4.4 • 1.9K Ratings
🗓️ 20 April 2023
⏱️ 9 minutes
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Happiness Break: Sketching Serenity with Chris Murchison
A guided drawing meditation to help you break out of stale thought patterns and maybe even enter a state of flow. No talent required.
How to Do This Practice:
Grab a piece of paper and something to draw with.
Find a comfortable place and start by taking some deep, mindful breaths
Take a few moments to take in your environment. What colors, shapes, and objects do you see?
Set a timer and for the next two minutes, draw something that caught your attention. Don’t worry about how it looks and try to stay in the moment.
Once time is up, spend a moment appreciating what you drew. Think about the impact of slowing down and doing something fun has had on your day.
Today’s Happiness Break host:
Chris Murchison is a meditation teacher, artist and speaker. He currently works as an independent advisor for organizations interested in improving their work cultures.
Check out Chris’s GGSC profile: https://tinyurl.com/32htut6n
Learn more about Chris’s art and other work: https://chrismurchison.com/about
Follow Chris on Instagram: https://tinyurl.com/4auxk3ur
Follow Chris on Twitter: https://twitter.com/murchisonchris?lang=en
Add Chris on LinkedIn: https://tinyurl.com/253x83ty
More resources from The Greater Good Science Center:
Doing Something Creative Can Boost Your Well-Being: https://tinyurl.com/4pcwxhsf
What is Creative Mortification and How Can You Overcome It: https://tinyurl.com/583kswfw
Does Art Heal? https://tinyurl.com/3ttybzpm
Everyday Art: https://tinyurl.com/mstemcsf
7 Ways to Foster Creativity: https://tinyurl.com/ycn5majv
How to Combat America’s Creativity Crisis: https://tinyurl.com/yckzm8se
We love hearing from you! Tell us about your experience of drawing this week. Email us at [email protected] or use the hashtag #happinesspod.
Find us on Apple Podcasts: https://tinyurl.com/2p9h5aap
Help us share Happiness Break! Leave us a 5-star review and copy and share this link: https://tinyurl.com/2p9h5aap
We're living through a mental health crisis. Between the stress, anxiety, depression, loneliness, burnout — we all could use a break to feel better. That's where Happiness Break comes in. In each biweekly podcast episode, instructors guide you through research-backed practices and meditations that you can do in real-time. These relaxing and uplifting practices have been shown in a lab to help you cultivate calm, compassion, connection, mindfulness, and more — what the latest science says will directly support your well-being. All in less than ten minutes. A little break in your day.
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
0:00.0 | I'm Dacker Keltner. This is Happiness Break, a series by the science of happiness where |
0:07.2 | we share short guided practices to help us develop more calm, kindness, connection, and |
0:14.1 | resilience to stress. Welcome. |
0:18.2 | This week we're trying something new on Happiness Break, a guided, drawing practice. We're |
0:23.0 | just going to take a break to get out of our heads and focus on the light, shape, and |
0:28.0 | lines of some object nearby and render it somehow on paper. Even if you don't think |
0:34.8 | you've got any talent, doing something creative like drawing, painting, or crafting can help |
0:41.0 | us find flow where we can get absorbed in what we're doing and break out of the room |
0:46.4 | in it to thought patterns we might be stuck in. It can also unlock our imagination, spurring |
0:52.1 | new ideas, and allowing us to connect the dots of our thoughts in ways we might not have |
0:57.3 | otherwise. Guiding us today is meditation teacher and artist Chris Murkerson. So grab |
1:05.2 | a piece of paper and something to draw with. Here's Chris. |
1:10.8 | Welcome. It's wonderful to be with here here today. Let's begin by taking a few mindful |
1:20.3 | breaths so I invite you to close your eyes or a virtual glance for a moment. |
1:27.4 | And as you breathe, bring your attention to this moment and to any thoughts passing through |
1:34.2 | your mind, any feelings or emotions that might arise and also to your body. |
1:43.0 | Please open your eyes and take a few moments to allow your mind, your near eyes, to travel |
1:57.8 | around the space that you're in. |
2:11.1 | Notice the landscape that you see surrounding you. What do you notice? |
2:23.4 | What textures, colors, light and shadows, interesting or odd shapes, relationships between |
2:33.4 | those things? What memories might be evoked by what you see? What emotions called forth? |
2:47.0 | What questions might your space be evoking or answers? What marvels do you see in your environment? |
... |
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