Art + Mindfulness Workshop St Brigids Secondary School

Fiona Archibald Art Teacher and Miriam Malone 6th year head teacher of St Brigids Secondary School Killarney, invited me to create an Art and Mindfulness workshop with 6th year students.

I was delighted to be invited back to the school after completing a BLAST residency in November 2023 with Ms. Archibald’s students.

The workshop was held as a support to teenager in stress management, peer pressure and self confidence.

Goal of workshop

The goal of the workshop was for exam students to engage in a series of self reflective art and meditation tools that they can use in school and at home. The workshop taught teens the importance of creating space to reflect on their lives through Art and Meditation.

They can incorporate the art and meditation practices into their daily lives and build a sronger feelings of self confidence in who they are.

Having a healthy relationship to their own emotions will improve relationships with family, peers and the larger school faculty.

What practices did the students engage with?

Meditation Practice 1 :Body Scan

 Meditation helps to calm down the monkey mind through helping it to focus on one simple practice that's being presented to you.

The body scan goes through the whole body down to the feet and brings a sense of peace and takes the focus away from a busy mind. A body scan brings focus and awareness to different parts of the body.

It helps the mind to focus and it releases any feelings of distraction or dissociation from your environment.

This practice begins the process of training the monkey mind.

The monkey mind is a term used to describe an over active mind.

The monkey jumping from branch to branch is an analogy used to describe how you are always jumping from one thought to the next. 

The students stood in small groups and were led through a 15 minute body scan where I lead them to focus on different parts of the body beginning with the top of the head. 

For example 

‘’Bring your awareness to the top of the head, rest your attention here for a moment…. Now bring your awareness to your left eyebrow, rest…. Now your right eyebrow… Now bring your awareness to the tip of the left ear. ‘’

Meditation practice 2

This Mindfulness Art practice connects the subconscious and conscious mind through a simple art technique. 

The subconscious mind holds information, feelings and facts that may have been otherwise been unaware of since they are not part of your conscious mind.

A student may have difficulty speaking about certain worries or stresses but Art is the tool that helps them to release feelings in the subconscious mind. 

Through art you give voice to these parts and it can help the students release tension, anxiety and stress from the mind and body.

Healing music was played during the art practice to help students stay in the meditative state.

Meditation Practice 3

Metta or a loving kindness practice is a practice used to improve relationships and friendships. This is a really valuable tool for teenagers as they navigate social pressures and self esteem issues. Metta gives you the opportunity to work with one prayer You can cultivate this intention to open the heart to your own wellbeing by silently offeringyourself some phrases of metta. In your head, slowly offer yourself the phrases:

“May I be happy.”

“May I be healthy.”

“May I be safe.”

“May I be at ease.”

The students then went on to offer the prayer to someone they were annoyed with, someone they barely know such as a shopkeeper or neighbour, the last person they offered the prayer to is someone they are having difficulty with. This metta practice has a profound impact on how you see yourself, how you see others and how you deal with arguments.

Meditation practice 4

It's valuable for students to reflect how their emotions and worries are released during the workshop. 

A closing ceremony helped them to close the door on what they explored in the workshop so they could continue on with their day. 

We closed the workshop by asking each student to take part in a water and ink ceremony.

Water as an element represents the emotions so we will ask each students release big emotions through this closing ceremony. 

The water ceremony taught them how to fully let go of anything they'd been holding on to. 

We use use coloured inks as part of this water ceremony.

Each student will take an ink bottle and drop coloured ink into a six different bowls

They each dropped the coloured ink into the bowl and privately state to themselves what they were releasing.