Jon Kabat-Zinn: From catastrophe to creative silence through mindfulness
It thunders, a storm rages, lightning flashes elucidate a street. Fences are pulled over, people run screaming from a burning house, wild boars race gruntingly over pavements, bins are turned over, a small child weeps bitterly in a front yard, flames jump over neighbor houses, cars lying on their sides, even darker clouds form up, the storm fuels the catastrophe.
A loud and hyperbolic image for the mental state of many. Where is the silence? Is it in the world, for which I am waiting? And as long as it storms and thunders, I adapt the catastrophe, and it starts thundering in me? Or could the silence be something that I can cultivate within me, despite the outer circumstances? And what does such a state of mind have to do with photographic creativity?
'Full Catastrophe Living' is the title of a book from Jon Kabat-Zinn, he wrote in 1989. Extensively and impressively the US-American physician and pioneer of MBSR (mindfulness based stress reduction) describes, what physical and mental stress is, and how mindfulness techniques can calm a potential inner catastrophe.
'Entropy', Regensburg, 2009 © Dr. Christine Lehr
This does not suggest that the houses of photographers burn, rather that mindfulness techniques are not only suitable for stress reduction, but also to cultivate creativity from a sphere of silence. When creativity is something, which blossoms in silence, when new creations emerge from a relaxed atmosphere, a view on mindfulness techniques is absolutely worthwhile.
Kabat-Zinn for example recommends a kind of diary to come in contact with one'e own inner sphere. Daily the occurring pleasant and unpleasant experiences can be documented, alongside the physical and psychological phenomena which accompanied those. For the one who is now curious about how such an attitude of mindful observation can be fruitful for photographic creativity, more information on Mindful Photography is recommended.
Eventually those exercises do not only lead to oneself but into silence - blue sky, the warm afternoon sun sends soft rays of light through high cypresses of an avenue. Children are playing and laughing in their shadows. People are sitting at a lake, relaxed and calm, birds are chirping in the reeds. The surface of the water is quiet and still, it mirrors the relaxed faces.
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