Mindful Drawing Workshops
One of the things that we try to support through our virtual social hub, is the anxiety and panic that our participants describe having. Sometimes its helpful to talk through some breathing techniques or distraction techniques and we have signposted people to specific apps or websites that can support them.
The key is to distract the brain from the frantic streams of thought that occur when one is anxious or panicked. A really good way to do this is to draw or paint. David our tutor and social hub worker has devised a series of Mindful Drawing videos that are on the website here and he is now running a Mindful Drawing virtual workshop every week for members who have expressed an interest. (See the Weekly Schedule displayed on the Right on the Virtual Hub Page)
If you are not sure if this is for you, just spend a couple of minutes looking at this video of our participants Ash and Adam talking to David about how they feel about Mindful Drawing
Members of the group have agreed that we can display some of their pieces of work to show the sort of things that are done, building gradually from a very simple warm-up exercise to something more complex –
The key thing to remember is that this is not for people who are necessarily good at art; this is for people who want a mindful activity to distract themselves and calm themselves down with a focused piece of work.
Everyone who takes part is asked to assess their levels of anxiety at the start of the exercise and then again at the end, and it’s clear that anxiety levels drop significantly and all the exercises are things that people can repeat or develop further in their own time
