Writing and the Contemplative Mind took place at the Mason Inn
By Lindsey Brauzer, NVWP TC 2010
When Paul informed me that I would be attending the Writing and Contemplative Mind Conference at GMU October 21st and 22nd, I literally laughed out loud. There is NOTHING contemplative about my mind. I tried yoga once. The instructor “tsk tsked” me throughout the class and adjusted my body every single time we tried a new pose. I tried meditating once after reading Elizabeth Gilbert’s Eat Pray Love and fell asleep. Needless to say, I was a little worried about how “zen” this conference was going to be.
On the other hand, I get overly excited at the chance of going through professional development. While I am a teacher by trade, I am a student at heart. If I can learn something that makes my teaching practices better and my students excited to learn, I am all for giving it a try, which is why I jump at every opportunity to attend a professional development workshop or conference. This is how I ended up at the Writing and Contemplative Mind Conference on that cold October afternoon.
As soon as I walked into the dim lighted ballroom, with my colleague and NVWP ’10 buddy, Norma Coto, I felt at ease. There was soft zen music playing in the background, which helped me to relax as well. Once I found a seat, took out my pen and writer’s notebook, the two-day conference flew by. I have three favorite moments from the conference—Anne Beaufort’s “Creative Processes to Deepen Your Writing Practice” break out session, Jane Hirshfield’s keynote address and poetry reading, and personal time for writing and reflecting.
Anne Beaufort, a professor in Interdisciplinary Arts and Sciences at the University of Washington, Tacoma, gave a break-out session which gave me some great new ideas for how to deepen my writing practices. She gave the group multiple techniques to use when writing including rapid writing, prompt writing, mind mapping, and even coloring! Anne’s session was so interactive and I was able to take each example she gave and use it with my own writing! I even have some ideas to take back to use with my students when we get stuck with writing or bored. At the end of her session, Anne had us reflect on what we learned, surprised us, stretched us and delighted us about our writing process. She challenged us to use these techniques and find more to enhance our writing.
Poet Jane Hirshfield
I was surprised to have my second favorite moment of the conference occur as Jane Hirshfield was reading her poetry. Poetry is my Kryptonite. I feel weak when teaching it; I feel stupid when writing it. But, when I listened to Jane’s talk about her poetry and actually got to hear her read some of her own, I was mesmerized. She does not want to be labeled as a zen poet, but there’s definitely something calming that happens when she reads her poetry. Her poems are so relatable, reassuring, and reenergizing. I closed my eyes while she was reading her poems and found myself right with her as she was reading the poem, seeing the images she was describing, feeling the emotions she was feeling. In a later Q &A session, Jane told the audience that she could sum up Zen Buddhism in seven words: “Everything changes. Everything is connected. Pay attention.” This statement was really powerful and I find myself referring back to it during my own writing process.
“Everything changes. Everything is connected. Pay attention.”
Lastly, I was shocked to find that we had free time during the conference to reflect and write. I spent the whole hour and fifteen minutes writing. I was recently introduced to Julie Cameron’s “Morning Pages” and Cameron was mentioned a number of times throughout the conference, so I thought I should probably start this as a daily practice. Norma brought me her copy of the book to leaf through and I spent the time doing some of the opening exercises suggested at the beginning of the book. Now, I get up every morning and write for at least fifteen to twenty minutes before I do anything and get the “junk” out of my head so I can have a clear conscious for the rest of the day. I’ve found that this writing has done wonders for my attitude this school year and has most certainly benefitted my students!
I went to this conference thinking I would be meditating and writing all weekend, but I am happy to report that I was able to overcome my preconceived notions of the contemplative mind and learn a thing or two about writing to implement in my own classroom, get some personal writing started and finished, as well as clear my scattered mind!
The Writing and the Contemplative Mind Conference was hosted by the George Mason Center for Consciousness and Transformation. The conference was co-sponsored by the Northern Virginia Writing Project, the Association for Contemplative Mind in Higher Education, and the Association of Writers and Writing Programs. For more information about the Center for Consciousness and Transformation please visit http://cct.gmu.edu/
