These teachings were recommended by the 16th Karmapa and Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche to be translated when the text will be found. I found the text and started to teach from them and found them to be very useful.

SMC: What inspired you to write this book?
RT: Actually I taught this book because of the instruction by Karmapa and Trungpa Rinpoche and then I was asked to teach at several places. This particular book is, I think, a transcript of teachings that I gave in Spain.

SMC: And now, what is inspiring you to teach from this book?
RT: I find the instructions very clear, precise, and inclusive. I was also asked to teach it here.

SMC: Are there certain things you will focus on during this retreat?
RT: I am not sure yet whether I will start from the beginning or choose some sections. I will first meet the people who have come and then decide.

SMC: Is there anything I’m not asking you that you want to share with us about yourself, the retreat, or Shambhala Mountain Center?
RT: I am sure there are countless questions one can ask, but I think it does not really matter.

Ringu Tulku was born in East Tibet and fled to India in 1959. He studied with many outstanding masters, including Dilgo Khyentsé Rinpoche and the Gyalwang Karmapa, and was awarded the titles of Khenpo and Lopön Chenpo. Since 1990, Ringu Tulku has traveled worldwide. Rinpoche is extremely knowledgeable, and with his excellent command of English, he is able to transmit the most complex teachings in a remarkably accessible way, infused with his characteristic warmth and sense of humor. Read more on their website, or sign up for the retreat on SMC’s website.

The Shamatha Project, Part III: Forging Ahead

Posted on March 15, 2013 by admin

By Sarah Sutherland

Editors note: Thanks to a recent $2.3 million Templeton Prize Research Grant from the John Templeton Foundation, researchers are revisiting the results gleaned from Shamatha Project and further analyzing those results. In the first two posts of this four-part series we offered people unfamiliar with the project the chance to learn more about the project and its researchers. In this third post we are discussing the next stage of this project funded by the Templeton Prize Research Grant. And in our final post we’ll take a closer look at the lead researcher, Clifford Saron, and the history behind the project.

In Part I and Part II we discussed the inception of the Shamatha Project and the results of the project. Now, thanks to a recent $2.3 million Templeton Prize Research Grant from the John Templeton Foundation, lead researcher Clifford Saron and his colleagues will be taking the Shamatha Project to the next level, further analyzing and expanding the mountains of data they collected in labs they built in the basement of Shambhala Mountain Center’s Rigden Lodge six years ago.

“Sixty percent of the new funding provided by the Templeton Prize Research Grant will help our team wrest meaning from the original data,” said Saron. “We’re taking a very broad view of human experience as seen through multiple lenses because two people who received the exact same meditation training might have entirely different responses to it.” Subsequently, the team is not necessarily looking at the effects of the retreat itself, but rather on how individual differences—including participants’ worldviews, motivation, stages of life, and relationships—affected their training and, ultimately, their personal growth. With these analyses, the researchers can better understand which physiological and psychological measures recorded during the retreats are linked to beneficial long-term growth, and which ones aren’t.

“The beauty of this project,” Saron said, “is having leaders in statistical techniques aggregate the data to predict a trajectory of change in participants’ lives.” Such findings could help explain why some people change for the better, while underscoring what aspects of a person’s spiritual profile are requisites for meaningful change.

With the new funding, allocated over three years, the researchers will also interview the participants again as well as their family members, friends and colleagues to further explore whether the meditation retreat impacted the participants’ daily lives and how those changes, if any, continue to affect them.

“We’re relating how things that we measure in the laboratory reflect meaningful changes in people’s lives,” explained Saron in a UC Davis press release announcing the research grant.

The Templeton Prize Research Grant, which debuted this year, honors each year’s Templeton Prize laureate by funding research related to the laureate’s life’s work. Templeton Prize winners are individuals who have made “exceptional contributions to affirming life’s spiritual dimension.” His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama won the 2012 Templeton Prize in May for his ongoing work in bringing relevant scientific research to bear on the question of compassion and its potential to alleviate the world’s fundamental problems. The grant that Saron, co-director Baljinder Sahdra of the University of Western Sydney, and their colleagues won was announced in November at the annual meeting of the American Academy of Religion during a special session in honor of the Dalai Lama.

Read the final part in our series on the Shamatha Project: Part IV: Background & Far-Reaching Implications

Meditation & Creativity

Posted on March 13, 2013 by admin

New York Times bestselling author Susan Piver will be teaching an Open Heart Retreat April 5-8 at the Shambhala Mountain Center. Susan discovered the dharma in 1995 after reading books by Chogyam Trungpa and Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche, who is now her teacher. According to her website, she practices a formal sitting meditation, acting right, being nice, digging deep, and forgiving herself when she screws up. Susan writes for the Huffington Post and has written five books, including her most recent, “The Wisdom of a Broken Heart.” Susan has generously allowed us to reprint this article. For more information on her retreat, visit our website.

Yesterday I read a tweet from someone looking for advice about taking up meditation for creative reasons. I don’t know this person and I’m not sure what they were looking for, but it started me thinking on what I would say if he asked me directly.

Some of you may know that I lead meditation and writing retreats that are about reconnecting with our own creativity and, beyond that, with the moment of inspiration. And after all, what is creativity exactly, besides a continuous series of moments of inspiration? Which begs the questions: what is inspiration and where does it come from? Can my meditation practice help?

When it comes to the latter question, the answer is “absolutely” and “of course not.”

To get to the reason for this interesting dichotomy, let’s look at the former question: what is inspiration and where does it come from?

Begin by asking yourself: “If I had to come up with one word that was a euphemism for inspiration, what would it be?”

Perhaps you’ll come up with something like “motivated” or “connected” or “awed.”

Fascinatingly, wiktionary offers us this definition: To infuse into the mind; to communicate to the spirit; to convey, as by a divine or supernatural influence; to disclose preternaturally; to produce in, as by inspiration. And this: To draw in by the operation of breathing; to inhale.

At no point is the definition offered: “to be clever” or “to impress.” Rather, the definitions allude to something far more simple, receptive, and intimate.

When I think of inspiration, the word that comes to me is “clarity.” Suddenly I see something that I hadn’t seen before—not because it wasn’t there, but because I simply hadn’t noticed it before. To me, this means that inspiration comes, not from conquering new horizons of thought or acquiring skills I had been lacking, but from relaxing into a more spacious view. This is why our most interesting inspirations almost always happen when we do not expect them, while showering, or dreaming, or driving. When we stop striving—even to be more creative, relaxed, or intelligent—moments of clear seeing are more likely.

Of course our meditation practice teaches this exact skill: that of relaxing our minds by resting attention on breath without agenda. The moment we apply an agenda to our meditation practice, even a great one like practicing in order to be more creative, its energy is drained. When we practice in a way that is both free and disciplined (the discipline of not applying an agenda), our innate brilliance is unleashed and in this way, mental and emotional innovations (aka inspiration) arise spontaneously.

One of the greatest teachers ever of the Enneagram (about which I am passionate), Chilean psychiatrist and brilliant thinker Claudio Naranjo, said about music, “Only repetition invites spontaneous innovation” and of course this is true of all the arts. You can’t sit down at your computer or pick up your guitar or paintbrush and command yourself to innovate. Much sloppiness results from such an approach, unless you just happen to get lucky. But we can do better than hoping to get lucky in art by learning to work with our minds skillfully and openly. Meditation is a very powerful way to do so—but only if it is practiced free from any and all agendas. At this point, one’s vision expands.

So, can meditation help you become more creative: Definitely. And no way.