Mindfulness in Motion

In the climactic scene of Stephen Chow’s Shaolin Soccer, an underdog character becomes the goalie and uses tai chi to redirect the massive energy of Team Evil’s kick. She is able to harness the momentum of the ball into a winning goal.

My students relocate from another building into the art room weekly. Morning classes tend to arrive hungry. Later in the day, classes arrive straight from recess or lunch in our outdoor cafeteria. Students may come to art class after a difficult test or assignment. Wherever they come from, students need to self-regulate as they transition to art.

Beginning with Breathing
Last year, I led the class in a mindfulness session to help students get calm, ready, and focused. We breathed deeply for sixty seconds while watching calming countdown videos. After a few weeks, we posed like trees, stretching our arms as we exhaled. It was enjoyable for most, but some students found it boring—and I was not thrilled about using instruction time on breathing instead of art.

Inspiration from a Museum Visit
When I was student teaching, I took yoga classes to help with stress. I drew on techniques like sitting in the lotus position and exhaling using lion’s breath, hissing breath, or laughing breaths. On a trip to the Harn Museum of Art, I saw a sculpture of Ganesh, a gilt bodhisattva sculpture from seventeenth-century Korea, and other sculptures from the museum’s Asian collection.

Inspired by that visit, I showed students an image of the Ganesh sculpture and explained the significance of the lotus on which the bodhisattva sits. Lotus f lowers are a symbol of purity and beauty, blooming in mud. They stand for the idea that no matter what you are going through, you can still rise up and be great. I avoided the religious aspect of the piece and presented it as a multicultural work of art.

I showed students other figurative sculptures and asked them to mimic the poses with their bodies. They enjoyed it so much that I continued doing it throughout the year. I scoured art books, searched art museums’ digital collections, and visited the Cummer Museum in Jacksonville, which happened to be showing the famous sculpture Shiva as Lord of Dance (Nataraja).

I put in the time to do research and find figurative sculptures that would provide students with an enjoyable challenge, such as the sculpted heads Jun Kaneko exhibited at the Dixon Gallery and Gardens in 2015.

Ending with a seated figure for the last pose became a natural way to get students into their seats and ready for their art lesson. Sometimes we would discuss the sculptures, and I was impressed with how obser vant my students were. Even young students pick up on details from a sculpture’s facial expression or the angle of a contrapposto pose. Interestingly, collaboration came into play as students got innovative with a partner or friend, posed collaboratively, or used one another to help complete the pose.

Reflection
It’s hilarious to watch students interpret abstract figurative sculptures and see how many different poses there might be for the same sculpture. This activity almost always leaves us giggling. Students loosen up as they get ready to learn. Moving through poses and focusing on moving our bodies like a sculpture is a more effective strategy for my students than sixty seconds of breathing. Mindfulness in motion—a few poses ending with a seated pose—gets students calm, centered, focused, and ready to learn every time.