Guest Kathy Leader on overcoming inner and outer criticism through meditation as an artist.
"As I developed along my life, I had lost my confidence completely. When I went to [art] school, I started really thinking about that. What is it that is stopping me...what was I being afraid of? Clearly, my mother, in a critical way of being was what was stopping me, so I kind of delved into that. I've always been into meditation and yoga. That's a huge part of my life. And I started to just meditate a lot about it and. I came up with this idea that my mother and that judgment had imprinted, implanted itself in my brain, and I had to in some way move it, move past it.
Through years of meditation and teaching, I did a lot of teaching in schools and on schools. I learned that, everyone, kind of [with] myself first, I needed a kind of liberation through meditation and breathing. But my students also needed it. So sometimes it wouldn't necessarily just be through meditation, but it would be through journaling or writing that I would encourage them to be less judgmental about their own work. I, as a teacher and a coach, had to be encouraging and not be at all critical because it just stops the whole process. So I think, you know, in a backhanded way, I can thank my mother for giving me that opposite experience that led me to do this work for myself and for my students."
Kathy is a fascinating artist, as is this interview on Meditation Happy Hour: Tea, Talk, and Truth with Karuna. She brings a freebie to Mind Oasis in mid-April and a series thereafter.
