==== Guided meditations ====

=== What is it? ===

Co-creating multisensory contemplative experiences and guided meditations; as performances, online streams and products.

=== Why? ===

Wisdom traditions as well as contemporary science teach us that meditation can have a deep and positive influence on people's lives, especially when facing stress and other types of difficulty. While meditation can be beneficial for all, it is still not accepted as a practice in many contexts. This is partly due to the "new age aesthetics" that dominates guided (audiovisual) meditation (just type in "meditation" in YouTube, to understand what we mean). As a community of creative practitioners, with deep roots in the arts, we want to reclaim meditation as a participatory artwork, including contributions by renown (performing) artists, writers and experience designers. 

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=== How? ===

By experimenting with different (multisensory) languages and aesthetics to create artful meditative experiences. We co-create these experiences together in the hosting community and offer them as:

  * Co-present experiences: guided meditations in workshops, retreats, festivals, and as stand-alone events
  * Recorded experiences: 
    * online database of guided meditations as sound and video files
    * physical package: including a physical carrier of AV programmes (CD/DVD, USB-sticks, or a card with a URL on it), scents, fabrics, lighting... to create a DIY meditative experience 

=== For whom? ===

(Aspiring) meditators, facilitators, arts and cultural venues and festivals, companies...

=== Needs ===

What does the practice/activity need from the hosting community?
  * Collaboration and co-creation
  * Funding opportunities (joint application?)
  * Testing ground

=== Offers ===

Why is this practice/activity relevant for the hosting community? What learning will it bring?

  * Materials to use in workshops and retreats
  * Broadening the community by involving artists
  * Reclaiming contemplation away from the new age context
  * Support for individual contemplation practice of the members