An Artful Path to Mindfulness: MBSR-Based Activities for Using Creativity to Reduce Stress and Embrace the Present Moment

An innovative, creative approach to help you break free from the fear and uncertainty that stand in the way of genuine happiness.

When you look at your life, do you feel it’s working just the way it is? Or do you feel overwhelmed, stressed, depressed, and uneasy? So many of us are stuck in a pattern of living reactively rather than proactively, and feel exhausted and uncreative as a result. Fortunately, there is another way. It requires stepping off the fast track, and no longer going through your days on “autopilot.” It requires slowing down and tuning in to the present moment and seeing things as they really are.

Mindfulness-based self-expression (MBSE), offers a way off the fast track. Drawing on mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR), MBSE fuses art exploration—including drawing, mark-making, and creative self-expression—with meditations, gentle yoga, breathwork, and body scans. These daily practices are designed to help you cultivate a mindset of awareness, patience, trust, acceptance, and vulnerability.

This unique workbook invites you to draw, tear, mark, play, and take risks. There is no plan, no goal, and no preconceived idea to follow. The process is simply communicating to yourself who you are in this moment, following the thread one mark at a time. The book also serves as a journal for recording your curiosity, vulnerability, and creativity. When completed, it becomes an artistic expression of life as you celebrate the profound gift that is now.

Tapping into our creative self-expression empowers us to be who we are in the world, to come into deeper contact with our authentic selves, and build the self-confidence needed to take risks. The Artful Path to Mindfulness will help you find your own creative heart, and use it as a tool for living a joyful and fulfilling life.

Janet Slom, MFA, is an artist, author, educator, and social entrepreneur who serves on the faculty at Lehigh University’s Global Village, and as adjunct faculty for fourteen years at the Center for Mindfulness at the University of Massachusetts Medical School. She is founder of mindfulness-based self-expression (MBSE)—evolved from Jon Kabat-Zinn’s mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR) program—which instructs students through an experiential curriculum to integrate mindfulness meditation, creativity through art, and mind-body practices into personal growth, mastery of one’s professional field, and improvement of overall wellness. Originally from South Africa, her art installations have been exhibited throughout the globe.

Foreword writer Jon Kabat-Zinn, PhD, is internationally known for his work as a scientist, writer, and meditation teacher engaged in bringing mindfulness into the mainstream of medicine and society. He is professor of medicine emeritus at the University of Massachusetts Medical School; and author of numerous books, including Full Catastrophe Living, Arriving at Your Own Door, and Coming to Our Senses.