Zentangle Activity

Experience #2: Zen And Flow In Music

Zen

The concept of Zen is a central part of the Buddhist philosophy movement that originated in China during the Tang dynasty (618-907 CE). "Zen" is actually a Japanese word translated from a Chinese word that means "meditation." Zen emphasizes:

a state of "calm attentiveness."
actions being guided by your intuition rather than your thoughts.
being at peace with your thoughts.
knowing your place in the universe.

So if this is what philosophers think about the subject, let's read on for a different perspective...

Flow

Now here's a different take on a similar principle by psychologists:

Have you ever looked up at the clock and wondered where the time went?

Have you ever heard the sayings "time flies when you're having fun" or that someone is "in the zone"?

All of these ideas have in common the concept of "flow." A researcher named Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (Mee-hi Chick-sent-mee-hi) was a prisoner during World War II and came to the United States after the war to study why some people are happy and content in life while others are not. He published a popular book in 1990 and has been looking into the topic for nearly six decades.

Things that are needed for a "flow" experience include:

Complete Concentration
Clear Goals
A Shift In The Feeling Of Time
The Experience Is Personally Important To You
The Feeling of Effortlessness
A Balance Between What You Can Do And What You Are Trying To Do
You Lose Yourself In Your Thoughts
You Feel Like You Have Control Over Your Activity

Does this sound like the process of creating a Zentangle to you?

New Age Music

Enter "New Age" music. New Age is a style of music that was developed as a reaction against the loud, money-making enterprise of rock and heavy metal music in the 1970s. It tried to achieve a simpler style that required less thinking about music and more of an experience where music "washed over" the listener like an ocean wave. In this style of music, the losing of a sense of time in a meditative state was encouraged.

There are four main types of New Age music:

Folk-Traditional-Acoustic (Sample Artist: Enya)
Ambient-Synthesizer (Sample Artist: Brian Eno)
Jazz-Based New Age (Sample Artist: Paul Horn)
Environmental New Age (Sample Artist: Paul Winter)

Try It For Yourself

Let's see if we can create a "flow" or meditation-type of experience using art and music. Since we have been working on Zentangles, we will create one final single square Zentangle while listening to the music in a provided Spotify playlist. Complete the steps below in order. The first step is to ask yourself a couple of simple questions:

(1) How are you feeling right now?

Rate the strength of your feeling on a scale from 1% (a little bit) to 100% (a lot).

(2) Start the timer. [Click]

(3) Play this Spotify playlist.

(4) Create one square Zentangle using a blank square sheet of paper.

When you are finished with your Zentangle...

(5) How much time do you think has passed? (Don't cheat!)

(6) Click back to your running stopwatch. How much time has ACTUALLY passed?

(7) Was the time more or less than you expected? Do you think you experienced a "flow" experience?

(8) How are you feeling right now?

Rate the strength of your feeling on a scale from 1% (a little bit) to 100% (a lot).

Did you experience any change in mood or the strength of that feeling?

(9) Discuss your experience with your class.

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