Creative Process

When we learn deeply, our critical intelligence, our intuition, and our physical senses are all engaged and synchronized. Creative process sessions help prepare the ground for this kind of integrative learning. Exercises based on artistic disciplines — dance, theatre, jazz, calligraphy, spoken word — awaken and clarify sensory, intuitive awareness. Creative process also provides a bridge between the simplicity of mindfulness and the complexity of organizational dynamics. We can begin to make this bridge by bringing wakeful awareness into physical movement, into precise moments of listening and seeing, and into nonverbal collaboration.

2008 Workshops

Calligraphy Mind with Barbara Bash

What is the experience of making our mark in the world? Working with large brushes and buckets of ink, we will touch the awake mind of calligraphy. The oriental principles of heaven, earth, and human provide a deep structure and guidance for our steady lines and spontaneous marks. We can appreciate our minds – and our lives – when we make a fresh stroke of the moment.

Leadership as a Performing Art: Short Practices for Bringing Mind and Body to the Present Moment with Steve Clorfeine

Where does the training and wisdom of a performer meet the training and wisdom of a leader? What does it mean to be on the spot, focused, attentive and at the same time relaxed, open to an event and its surroundings? A series of direct and simple movement-theater exercises will reveal the tranformative power of play.

The Art of Making a True Move with Arawana Hayashi

Authenticity begins with an integrated relationship between body, mind, and environment. Discover your natural creativity through a gentle process of paying attention to the body, in stillness and in ordinary movement. In this workshop we will learn how to access fresh responses to the challenges of leading in the midst of the speed and fragmentation of contemporary life.

Spontaneous Communication with Jerry Granelli

The ground of communication is openness to oneself and others. Musicians are constantly listening to the world around them and the world within, and surrendering to what is. In this workshop we will practice listening, hearing, and spontaneous composition and form, in order to open ourselves to the message of the moment.

Ways of Knowing with Wendy Morris

The practice of the meditator, the method of the scientist and the frame of the artist are complementary ways of knowing that together expand our understanding of current reality and what is possible. With a spirit of serious play, we will access a broader range of knowing than we habitually experience. Through exercises derived from mindfulness practice, movement improvisation and human systems dynamics we will explore how to flexibly shift perception back and forth between the part, the whole and the greater whole; discover the power of not-knowing as a creative resource; embody the felt experience of leadership in self-organizing systems.

Who Are We, Anyway? with Lanny Harrison

Let's play with going beyond the limited view of who we think we are, and discover some of the myriad characters who dwell within. True play combines structure and freedom – refreshing, outrageous, sublime – often revealing our deepest selves. Through exercises that emphasize imagination, improvisation and transformation, participants will experience the connections between live theater performance, contemplative practice and leadership roles.

The Presenters

Barbara Bash is a published author and performance artist who lives in the Hudson Valley of New York. She has worked for many years as a calligrapher and teacher of book arts and nature journaling. She was co-director of the book arts program at Naropa University and has collaborated over the years with musicians, storytellers, and dancers,exploring calligraphic performance art. Her study of Dharma Art with Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche and Chinese pictograms with Ed Young contributed to her understanding of eastern principles as applied to western forms. She has written and illustrated many award-winning books on natural history for children and adults. Her most recent book is True Nature : An Illustrated Journal of Four Seasons in Solitude. She teaches Big Brush calligraphy workshops throughout the U.S. Barbara has been involved with Creative Process at the Institute since 2002. She has also been collaborating with Bob Wing and Toke Moeller in developing a leadership workshop that draws on the principles and practices of the "Circle, Brush, and Sword."

Steve Clorfeine is part of the Cultural Envoy Program of the U.S. State Department and recently spent two months creating a perfomance with theater students in Kolkata's Rabindra Bharati University. Steve has been writing, performing and directing theater pieces since 1975. For many years he performed in the companies of Barbara Dilley, Meredith Monk, Ping Chong and at Naropa University where he has been on the adjunct faculty since its inception. His own performances and workshops have toured the U.S., Europe, and Asia. Steve has long standing collaborations with Lanny Harrison, with jazz singer Jay Clayton, tap diva Brenda Bufalino, musician/composer Steve Gorn, and with the arts team at the Shambhala Institute. He leads theater, poetry and storytelling residencies in public schools in Europe and the U.S. as well as workshops for theater teachers in Germany, computer engineers in Zurich, and acting students in India and Nepal. He is the author of In the Valley of the Gods – Journals of an American Buddhist in Nepal, several poetry collections, most recently, Field Road Sky, and a sourcebook on creative process.

Jerry Granelli, jazz drummer, composer, bandleader, and teacher, began his musical career in San Francisco in the 1960s, as a member of Vince Guaraldi's group, and then later as the rhythm-section mate of Charlie Haden. Over the years he has frequently worked with Mose Allison, and has been regarded as the star pupil of legendary drum master Joe Morello. Jerry spent much of the 1970s and early '80s teaching in various innovative and prestigious music programs, such as Seattle's Cornish Institute and Boulder's Naropa University.

In the mid-1980s he returned to active recording and performing, first in a trio with Ralph Towner and Gary Peacock, and then with the group Quartet. He now leads his own quartet, Berlin-based UFB. His recordings include Another Place, A Song I Thought I Heard Buddy Sing, News from the Street, and Broken Circle. Jerry presently teaches at the Hochschule der Kunst in Berlin, and also lives and performs in Halifax, Nova Scotia.

Lanny Harrison began her career in the New York Pantomime Theater in 1966. She has played character roles in Off-Broadway musicals and films and, for the past 25 years has written and performed one-woman shows, touring America and Europe. She is currently at work on “Isba”, a new solo. Ms. Harrison has collaborated with the late musician Collin Walcott, with Steve Clorfeine, Lily Pink and with Meredith Monk. She has been a member of The House, Monk's company, since 1969. For the past eight years, she has been part of the Creative Process team at the Shambhala Institute. Ms. Harrison teaches theatre to children in upstate NY, in the Gallatin Division of NYU and at The New York Shambhala Center.

Arawana Hayashi is a dancer and choreographer, with roots in Asian and Western arts. Arawana has been on the faculty of the Shambhala Institute for Authentic Leadership since its inception. She also teaches extensively within the international network of Shambhala meditation centres and is leading the development of Embodied Presence Practice in collaboration with C. Otto Scharmer (MIT) at the Presencing Institute.

Wendy Morris is the Director of The Creative Leadership Studio, supporting the work of organizations, communities and individuals through arts-based approaches to leadership development and intentional change. She synthesizes a wealth of experiences as an organizational consultant, cultural organizer and professional artist performing in North America, Asia and Europe. Her work has received over 25 awards for excellence including a Leadership Initiatives Award from the St. Paul Companies and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts. She is associated with The Human Systems Dynamics Institute, Banff Centre Leadership Development in Alberta, Canada, and St. Mary's University of Minnesota where she teaches Creative Leadership Development at the master's level. After 20 years studying and teaching movement-based awareness practices, in 1990 she began practicing vipassana meditation and learned to love stillness.