Seamus
Berkeley

“Now, twenty years into teaching happiness, I have an answer: FIND AWE. Awe is the emotion we experience when we encounter vast mysteries that we don’t understand.”
~ Dacher Keltner

The practice of drawing or painting from life can lead to such focused attention on details of the subject that the mind can enter into a different state in which the ‘named’ object is dropped and replaced by a more direct perception and connection to the actual experience of vision—something much closer to being a new-born infant again allowing us to re-experience the majesty of the world. In his book Awe, Dacher Keltner comes close to describing this shift in his research on how we experience moments of awe.

What Keltner discusses in his book comes very close to the focus of my art coaching sessions, in which we explore practical methods for expanding the ways we see the world, allowing us to reconnect to direct perception of our surroundings and momentarily dropping the concerns of everyday living. Practiced over time, these methods can lead to greater overall calm and serenity during any moment, even those where we are experiencing anxiety or tension.